Unfortunate fashion truths from the LA Weekly, via Feministe:
Here is a crisis no one is talking about, an inconvenient fashion truth. Hipsters have been mining vintage shops, thrift stores and resale outlets, tapping the ’80s vein at an alarming rate. If the trend continues, there will be no skinny jeans, no Care Bear T-shirts or even pastel bangles left in our lifetime. Why? Because this year, looking bad was hot, and no other decade can rival the ’80s in unattractive fashion. Ugly was the new pretty in 2006, a year when even TV undid the glam and turned Ugly Betty into a breakout hit. Hipsters citywide craving the ironic I-just-can’t-look-bad-no-matter-how-hard-I-try style have left store shelves empty: American Apparel can’t seem to make leggings fast enough and Urban Outfitters can’t replicate enough ’80s-sitcom T-shirts to quench the needs of the L.A. scenester. Mismatched outfits, bad eyeglasses, bad hair — the more fucked up you look, the cooler you are, because you don’t care, and nothing is cooler in Los Angeles right now than not caring about how you look… or at least looking like you don’t care
“Mismatched outfits, bad eyeglasses, bad hair, the more fucked up you look, the cooler you are” should be adopted as the official motto of the city of Amsterdam.
Witness this design by Bas Kosters, from coverage of his ’06 show by the blog of the Dutch Fashion Foundation:
Oh dear.
I’ve got lots of problems with Amsterdam fashion. For instance, I have to go to the opticians shortly for new glasses and I’m dreading it: from my inspection of the available frames it seems I’ll have little choice – either I can look like someone’s granny in fuddy-dudddy wirerims or resemble a barely-shaving, peach-fuzzed wannabe MTV VJ, in heavy rectangular black or red frames. I am a free woman, not Joe 90, dammit!
I’d like to think it’s all an ironic homage to geekdom, but no, not really, it’s just a dearth of creative imagination, here as in the US.
I was watching season one of Project Runway last night ( hey isn’t that Jay McCarroll guy actually Renko from Hill St Blues?) and not one of the contestants had any real design or craft skills, it was all about the dissonance and shock value, much as design is here. Not one contestant, other than a Hollwood costume designer, showed a spark of originality and they all showed even less craftspersonship, wit or style. The contrast, between the cheap sensationalism of this show and the Chanel couture fly-on-the-wall documentary shown on BBC4 recently, which showed the mindboggling range of creative skills of the Chanel seamstresses, is stark. The Project Runway approach does not bode well for fashion’s continuance as the perfect melding of clothing. craft skills and art. One can applaud the democratisation of fashion while still deploring the loss of taste and traditional skills.
I especially noticed the difference in fashion between NL and Britain at Christmas: the UK shops still make a nod towards women of a certain age’s desire to look pretty and chic as well as hip while Dutch stores, although belonging to the same chains as in England, France, Spain and the rest of Europe, seem to stock all the ugly rubbish that won’t sell elsewhere. And all horribly overpriced and undersold. Op is Op.
My own personal clothing philosophy, such as it is, is to stick to monochrome in low detailed (very dating), reasonably current shape and fit , then to update regularly with accessories – so at the start of every season I try and get an overall feel for where fashion is going and shop accordingly. I’m too old to be a complete fashion slave, but not to old to want to be chic. This year I’m going for pleats, berets and a general air of gaminity. I’m not tall and I’ll never a be a Hepburn so I’m going for a short, red-head-bobbed Faye Dunwaway circa Bonnie & Clyde.
In Amsterdam it sometimes seems there’s only a] quirky/ugly for teenagers, or b] luxe for the haute-bourgeoisie or c] slashed-to-the-navel designer labels for the tragically permatanned clubber, and nothing in between. I was in Primark in Plymouth at Christmas – hardly an outpost of high fashion – and within minutes found the exact of-the-zeitgeist sweater I’d looked all over Amsterdam for for weeks, (and for only 6 quid) and the perfect squishy bucket bag – again that I’d looked everywhere for – for an equally risible four pounds.
Oh well, I suppose ugly clothes must have somewhere to go to die. I, however, shall continue to buy my clothes in England, where being over 40 is still the beginning of real stylishness, not the end.
Read more: Fashion, Clothes, US, Netherlands, Amsterdam, LA, UK
