Fashion killers
When Camilla appeared in wedges this week, one thing was certain: no fashionista would ever wear them again. Zoe Williams on how the right garment on the wrong person can sink a trend
Wednesday March 22, 2006
The Guardian
They've always trod a thin line, wedge heels, which is all the more impressive considering how wedgy they are. Flattering, reliable and comfortable, they're the best friend of the heel world. The danger point is how you can be that comfortable without looking a bit, you know, orthopaedic. It was a danger they navigated very well, as a shoe, until Camilla Parker Bowles wore them in Egypt this week and now they are for ever tarnished with the smack of Sensible, and the massive boon of their superbly discreet stability is lost to us for ever. They have had their tipping point and it is irreversible. It's a damned shame, is what it is.
Fashion is a surprisingly fragile beast, and the awful truth is - awful for the fashion industry at least - that any garment or trend can be sunk by a chance wearing from the wrong person. Paradoxically, the more ubiquitous the object du jour, the more vulnerable it is to abrupt sinkage by said wrong person. And almost any royal at all will be the wrong person. I think even if Lady Di were still alive, she would by now be wrong, though the likelihood is that she would be wearing timeless classics and flashpoints such as this simply would not happen to her.
Fergie did for the puffball skirt, though that was subtly different to Camilla's wedge-gate - Sarah Ferguson, as a fairly stocky young woman, merely alerted us to the fact that, whatever we looked like when we sucked in our tums before a low-lit mirror, we looked like her when we went outdoors in broad daylight. That kind of tipping point is often more of a kindness than anything else - a person of a normal shape, wearing a garment made for someone of an abnormal shape.
"Stop right there!" it says to the normal-shaped. "Hipsters aren't for everyone! Nor are shorts!" See? A kindness both to the wearer, and to all humanity.
These sudden reversals in fashion fortune are not limited to clothes. Although most people can carry most handbags, not everyone can carry them off: witness Vanessa Feltz with her Louis Vuitton Murakami bag - it felt as though if you squinted 50 metres behind her, you might catch sight of a much more stylish person, without a handbag, shouting: "Stop, thief!"
What Camilla and Feltz both managed to do was to take an item that previously, at least in theory, suited everyone, and was lusted after by everyone, and summarily curse it. Teresa May did the same thing to kitten heels, though that wasn't such a loss, since the core feature of her conference shoes was their racy leopardskin print and, frankly, she is welcome to leopard- skin, although the occasion might arise when she has to mud-wrestle Sharon Osbourne for it.
Politicians and older royals simply make the wrong association at the wrong time: they align a garment or label with safety and respectability, and suck all the fun and sex from it. It is slightly worse when they're deliberately doing it to look cool, apparently unaware that their ability to invest a thing with uncoolness is much, much greater than the ability of any given inanimate thing in the other direction. Tony Blair nearly did for Paul Smith in this manner, though I think the designer almost got away with it (see "Timeless Classic"; they will usually survive); David Cameron has almost certainly done for Converse trainers, en masse, which is a shame, since I had bought two pairs for summer on the advice of a magazine that clearly went to press before Cameron existed, and now I'm going to have to throw them away.
Other fashion-tippers (not to be confused with fashion tipsters) exercise a more complicated power - some are neither too old, nor too fat, nor too royal, nor too establishment for an item; they are just, curiously enough, too rich. Geri Halliwell in the green Versace chiffon dress, made famous by J-Lo, brought no insult to the dress. The dress fitted her. She just hadn't earned the right to piggyback off international glamour: she looked as if she was trying to buy her way in. So in a way, the frock had to die to punish her presumption. Do you follow? It's a little bit like a fairytale, only with clothes instead of dwarves. Rebecca Loos wasn't trying to buy glamour so much as decorum when she fetched up in a Temperley dress, and that didn't wash either (the act, I mean, not the garment, though as a general rule, any clothing item with enough identity to die will be dry-clean only).
Danniella Westbrook, when she bedecked herself as well as her child entirely in Burberry, was, on one level, staging a foot-stamping insistence on her own respectability; yet, in knowingly over doing it, she was rejecting, nay, mocking the world that judged her, even while she insisted she had played by its rules. If she had pulled it off, it would have been the most dazzling juggling act of self-assertion and self-effacement. Sadly, she didn't. She just looked silly and ruined it for the entire check.
Some people - Max Clifford probably - would say that just by proving you have the power to kill a style, you ascend to a new rank of fame and influence. Well, history might respect you for killing the wedge, Camilla. Nobody will ever thank you.
Imogen Fox on the moments that did for Ugg boots, Converse and the Lariat bag
Wedges The Duchess of Cornwall
The fashion industry has worked hard over the past few months to convince us all that a clumpy wedge is the shoe of the season. On the Chloé catwalk for summer - the clothes are just hitting the shops now - almost every doe-eyed model trotted out wearing a pair of huge wedges. On the front row at the most recent fashion shows, clumpy wedge sandals were strapped to the ankles of almost every fashion editor. (In fashion land, open-toed wedges with thick grey tights were quite the thing.) It has been the trend of the moment. Whether the sight of Camilla's blue closed-toe confections will end fashion's latest love affair remains to be seen.
Temperley dress Rebecca Loos
Time was when a Temperley dress was the standard uniform of the West London party girl. Said girl went to endless summer parties wearing one of the label's pretty dresses. She was pictured laughing and drinking champagne at art openings. It was an aspirational look. It implied you were a friend of Yasmin Le Bon. Then Ms Loos chose to wear one to her first very public post-text appearance at a film premiere and Temperley's charming spell was broken. Loos was tabloid not Tatler, and customers were turned off. The maker-of-dresses-for-it-girls mantle duly passed to the label Issa.
Versace dress Geri Halliwell
Geri fell into a fashion trap we've all been guilty of. She saw J-Lo looking amazing in this green printed Versace dress and she wanted in on the action. It wasn't her fault per se - anyone who was brazen enough to try to wear this particular dress after that moment would have killed the magic. In fact, it could almost be said that the tipping point for this Versace dress was the moment Ms Lopez took it off. The sartorial lesson? Never wear anything that has such a strong association with an individual celeb.
Converse trainers David Cameron
In the 90s, Converse trainers were the chosen footwear of indie boys who played in bands and looked up to Kurt Cobain. In the early noughties, they were an easy sidestep to make for boys who didn't know their Nike Air Force Ones from their Adidas Marathons. Over the past five years, they have been the sort of shoe that a man who isn't accustomed to formal dressing can wear with a suit at a fairly relaxed wedding. What your Converses said about you was: "I don't work in an office nine to five, I'm a bit creative, and I'm relaxed enough to grow some facial hair."
Actually, Converse trainers were starting to become something of a cliche, anyway, when David Cameron self-consciously stepped out in them. But when he did, the game was finally up for them. This particular short cut to cool is now officially closed.
The poncho Victoria Beckham
In all honesty, the poncho never really achieved any sort of fashionable status - fashionistas would argue that it amounted to no more than the fact that a Missoni zig-zag knitted version looked OK-ish one winter. But the world at large certainly, at least briefly, fell in love with ponchos - until Victoria Beckham showed up in one. You would have to pay most people to wear one now. RIP.
Ugg boots Jennifer Ellison
The Ugg boot was a phenomenon - and they did look great on the pregnant feet of Sarah Jessica Parker and Kate Hudson - but their moment of cool was short-lived, and much shorter-lived than most celebrities imagined. It may be unfair to put all the blame for their death on Jennifer Ellison, but what is certain is that on a latte-drinking celeb in Los Angeles or New York, they worked. Back in the UK, on the fake-tanned bare legs of Ellison, they looked ridiculous. Of course, Ugg was partly to blame - why on earth did they ever make them in pastel pink?
Lariat bag Alex Curran
Balenciaga sent out its Lariat bag as a gift to elite members of the fashion corps (including, unsurprisingly, Kate Moss) and by means of positive association, and a lot of pictures in Heat, the bag become totally desirable - despite a prohibitive price tag (of around £700). The label, once a fashion shibboleth, became incredibly well known; a thousand fakes were spawned. Inevitably, the tide turned. Of course, the footballers' wives could afford several. It was deemed OK for wholesome Colleen to carry one, but finally along came Alex Curran and that was it. It was a step too far down the fashion chain for the Lariat to survive such a blow. The über-snobby label now refers to this particular bag as The First. Nothing to do with Alex, naturally.
When Camilla appeared in wedges this week, one thing was certain: no fashionista would ever wear them again. Zoe Williams on how the right garment on the wrong person can sink a trend
Wednesday March 22, 2006
The Guardian
They've always trod a thin line, wedge heels, which is all the more impressive considering how wedgy they are. Flattering, reliable and comfortable, they're the best friend of the heel world. The danger point is how you can be that comfortable without looking a bit, you know, orthopaedic. It was a danger they navigated very well, as a shoe, until Camilla Parker Bowles wore them in Egypt this week and now they are for ever tarnished with the smack of Sensible, and the massive boon of their superbly discreet stability is lost to us for ever. They have had their tipping point and it is irreversible. It's a damned shame, is what it is.
Fashion is a surprisingly fragile beast, and the awful truth is - awful for the fashion industry at least - that any garment or trend can be sunk by a chance wearing from the wrong person. Paradoxically, the more ubiquitous the object du jour, the more vulnerable it is to abrupt sinkage by said wrong person. And almost any royal at all will be the wrong person. I think even if Lady Di were still alive, she would by now be wrong, though the likelihood is that she would be wearing timeless classics and flashpoints such as this simply would not happen to her.
Fergie did for the puffball skirt, though that was subtly different to Camilla's wedge-gate - Sarah Ferguson, as a fairly stocky young woman, merely alerted us to the fact that, whatever we looked like when we sucked in our tums before a low-lit mirror, we looked like her when we went outdoors in broad daylight. That kind of tipping point is often more of a kindness than anything else - a person of a normal shape, wearing a garment made for someone of an abnormal shape.
"Stop right there!" it says to the normal-shaped. "Hipsters aren't for everyone! Nor are shorts!" See? A kindness both to the wearer, and to all humanity.
These sudden reversals in fashion fortune are not limited to clothes. Although most people can carry most handbags, not everyone can carry them off: witness Vanessa Feltz with her Louis Vuitton Murakami bag - it felt as though if you squinted 50 metres behind her, you might catch sight of a much more stylish person, without a handbag, shouting: "Stop, thief!"
What Camilla and Feltz both managed to do was to take an item that previously, at least in theory, suited everyone, and was lusted after by everyone, and summarily curse it. Teresa May did the same thing to kitten heels, though that wasn't such a loss, since the core feature of her conference shoes was their racy leopardskin print and, frankly, she is welcome to leopard- skin, although the occasion might arise when she has to mud-wrestle Sharon Osbourne for it.
Politicians and older royals simply make the wrong association at the wrong time: they align a garment or label with safety and respectability, and suck all the fun and sex from it. It is slightly worse when they're deliberately doing it to look cool, apparently unaware that their ability to invest a thing with uncoolness is much, much greater than the ability of any given inanimate thing in the other direction. Tony Blair nearly did for Paul Smith in this manner, though I think the designer almost got away with it (see "Timeless Classic"; they will usually survive); David Cameron has almost certainly done for Converse trainers, en masse, which is a shame, since I had bought two pairs for summer on the advice of a magazine that clearly went to press before Cameron existed, and now I'm going to have to throw them away.
Other fashion-tippers (not to be confused with fashion tipsters) exercise a more complicated power - some are neither too old, nor too fat, nor too royal, nor too establishment for an item; they are just, curiously enough, too rich. Geri Halliwell in the green Versace chiffon dress, made famous by J-Lo, brought no insult to the dress. The dress fitted her. She just hadn't earned the right to piggyback off international glamour: she looked as if she was trying to buy her way in. So in a way, the frock had to die to punish her presumption. Do you follow? It's a little bit like a fairytale, only with clothes instead of dwarves. Rebecca Loos wasn't trying to buy glamour so much as decorum when she fetched up in a Temperley dress, and that didn't wash either (the act, I mean, not the garment, though as a general rule, any clothing item with enough identity to die will be dry-clean only).
Danniella Westbrook, when she bedecked herself as well as her child entirely in Burberry, was, on one level, staging a foot-stamping insistence on her own respectability; yet, in knowingly over doing it, she was rejecting, nay, mocking the world that judged her, even while she insisted she had played by its rules. If she had pulled it off, it would have been the most dazzling juggling act of self-assertion and self-effacement. Sadly, she didn't. She just looked silly and ruined it for the entire check.
Some people - Max Clifford probably - would say that just by proving you have the power to kill a style, you ascend to a new rank of fame and influence. Well, history might respect you for killing the wedge, Camilla. Nobody will ever thank you.
Imogen Fox on the moments that did for Ugg boots, Converse and the Lariat bag
Wedges The Duchess of Cornwall
The fashion industry has worked hard over the past few months to convince us all that a clumpy wedge is the shoe of the season. On the Chloé catwalk for summer - the clothes are just hitting the shops now - almost every doe-eyed model trotted out wearing a pair of huge wedges. On the front row at the most recent fashion shows, clumpy wedge sandals were strapped to the ankles of almost every fashion editor. (In fashion land, open-toed wedges with thick grey tights were quite the thing.) It has been the trend of the moment. Whether the sight of Camilla's blue closed-toe confections will end fashion's latest love affair remains to be seen.
Temperley dress Rebecca Loos
Time was when a Temperley dress was the standard uniform of the West London party girl. Said girl went to endless summer parties wearing one of the label's pretty dresses. She was pictured laughing and drinking champagne at art openings. It was an aspirational look. It implied you were a friend of Yasmin Le Bon. Then Ms Loos chose to wear one to her first very public post-text appearance at a film premiere and Temperley's charming spell was broken. Loos was tabloid not Tatler, and customers were turned off. The maker-of-dresses-for-it-girls mantle duly passed to the label Issa.
Versace dress Geri Halliwell
Geri fell into a fashion trap we've all been guilty of. She saw J-Lo looking amazing in this green printed Versace dress and she wanted in on the action. It wasn't her fault per se - anyone who was brazen enough to try to wear this particular dress after that moment would have killed the magic. In fact, it could almost be said that the tipping point for this Versace dress was the moment Ms Lopez took it off. The sartorial lesson? Never wear anything that has such a strong association with an individual celeb.
Converse trainers David Cameron
In the 90s, Converse trainers were the chosen footwear of indie boys who played in bands and looked up to Kurt Cobain. In the early noughties, they were an easy sidestep to make for boys who didn't know their Nike Air Force Ones from their Adidas Marathons. Over the past five years, they have been the sort of shoe that a man who isn't accustomed to formal dressing can wear with a suit at a fairly relaxed wedding. What your Converses said about you was: "I don't work in an office nine to five, I'm a bit creative, and I'm relaxed enough to grow some facial hair."
Actually, Converse trainers were starting to become something of a cliche, anyway, when David Cameron self-consciously stepped out in them. But when he did, the game was finally up for them. This particular short cut to cool is now officially closed.
The poncho Victoria Beckham
In all honesty, the poncho never really achieved any sort of fashionable status - fashionistas would argue that it amounted to no more than the fact that a Missoni zig-zag knitted version looked OK-ish one winter. But the world at large certainly, at least briefly, fell in love with ponchos - until Victoria Beckham showed up in one. You would have to pay most people to wear one now. RIP.
Ugg boots Jennifer Ellison
The Ugg boot was a phenomenon - and they did look great on the pregnant feet of Sarah Jessica Parker and Kate Hudson - but their moment of cool was short-lived, and much shorter-lived than most celebrities imagined. It may be unfair to put all the blame for their death on Jennifer Ellison, but what is certain is that on a latte-drinking celeb in Los Angeles or New York, they worked. Back in the UK, on the fake-tanned bare legs of Ellison, they looked ridiculous. Of course, Ugg was partly to blame - why on earth did they ever make them in pastel pink?
Lariat bag Alex Curran
Balenciaga sent out its Lariat bag as a gift to elite members of the fashion corps (including, unsurprisingly, Kate Moss) and by means of positive association, and a lot of pictures in Heat, the bag become totally desirable - despite a prohibitive price tag (of around £700). The label, once a fashion shibboleth, became incredibly well known; a thousand fakes were spawned. Inevitably, the tide turned. Of course, the footballers' wives could afford several. It was deemed OK for wholesome Colleen to carry one, but finally along came Alex Curran and that was it. It was a step too far down the fashion chain for the Lariat to survive such a blow. The über-snobby label now refers to this particular bag as The First. Nothing to do with Alex, naturally.
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and thank god i haven't seen fergie wearing the puffball skirt since i still want one
