Whoosh! What was that? Oh, that was London fashion week, that was. And before that it was New York. But now it's Milan
and then it's Paris's turn to be glitter-dusted by the fashion week
travelling circus. In the two weeks since London put away the fancy
dress, dreams and props – and totted up the order book – they have
already moved on to the next lot, which is to say autumn and winter
2014.
Such is the mayfly nature of fashion and yet, for all its silliness
and superficiality, it remains a huge money spinner for the UK,
generating stupid amounts of dosh (trillions
annually) to be recycled through the merely temporary bolted on to the
impossible. Aspirational – yes, some of it. A work of art – yes, some of
it. Beautiful – yes, some of it. Stylish – ah, well, now you're asking.
It's interesting, this question of fashion (around for millennia) v
style (also around for millennia). Without getting bogged down in
semantics, I often wonder which came first or if this is another of
those "chicken and egg" things I will never satisfactorily unpick.
I'm presently of the opinion that style is the catalyst to fashion. The first woman to wear a bifurcated hennin
was attempting a new style. When all her friends stopped laughing their
garters off and started wearing it themselves, that's when it became
fashion. Likewise, the first punk to wear a T-shirt held together with
safety pins, which regrettably generated the Versace frock
responsible for catapulting Liz Hurley into the public eye. Some you
win and some you lose: a thing that started out as "street",
sustainable, recyclable and accessible gets picked up by a designer who
adds a bit of je ne sais quoi and a four-figure price tag and reincarnates it as a fashion item but bearing little relation to what it started out as.
During "#LFW", Vivienne Westwood (whose own career had quite a lot to
do with safety pins in its early stages) came out with: "Buy less.
Choose well. Make it last. Quality, not quantity …" I agree. It's a pity
she added: "I think that poor people should be even more careful",
because what that shows is that she's lost touch. Small income equals
small choice, Dame Viv, but apparently you've forgotten that.
Not
that I begrudge Westwood's success because the cut of her collections
is unusual and beautiful, the fabric and manufacture is robust and the
clothes are designed for women … women with hips and knockers. My newest
Westwood piece is six years old. Break that down into price per wear
and it looks like a more sensible purchase, assuming I didn't spend the
rent money on it in the first place. My personal style, as opposed to
everyone else's fashion, evolves from what survives in my wardrobe; that
is, the pieces that sang to me from a clothes rail or a website and
most accurately reflect who I am. Very few of them are what might be
described as "in your face". Many of them are in excess of 20 years old.
So, to return to fashion week … I don't "do" it. That is to say that
I'm not interested in seeing or being seen and all the shows are
available live on video to watch happily from my desk in any case. I'm
interested in fashion only insofar as there are bits of it I might want
to incorporate into my personal style. I like it for its ideas.
One idea I like is sustainable, responsible fashion and one company that popped up on my radar in that regard is Eileen Fisher,
a US company making inroads into Europe and the UK. It interests me not
just because of its well-made, ethically sourced, washable and
eminently wearable clothes but because it is so active in recycling,
repairing and up-cycling its own stuff, its mission
is to keep as much as possible out of landfill and put whatever money
the various schemes generate back into supporting women's initiatives
and generally making life better. The pieces come with a healthy price
tag but then I wouldn't want them to be cheap either. These are
investment pieces. The only invitation I accepted this fashion week was
to a preview of its spring/summer 2014 range and I loved it, all of it.
And I didn't love it just because they gave me a cactus to take home in
my goody bag – what do you take me for?
I have one question, and it's the usual thing: why, when the biggest
purchasers of this range are the 45+ age group (and you have a range labelled "Plus"),
do you show your clothes on whip-thin post-pubescent models? This is a
question I shall keep asking because, to my eyes, the whole Identikit
model thing is beginning to look a long way out of touch with what
people actually want.
But then I suppose that's what differentiates
fashion from that other thing – style.
http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/fashion-blog/2013/sep/25/fashion-shows-prefer-style-to-fashion
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