How to dress: Print and pattern
Apparently, the return of print and pattern to our wardrobes is a good sign for the economy: with a bull market comes a peacock aesthetic, or something. Yeah, yeah, whatevs. Ever since we found out that the people who are supposed to know all about the economy didn’t even understand the international banking system, I’ve been a little sceptical as to their ability to have any real insight into a business as nuanced and fast-moving as fashion, frankly. Anyway, the return of print has been a gradual process. It started years ago with one wallpapered wall, then we branched out into a print blouse or a striped dress, and now we’re ready for some print-on-print action.
The beauty of print-on-print is that it sends mixed messages. Both halves of this outfit – gingham and spriggy floral – would simper on their own, but together they take on a feistier attitude. Mix together leopardprint (read: vampy) and a Breton stripe (read: laidback, boyish), and no one can tell whether or not you are trying to be sexy. Well, good, because why give that away?
When you find a print you love, you feel a pull that is emotional, not logical. It may be a naive red and white strawberry print, or a gothic skull silhouette, or a splash of peonies on silk: when you see a print you love, just like when you hear a song you love, you can’t always explain why you love it. Pile on the prints that speak to you, and leave it to others to wonder what it all means. Read more
Jessica Biel Week
This week I’m devoting all of my articles to Jessica Biel’s impeccable style. To be 100% honest, I didn’t like or even slightly admire or pay attention to Jessica’s style until this fall. That’s when I saw her turn from a stylist’s mannequin to owning her own personal style. Whether it’s her signature Oscar de La Renta or her boyfriend’s William Rast collection, Jessica is effortlessly full of style.
For evenings, Jessica typically picks solid color fabrics, particularly in nude or pastels. The shapes are always, always form fitting and as tight as can be. With a body like that, can you blame her for showing off a bit?
Want Jessica’s red carpet premiere look? Easy enough with my shopping skills, check out these picks: Read more
Off to Glastonbury? Check out my tips for Michelin Man chic
I am going to Glastonbury next weekend and I see from various magazines that I am meant to be sporting “a festival look”. What is “a festival look”?
Charlotte
Round my way, a festival look is at least three sweatshirts, a bad pair of jeans, lame wellingtons from the high street that leak because you were too cheap to go Hunter, hair that hasn’t been washed for three days, eyes that haven’t been shut for four, and a palpable air of despair of ever seeing your home and, more importantly, your bed and indoor plumbing again.
According to certain magazines de mode, however, a fashion look is a Galliano silk slip dress, some Jimmy Choo wellies, Clubmaster sunglasses, a Nicole Farhi scarf and a Stella McCartney parka. Or something.
We have spoken frequently – oft, even – on this page about the disjunct between the real world and the one depicted in fashion magazines, and usually in defence of the magazines. You want reality, go to a Ken Loach film (if your reality is particularly depressing, mind). You want attenuated women wearing clothes that cost more than all of your worldly possessions? Come sit by me.
I doth protest – not too much, but just enough – against fashion shoots and articles that pretend to have some form of practical intention but are actually as divorced from reality as the most high-falutin of haute couture shoots. Examples of such articles include those which ask “fashion insiders” for their “holiday packing tips”, which tend to focus more on name-dropping one’s friends and self-promotion than, you know, packing tips (“My daytime wardrobe consists of a Temperley London kaftan, £1,950,” Alice Temperley, Harper’s Bazaar.)
But even those have their voyeuristic plus sides. The “festival fashion tips” to which you refer have no plus sides other than proving that the writer has never been to a festival or, indeed, outside, full-stop. Read more