How to wear clothes articles - The Guardian

I dunno Quirky...I quite like a pleated skirt with just one or two kick pleats in the front. I agree that you do have to really watch that they don't make you look really fat though.
 
I know they're not the most flattering things but I love knife pleated skirts.
 
helena said:
I dunno Quirky...I quite like a pleated skirt with just one or two kick pleats in the front. I agree that you do have to really watch that they don't make you look really fat though.

I'm sure any pleated skirt would look fantastic on you Helena :D .
 
oh quirky too kind, but I am not so sure.....lol. I remember trying on one with the sunray pleats and I looked like the side of a house.
 
Agreed full pleated skirts are hard to work! I think the key is that the pleats should start at the lower hip so they don't add volume to the hips. NEVER a good thing for us ladies :lol: You all know I'm a fan of the kick pleat already :D

Thanks for the updates Helena!
 
I think the key is, unless you're tiny, those pleats must be stitched down ... as long as the flare starts a ways down, we should be fine ...

Susie, you're making me nostalgic for a pale grey linen/cotton knife pleated skirt that had been my mother's that I wore when I was in high school ... not stitched down ... I was tiny then :innocent: Also broke ... I remember calling around to dry cleaners to find one that didn't charge by the pleat :lol:
 
^ Funny! That's exactly how I was going to describe it, but didn't know if 'flare' would make sense. Completely agree :flower:
 
I had lost track of this thread. Started reading it at the beginning then missed the middle. Fun reading. Thanks for posting Helena!
 
The chintz, the curtains and the cocktail dress

Jess Cartner-Morley
Saturday April 8, 2006
The Guardian

To paraphrase the Ikea ad (never let it be said that this column is not steeped in high culture:( it is time to chuck out the chintz. Not, I hasten to add, literally. On the contrary: chintzy fabrics, from heavy, curtain-ish florals to sofa-esque brocades, are suddenly cocktail dress material. The chintz I'm talking about represents what an overstuffed floral sofa with too many mini scatter cushions stood for a few years ago: a lazy, outdated view of what's "smart". In fashion right now, the equivalent of chintz is sparkly diamanté jewellery.

Note, please, that I refer specifically to diamanté. If you are lucky enough to be in possession of a treasure trove of the real thing, then I am not, of course, suggesting you should start lobbing your diamonds and rubies into the bin. No, what I'm talking about ditching is the fake sparkle by which we have all been seduced in recent years, as costume jewellery has grown in sophistication and style. Once upon a time, diamanté meant crude, pea-sized blobs of cheap glass, passable only by the nastiest of strip lighting and therefore only in the tackiest of venues. But these days department store racks are crammed with delicate chandelier earrings that could pass, to the layman's eye, for vintage diamonds.

The trouble is, we have been so excited by this that, like magpies, we continue to flock to all that glisters, failing to notice that, frankly, it is starting to look a bit naff.
A black dress and chandelier earrings look less sophisticated now than a print dress with big wooden beads. Annoying, but true; naivety is the thing. Anyway, look on the bright side: big beads tied with string are even cheaper than the paste bling.
One last thing. When I say "chuck out", I don't mean that literally, either. Remember what happened to chintz itself? It came right back.
 
The Goldie standard

Jess Cartner-Morley on the strange tale of the hairstyle that has raced from the catwalk to Clarence House

Friday April 14, 2006
The Guardian

The tipping point for any style trend comes when it climbs out of the murky depths of teen culture and makes its first wobbling, colt-like steps into the harsh glare of the adult world. It is one thing to win over bored, hormone-ravaged schoolgirls who, frankly, would wear something as ridiculous as white furry moonboots over pastel tracksuit bottoms if Coleen McLoughlin did - come to think of it, that actually happened - but quite another to gain the backing of sentient, fully formed human beings.

This is why Goldielocks, as the story of the Goldie Hawn Hair Comeback is known, is so striking. Picking up the new issue of Vogue on Tuesday, I was hit by an unmistakable sense of deja vu. Examining the portraits taken by Mario Testino to mark the first royal wedding anniversary, I knew I had seen Camilla's hairstyle somewhere before. And then I remembered: it was on Nicole Richie, who a few days previously had sported exactly the same fringe (albeit as part of a longer, more girlish 'do) at the LA press conference for the new series of The Simple Life.

What's more, I remembered thinking, when I first saw the Richie pictures, how much they reminded me of Sarah Jessica Parker's scene-stealing hairstyle in her new rom-com, Failure to Launch. And, indeed, while watching Failure to Launch, I had found myself much more attracted to said hairstyle than to the charisma-free Matthew McConaughey, and had spent some considerable part of the film musing over the charms of Parker's locks, and comparing them in my mind's eye to the Yves Saint Laurent catwalk show I saw in Paris at the beginning of last month, where the models had - you guessed it - tousled blond locks with beachy, grown-out fringes side-flicked just so to emphasise eyes and cheekbones. From catwalk to Clarence House, via California, in the space of just over a month.

In fashion, familiarity very quickly breeds contempt. So now that poker-straight hair, when very long and very blond, has morphed from the height of silken sophistication to crass, nylon reality-show glamour - hello, Chantelle from Big Brother - it is almost inevitable that this tousled, tawny blond suddenly looks deliciously classy. It is a look which references Goldie Hawn and Farrah Fawcett, all-American glamour girls from another era. These two are beguiling icons, because they project two sets of signals simultaneously: party-girl on the one hand, girl-next-door on the other.

While there is something beachy and wholesome about the puppyish, shaggy fringe - it is the direct opposite not just of the poker-straight Barbie/lapdancer look, but of the harsh, Vicky Pollard scraped-back ponytail - there is also something knowing and foxy about the way the fringe, especially when licking at the rim of a huge pair of sunglasses, can conceal a multitude of sins.

British writer Emma Forrest, who has observed bi-coastal celebrity culture at first hand since moving from New York to Los Angeles earlier this year, calls the look as worn by Richie, Paris Hilton et al "that Studio 54, up-for-three-days coke-wh*re look". It is this reference which gives these girls their essential what-are-they-up-to, they're-having-more-fun-than-me, faux-scurrilous appeal; however, as Forrest notes, for mass appeal in middle America this needs tempering.

"Celebrities these days are minutely aware of how every outfit, every makeup look, every hairstyle, reflects on their image. They can't afford to get it wrong. Hawn and Fawcett had a look that was sexy but innocent. It is a style that today's very knowing celebrities can borrow, to hark back to a less cynical age of celebrity, in the hope that we will see them in that same light."

When viewed in historical context, the cross-cultural, cross-generational appeal of the style makes perfect sense. "The thing about Studio 54," says Forrest, "is that they really did have royalty alongside pop stars and 'it' girls. So if a duchess, a Jewish princess and an American princess are now all wearing the same Studio 54 hairstyle, we have come full circle."

And it is a circle that may widen even yet. At ladies' day at Aintree last week, Coleen McLoughlin proved that she has left the moonboots far behind, wearing a very fetching pair of white city shorts with matching jacket (trust me, it worked) and a demure silk scarf. Her hair? Tawny blond, with a long, sideswept fringe. What else?
 
Staying balanced in the sparkly world of fashion

Jess Cartner-Morley
Saturday April 15, 2006
The Guardian

Like a revolving door, fashion requires both speed and precision timing from all who enter, or it will trip you up. Faced with the realisation that diamanté chandelier earrings have, through overexposure, crossed the line from sophistication to cliché, the alert style leader must remove them at once, acting faster than 007 confronted with a ticking bomb. She must, then, replace what has been made defunct. For fashion abhors a vacuum.

And so it is that, while sparkly jewellery is on the slide - the spangle of crystal having been usurped by the dull lustre of wood or plastic beads - shiny clothes are on the up. This is not as nonsensical as it sounds. Balance is a key part of style - diamanté jewellery was the perfect complement to jersey little black dresses, yet sparkly jewellery and shiny fabric is too garish a combination. And now that sparkle is banished from the jewellery box, it is welcomed back to the wardrobe. If you get my drift.

For over a decade, taffeta and satin have been largely relegated to the society pages of glossy magazines, where the story of their demise was eloquently told in pictures of titled ladies trussed up in frocks as garish as sweet wrappers. By last year, they were making inroads into fashion shoots; this summer, they have pride of place in guides to high-street best buys. The reconciliation is complete.

Two points on how to wear shine. First, never tight: taffeta and satin catch the light in a more attractive, nuanced way when not stretched tight, plus you avoid looking like a sausage about to burst, which is handy. Second (and this bit you know already) matt accessories such as wooden beads or canvas wedges are necessary to take the sting out of the bling. The sparkly lobed can head straight for the society pages.
 
Suits you Miss

Jess Cartner-Morley
Saturday April 22, 2006
The Guardian

It used to be that tailored jackets for women were men's suit jackets, dubbed into femininity. This was sometimes sensitively done - the YSL Le Smoking - but sometimes crude, as in the dumpy, clumsily businesslike "policewoman" jacket worn by floor managers in a certain type of provincial department store, as well as by law enforcers; the kind that manages to accentuate the volume of hips and bosom while robbing them of all allure.

Recently, a new style of jacket has appeared that has its roots in old-fashioned feminine cover-ups - the evening cape, the shawl, the cardigan. It is usually cropped, to the waist or above, so it has movement from the shoulders. The sleeves are often slightly short, to expose the wrists, and the shoulders cut to slope seamlessly into the upper arms - the polar opposite of the shoulder-padded power-dressing style of 20 years ago.

This jacket gives the appearance of orderliness that only tailoring can bring, without the unappealingly gruff connotations of the traditional jacket: you get to look together, without looking bossy. The more light-hearted mood of this type of jacket is reflected in the fact that many designers and retailers have added ribbons or corsages at the lapel.

I am broadly pro these jackets, though wary of the corsages, which can look a bit too Pony Club for work (please don't wear one with your new headband). But a word of warning: mind your back view. A jacket ending above the waist, worn over a loose-fitting dress, can from the back have an effect on your bottom as flattering as baggy tracksuit bottoms - a lot of volume with no definition. A dress should be cinched at the waist; or wear a slim knit or blouse to hip level over jeans or a skirt, so that the boundary between garments trims your back view. Thus you have the best of both worlds, from all angles.
 
Concealing the bump

Jess Cartner-Morley
Saturday April 29, 2006
The Guardian

As of today, I will be writing this column fortnightly for a while. I am having a baby in a few weeks, and this being the second time, I am only too aware that for the foreseeable future I will be spending rather less time musing on the symbolism of the Lanvinesque exposed zip than I will struggling to focus on Babygro poppers through a fog of sleep deprivation.

In the light of this, today seems the right moment at which to share my thoughts on maternity wear, a subject to which I have devoted, naturally, a great deal of thought over the past eight months. In the interest of brevity I have distilled my findings into a five-point precis.

One: make sure your clothes meet in the middle. The crop top and bump look is unutterably passé, and gives the distinct impression that you are modelling your look on a pregnant All Saint, thereby inadvertently showing your age. Two: avoid shiny fabrics, bows and ribbons, as these will make you look like an Easter egg. Three: you have a choice as to whether to draw your, ahem, "waist" above or below the bump. As a rule, an empire line will emphasise the bump; a long top and low-rise trousers will diminish it. Four: rejoice in your freedom from the clutches of body fascism. Shapes that are comfortable but difficult to wear if you are not slender - DvF-style wrap dresses, smock tops - are excellent in pregnancy. Take this opportunity to reclaim them from the guilty-mistake section of your wardrobe. Five: the most important piece of your maternity wear is the element - a good pair of jeans, heels you can still wear, great jewellery - that makes you feel like yourself, rather than The Pregnant Lady. And finally, remember, as I have been telling myself all year: there is always next season.
 
The 'dead socialite' look

Jess Cartner-Morley
Saturday May 13, 2006
The Guardian

Even by the standards of the fashion industry, where political correctness is largely dismissed as the whingeing of those too poor for minks and too fat for minis, this summer's newest "look" is not for sensitive types. This season, according to Tatler magazine, those in the know are aiming for the "dead socialite" look.

For day, this charming moniker translates as an understated-but-expensive get-up of gym-honed legs and salon-blown hair, cashmere sweater, crocodile handbag - a little bit Jackie Onassis, a touch Nan Kempner. Imagine the film Heathers, but updated and set in the world of Park Avenue baby showers.

For evening, it means something extravagant and opulent, with lots of Pucci: note, for reference, the line of fashion genealogy that runs directly from Talitha Getty in Morocco to Tamara Mellon in Ibiza. The "mission statement" of the "dead socialite" look is, according to Tatler, to let the world know that you are chic and married but still sexy. (If you can relate to this as a description of your self-image, then the fact that you are also an insufferably smug cow is, I would imagine, so self-evident as to have no need of sartorial signposting.)

What is striking about the look is that it is not confined to the tiny social set of Upper East Side 30-year-olds who dress like their mothers-in-law in the hope of getting their hands on the best of the family earrings. In LA, a west coast version - more theatrical, less uptight - has grown up around the celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe and her "girls", who include Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie. Zoe's girls, like Zoe herself, dress like the coke-snorting trophy wives of 70s Hollywood producers - in other words, like dead socialites. So think, before you buy those bug-eyed Richie-esque sunglasses: what, exactly, are you trying to say?
 
^ The Brits have a certain way with words, don't they? :wink:
 
Helena and tott great thread i really enjoy reading it
it gives me useful tips
:flower:
 
I especially love the last article in this most recent batch:lol: .The writing style in the first one is unnecessarily convoluted,I must say.

Thanks for updating,tott:flower: .
 

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