Boho and babushka chic for the high street

[kit]

Boho and babushka chic for high street

[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Hadley Freeman, deputy fashion editor
Friday April 22, 2005
The Guardian

[/font][font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]There is a definite change afoot for high street fashion, and not just in its insistence that for next autumn/winter babushka chic (think embroidered skirts and slippers) is the next big thing.

This became clear yesterday at the autumn/winter press day for the Arcadia Group, the umbrella company for some of the best known fashion companies on the British high street, including Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins and Burton's.

The British high street has become a byword for clever copies of catwalk fashion. But during the past five years, as its techniques have improved, so has its confidence, and now it is happily coining its own looks.


Earlier this week this tendency seemed to be marching towards its inevitable conclusion when the high street outlet Monsoon announced that it was suing (the lower priced) Primark for copying its designs, proving that the high street is becoming a lot more houseproud of its creations.

"We're not so much taking influence from designers as creating our own look," confirmed Miss Selfridge's design manager, Lisa Marie Peacock.

Of course, high street claims to originality need to be treated with scepticism: no sooner did Peacock make her claim than she pointed to a rail of satin minidresses and described them as "very Galliano and Westwood".

But it is certainly true that high street copies of high fashion clothes are, well, a little last season. Instead, high street manufacturers are more likely to look towards the real trendsetters of the day: celebrities.

Thus "boho fashion" (identifiable by its floppy wide-brimmed hats, long skinny scarves and wispy wafty clothes), popularised by actress Sienna Miller, will still be making its presence felt at Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins and Topshop in September.

But all this trailing chiffon (which rarely looks good when done on the cheap) will, thankfully, soon be replaced by narrow peacoats and chunky knits in honour of Miller's future incarnation as the 1960s fashion icon Edie Sedgwick in the forthcoming biopic.

Kate Moss, inevitably, will also continue to wield some fashion influence this autumn, particularly in Topshop's ever-improving shoe range, its cropped jackets and floral dresses. This continues the high street's tendency of making decidedly youthful-looking clothes, but in improved cuts, so customers born before 1985 can wear them too. Moss's boyfriend, the rock star Pete Doherty, is an unlikely fashion inspiration.

At Topman, which has been improving every season, there were extra skinny trousers, narrow ties, and long naval coats with brass buttons and yellow piping.

If this sounds a little fashion forward for your average British male, there is always Burton's, a store that really can be as uninspiring as its name.

For next season there are the usual button down shirts and denim jackets in a variety of permutations, as well as the inevitable suits and trousers, some of which will be marked up by an extra 30%, due, according to the PR, to improved fabrics and cuts.

Unsurprisingly, the best collections were Topshop's and Topman's, followed by Miss Selfridge's, probably because these brands had the most wearable take on celebrity-inspired fashion - although even this may be about to change.

Asked whence the inspiration came for their Russian-inspired slippers, the PR shrugged: "Russia?"

The best of next season on the high street:

Pretty wedges and velvet capes from Miss Selfridge ;

A-line jackets with bell sleeves and skinny scarves with raw edges from Gap ;

hot pink tweed coats from Hobbs ;

Chloé-inspired bags and dresses at Oasis ;

Topman's skinny trousers and naval coats; Topshop's brocaded 50s-style dress and the matching knickers and camisole sets; and wooden- heeled sandals from Miss Selfridge

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[stilista]

I hate the high street and all who shop in her.

 

[Fashion Puss]

I hate the high street and all who shop in her.

I find it refreshing that the high street is coming up with its own looks. Places like Topshop have over taken the fashion houses as trendsetters in some resepcts. Its nothing but positivity for the high street consumer.
Not everyone can afford to buy expensive. So should that mean that anyone who cannot afford high end fashion doesn't deserve it???

 

[Elegance.Is.Refusal.]

^^^ very good statement there.

the only problem i have with the highstreet is the way the clothes are manufactured. overseas where workers dont have a minimum wage or saftey standards. i watched a panorama report on the dollar a day dress and it opened my eyes to the poverty that we are keeping these people in buy buying high street. but this would be a hard thing to change it should be the goverments and the retailers that change this. its also killing the textile industry here in England alot of skilled workers have been layed off due to cheap labour overseas

apart from that i love the high street because it is forever changing and creating new looks plus i can afford it

 

[pucci_mama]

I HATE the boho thing sooooo much!!!

 

[stilista]

I find it refreshing that the high street is coming up with its own looks. Places like Topshop have over taken the fashion houses as trendsetters in some resepcts. Its nothing but positivity for the high street consumer.
Not everyone can afford to buy expensive. So should that mean that anyone who cannot afford high end fashion doesn't deserve it???

I was being quite tongue in cheek - but I do hate high street stores who blatantly rip off everything on the catwalk and have the "Trends of the season" out on the rails before the designers have even got backstage with their champagne.

I think it's complete balderdash that they're "coming up with their own ideas". Sure, but as long as it's fitting in to the current boho-crap guidelines.
Quote - Of course, high street claims to originality need to be treated with scepticism: no sooner did Peacock make her claim than she pointed to a rail of satin minidresses and described them as "very Galliano and Westwood".

I have been at the trade fairs where the buyers from Miss Selfridge (and others) have come to buy up tens of thousands of units of unlabelled ready-manufactured-in-China/Turkey/Poland ready for their own label to be stitched in. They had no say in the design or manufacture of this, they're just buying into a very cheap trend...and some of the prices would make your head spin. I'm talking several items for a dollar.

I'm sick of every high street store selling the same junk. 5 year old kids are dressing the same as their mothers in very, very watered down catwalk inspired items. It devalues it all.

Of course everyone wants to be able to buy into the new trend, but I definitely preferred it the way it used to be a few years ago. The real designers had their time, and the high street had the copies out one or two seasons later. It meant there was much more longevity for a trend, and shops didn't have to have sales every 5 minutes. Perhaps people tried a bit harder to be individual then too instead of 3million Siennas walking down Oxford Street every Saturday.

 

[Fashion Puss]

Officially, a garment must be changed in five ways in order for it to pass copyright. But they can be very minute things.
I totally agree with you on uninspiring 50 million copies of Sienna Millers clothes walking out, and especially kids wearing watered down versions of adult clothing (kids trousers with "cute" written on the butt makes me want to vomit ) And you're right, its so popular at the moment because its so cheap to do.
But high street stores have a combination of buying as well designing ranges (I know because I work for one) Yes it is cheap to buy ready prepared clothes that only have to have your label sewn in, but its becoming the norm from places like China. Those factories will source the cloth for you, plus give you a making price, like buying a dress in a box I suppose.
I know that other high street retailers may not copy directly, but have design teams that are inspired and do their own versions of what they see.
I don't think that its a one way thing. Did anyone remember that case of Prada copying outright a vintage Terry de Havilland shoe (pictured, I think the Prada one is on the right)
The only thing I will say that is very worrying about buying cheap clothes from the Far East, is the dangerous chemicals they use to dye the cloth with. Part of my job is to ***es fabric and decide whether it has to be tested or its safe. Chemicals such as azo, carginogenic and disperse dyes are rife in cloth from India, Pakistan and China. The cheaper your clothes, the more likely they are to contain these substances. Its the large retailers such as Arcadia, Hennes and C&A that are really putting their foot down about this issue and demanding proof from suppliers that the fabric is safe.
My point, at the end of the day, is that although there's right and wrong reasons to buy cheap clothes, that copying fashion is not a one way thing.

 

[cosmocat]

I very much agree with what stilista said although I do shop in the high street myself! I find that you have to be very careful in what you buy so as to ensure your not wearing a direct copy of a Miu Miu dress, as in Topshop at the moment, or the same thing as everyone walking around. The high street definately has a nack for making me hate a trend and anticipating its death, previously with the 'vintage' trend, and now with boho and ethnic. My favourite of the highstreet shops is Topshop, as though it does do copies some of the more basic clothes are just what I want. I also love the Divided range at H&M. I would say that generally, high street shoppers do end up looking the same unless they have an real interest in fashion. Thanks for your inside view Fashion Puss, its very interesting to read about how the clothes you see on the racks come about.

 

[PrinceOfCats]

I've never seen anything 'new' on the highstreet. Obviously there's no absolute 'new' but on a relative scale. Places like Topshop and H&M produce the frankenstein children of whatever hodepodge of trends their designers have on this seasons moodboard.

 

[Acid]

I HATE the boho thing sooooo much!!!

ugh the boho wannabes are so lame!
especially when they try and be soooooooo boho
like have the cowboy boots, the gypsey skirt, toussled sienna hair, slouchy bag, studded belts

its like GO HOME U LOSER AND GET CHANGED!

 

[Fashion Puss]

There are times when I think that if I see yet another furry gillet and I will go insane!

 

[cosmocat]

^Or tear it off them and burn in it.

 

[impossibleprincess]

I blame Heat magazine, personally.
And I'm sure there is a member of this board who is a Heat journalist. I'm certain.
I don't dislike Sienna, it's not her fault, but the fact that Balenciaga Le Dix's are so mainstream now dirves me insane.
I hate Topshop now. There is not anything new there, they are still copying, they are not being original. The vintage section downstairs is cool for sunglasses, but that it it. I've seen more original stuff which is very 60's inspired (not boho, retro) in H&M.

And other stores do copy the main high street ones, so you are left with the same stuff everywhere-another reason why people dress the same. My sister in law is a buyer for a major high street chain. When I first met her, (so happy that I finally had someone who knew what she was talking about fashion-wise within the family) she was telling me all about how they get their stuff-they all go to the same manufacturers. Then, smaller stores like Tesco/Primark will go to Topshop/H&M, buy a sample of the stuff, go to a factory, have them make it, and sell it at half the price of their rivals.

 

[twilight fairy]

I really really hate it when trends are taken too far. I used to looove the whole 40's 50's look, until it became over-hyped. I used to quite like the gypsy skirts until the whole world started wearing them. I don't even know what to buy when I go shopping cos I'm afraid that anything I chose might become next month's trend and I'll start hating it.

 

[helena]

I agree with what stilista & PoC have said. More & more I'd rather save my money & buy fewer better quality clothes not from the high street. The British high street is becoming more & more smug about the commonly held perception that it is cutting edge etc. I just can't get away from the fact that high street clothes are just so cheaply made & finished.

 

[snowqueen]

For me by the time a "trend" is in the high street by its massses. The trend is over. I hate the way you can walk around town and see like 20 people that aree wearing the exsact same outfit. I like to stand out and have clothes no one else has, which is why i have a slight dislike for highg street.

 

[urd]

For me by the time a "trend" is in the high street by its massses. The trend is over.

you can't really say that, because trends hit high street so fast

 

[snowqueen]

well when i say high street in its masses i mean its in every back street mrket stall and 5 years olds are wearing it, which for me is a trend to far

 

[kit]

I just couldn't resist an update on Primark , and I'm posting it here , since I cannot find the thread where Sean ( Acid ) emptied The Augean Stables on this Mecca of cheap shopping chic .




[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]The lure of thrift luxe[/font]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Fashion assistants on glossy magazines are expected to look fabulous on distinctly junior pay. Thank heavens for Primark[/font]

[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Polly Vernon
Sunday July 10, 2005
The Observer

[/font][font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Primark is hot. The nation's lowest-rent fashion outlet, a brand that has dedicated itself to the peddling of garments of gobsmacking cheapness since 1969, is now officially rocking the high street. Late last week, retail analysts Verdict Research confirmed in cold, hard stats what hip fashion things have known for months: everyone wants a bit of Primark.

'That end of the market - the value sector - is growing much, much faster than ever before,' says Maureen Hinton, a senior retail analyst for Verdict. 'It's now worth £6.4 billion, some 20 per cent of the clothing market overall. It's driven by Florence & Fred at Tesco, by George at Asda, by TK Maxx, but particularly Primark. What's more, in Primark's case, this rise represents like-for-like growth. Primark hasn't increased its retail space to achieve those figures, something everyone else would kill for.'

The nation's fashion consumers are besotted by the brand. Tales of Primark's brilliance and outrageous low pricing circulate furiously: anyone who's anyone has a Primark bargain anecdote. There was the £12 naval-style crop jacket, the piece that looked more like the Balenciaga catwalk version that inspired it than, well, the Balenciaga catwalk version did. It sold out within days of being featured on Vogue's fashion pages.

And the gold sequin shrug, the epitome of the outrageously current antique look, which sold out more rapidly yet, creating such frenzied desire that several examples wound up changing hands on eBay for far more than the 10 quid Primark originally wanted for them. Accordingly, Primark is insinuating itself into the most elevated frame of references. 'Come to Prada-mark with me at lunchtime?' demanded one particularly fashion-forward acquaintance recently. 'Mmmm, is that Pri-marche?' asked another approvingly, when I wore a new jacket in her vicinity. (It wasn't and she lost interest when I admitted as much.)

An entire cultural scene has evolved around the new breed of Primark shoppers. 'My friends and I arrange to meet for "Primark sessions" on a Saturday,' says Julia, 29. 'Because the stores aren't in the West End, they're only in weird, far-flung bits of London, and because they're so frantic and you have to spend so long searching through for the great stuff - you have to make dedicated journeys. It's an entirely distinct shopping trip.'

'We call it "Smash'n' Grab",' says Sally, 31. 'We do pay, but so little, and there's such a buzz to shopping there that it feels like it might as well be illegal.'

What's driving the Primark moment? The brand hasn't been forcefully marketed, cleverly advertised or smartly reinvented. Its giddy rise has been the result of word-of-mouth endorsement and nothing else. The nation's fashion editors report that the store has become noticeably better at imitating catwalk designs over the last couple of seasons and at getting them on to their shop floor often before the designers actually get the originals into their boutiques, but that's nothing that Top Shop and Zara haven't done for years.

And unlike many rogue fashion scenes, this one isn't being forced on us by the dark forces of celebrity. No one significantly A-list has name-checked Primark as their new favourite shopping destination or got themselves photographed loitering around one of the stores. 'We don't actually even look to see if celebrities are wearing our clothes,' explains Helen Penney, the curiously taciturn press officer for the chain. 'All customers are equal in the eyes of Primark.'

In fact, Primark is the most visible beneficiary of a greater cultural shift, a trend partly fuelled by an economic imperative, by rising interest rates and spiralling debt, but which is also powered by straightforward cultural fickleness. Call it Cheap Chic or Thrift Luxe or whatever you like, the basic notion is this: it's suddenly cool to be cheap. The Beckham-inspired, label-loving, conspicuous consumption of the late-1990s is over. Parsimony has been embraced as the stylish alternative. Anyone in the know is trawling flea-markets for secondhand bargains and reading Cheap Date magazine, Manhattan's hipster bible on inexpensive living. We're in the grip of reverse consumer snobbery. We brag about how little we paid for our flights on easyJet, the bargains we've found online, the deals we've cut in Argos.

'People want to be able to tell friends their top was £2.50 from George at Asda,' says Verdict's Hinton. 'It's like saying: see how clever I am?' Sophie Ferguson Jones, recent Primark convert and fashion assistant at Grazia magazine, agrees. 'I am proud of being the one with the Primark version, rather than the designer version,' she says, 'especially if I'm the one to have discovered it.' 'And everyone's into compulsive price disclosure' adds Elle's fashion feature's assistant, Kate Blythe. 'When people compliment you on something you're wearing, you can't resist telling them where it came from and exactly how cheap it was. I find it very embarrassing to admit that something cost a bit of money now.'

No one has embraced the Primark moment more passionately than the nation's fash-mag juniors. Twenty-somethings like Ferguson Jones, Blythe and Vogue's fashion features writer Sarah Harris are required to look fabulous at all times, on distinctly junior pay. Primark is the perfect response. Their influence over our fashion choices is considerable; they feed back to their authentically designer-clad editors, and their sensibilities inevitably shape the content of the glossies' fashion pages.

Their personal philosophies on Primark are well-honed.

'It isn't just about the prices actually,' says Sarah Harris. 'These are often really, really good catwalk copies, possibly the best out there. Take the naval jacket for example. The detailing is absolutely right - the buttons, the piping, the ruching at the back. It all works.'

'It's really been this season that I've got very enamoured by it,' says Ferguson Jones. 'I started going because I heard it did good, cheap underwear - which it does - but then I realised it was very on it with high fashion. These jeans [pictured] were £12, and they're just like my [designer] 7 jeans, with exactly the right stretch, shading on the denim and skinny leg-cut. The jacket is next season, a variation on the military one but in velvet, with Russian detailing and puff sleeves. It's very Stella [McCartney.]'

The whole phenomenon, Ferguson Jones believes, is the essence of current approaches to style. 'We call it No-Brow. Fashion trends are meant to be disposable; fads are meant to pass quickly. You can wear a Primark piece twice and then throw it away. Mix'n'match'n'bin.' Sarah Harris agrees. 'It simply doesn't make good fashion sense to invest in a designer piece you will only wear for a season.'

'There's also a vanity in making something really cheap look really good,' points out Kate Blythe.

The Primark effect and the wider influence of Cheap Chic is inevitably having an impact on the pricier elements of the high street. The mid-market - Next, M&S - are suffering for many reasons, but Primark's certainly a significant contributor. 'It's definitely chipping away at their profits,' says Maureen Hinton. 'They've tried to retaliate with higher fashion pieces and cheaper prices, but they aren't there yet.' And unfortunately for them, Primark is showing no signs of slacking off.

'It's developing its customer base with more fashion ranges and by introducing things like homewear, it's opening more stores in the UK, and it's also planning to open up stores in Spain and possibly Poland, where I think it'll do really well,' says Hinton.

I went, just once, to the Hammersmith branch and I definitely felt the power of Primark. There's something thrilling, if a bit vertigo-inducing, in the ridiculous cheapness of the price points. Everything's roughly half my lowest guess - the shoes with the espadrille wedge and the Sophia Kokosalaki-esque weave front are eight quid, the turquoise silky boho-look vest top is six, the multilayered peasant skirt is 10, etcetera and so on. This is the absolute reverse of my normal experience of life, the opposite of confronting my credit card statement, the wine list in most restaurants and, usually, the price tag on anything I covet. The sheer, giddy adrenaline-inspiring weirdness of that alone is worth the trip. I left with the espadrille wedges, a navy crop military jacket for me and another for a friend (they're briefly back in stock) and a worldview that had shifted a little bit. Mark my words. We'll all be Primark converts soon. [/font]




GLOAT !!!!!!!

 

[Lena]

i dont have the time to go through this now but it seems like a FAB thread..

thanks mr kit and all participating in the discussion, promising to get back here.. soon