March 26

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There’s always an end in trend?

Posted by on March 26, 2014 in Daily Style | 6 Comments

My blogging crush manrepeller.com today wrote about how fashion has evolved beyond, big key trends. She starts

“People used to wait around for trends. They’d wait for Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar or Women’s Wear Daily to report on the hemlines, sleeve lengths, colors or textures of the bi-annual seasons in Paris, and those accounts would inform the uniform, though decidedly fashionable, way in which women dressed. But that was then. Before the romantic concept of personal style and the subsequent bastardization of that concept began their respective reigns.

Don’t get me wrong, though, things still come in. They come in and they trend. And trend … For the most part, however, the things that do come in, don’t come in how they used to.”

And she is so right. There’s really little excuse to get anything wrong these days. Evidence: Birkenstocks. Even the so wrong is so right.

As for hem lines, go on net-a-porter.com and you will find the skirt categories of mini, midi, knee length and maxi. As a key purveyor and distiller of ‘trends’ on a global scale, I’m wondering what skirt isn’t trending.

And those trends from the catwalk features in magazines are more a tapestry (which is also probably featured as a trend, next to minimalism) than a signpost.

So what’s my point? Well, first comes to mind that TMR is a bit late in the observation – But that’s the beauty of youth, you always believe you thought it first. Gosh I miss that – But in her defence , she is probably too young to juxtapose her current ennui with ‘no-trends’ with her own past. Quite likely she also didn’t have a mother like mine. A dedicated fashionista, when fashion actually meant something.

My childhood and younger years echo with memories of my mother explaining away everything from matching mother and daughter outfits; extreme shoulder pads; dad’s flares and platforms; perm after perm after perm, with the words “but it’s in fashion”. (Actually, she still seeks refuge in this concept. It must be so confusing for her at the moment). Anyway, back to my point about TMR missing these references, seeing as her formative years were (I think) during the mash-up years that germinated in the late 90’s and grown like a benevolent and democratic virus. Really, I can’t think of one dominant rule that prevailed at all during these times. Not in the way that everyone who gave a Simplicity Pattern about being in fashion wore a smock or shirred sun-frock in 1973; Or burgundy coloured everything in 1978.

Is this trend to no-trend ironically, itself a trend?

Which, if my time calculations are anything to go by, suggests that we are due for a new trend and will this be that fashion will revert to the dictatorship of the past. I certainly connect when TMR goes on to write “It seems great, but it also presents the larger issue of over-saturation, doesn’t it? A broad sense of stimulation that is so vast and comprehensive, it doesn’t even stimulate anymore. So where does that leave us?”

Well I know one lady of 73 who will be happy if in-fashion is the new fashion.

What do you think? Is this free-for-all just part of the new world order, facilitated as it is with the celebration of individuality, not to forget the idea that the internet and fast planes mean that we don’t have to stick with anything for long? Or will women genuinely respond to something that gives them simplicity and packaged confidence – and to be honest, actually makes getting dressed a whole lot easier?