Fashion, as we know, is
a perennially cyclical thing. How many times have we heard
of the return of 40’s chic, 50’s glamour, the
sexy 60’s and 70’s bohemia? Hell, we’ve
even done the 80’s again with techno bright sportswear,
puffball dresses and power-suits. There’s nothing
I like more than a bit of retro pastiche, or so I thought,
until I was struck by an epiphany last Thursday night in
the hosiery section of Topshop, Oxford Circus. I was there
with my friend to buy a pair of electric blue footless
tights to wear under a fantastically embellished Iron On
Reverse jersey dress, when she dealt me with a crushing
blow “who thought we’d be buying leggings
again?!” At
first I shrugged it off, yep, leggings are back, but I’m
buying footless tights. Entirely different. Not the same
at all.
It has, however, been playing on
my mind ever since. Particularly when I turned my attention
to dresses, and casually perused the lines at Browns. Here
I spotted a Vera Wang lavender one-shoulder dress; similar
to the one Keira Knightley wore, in burgundy, for the Oscars.
This, in turn, led me to think of the one-shoulder dresses
recently adorned by Nicole Richie, Charlize Theron and
Naomi Watts, which led me then to think of those purveyors
of one-shoulder dresses: Roland Mouret (the Chromium),
Givenchy and Dior. This ultimately led me to think of those
countless holiday photos of me, in the 90’s, garbed
in one-shoulder tops and dresses. This then directed my
thoughts towards the storage bags that I have in the loft
full of my old clothes, including the aforementioned one-shoulder
tops and dresses.
Now,
the reason that I’m hoarding my old clothes is because
I want my children (that I haven’t actually got) to
have them. Just as I look back at photos of my mum in the
60s and wish that she had kept some of her Biba dresses and
Mary Quant classics, I would hope that my children (preferably
the girls…) would look back on the things that I wore
with the same reverence.
The
difference being that I will have kept my clothes, finely
preserved, in the loft, as some sort of meagre inheritance.
In my wardrobe I have things that are so old that they must
be nearing tenth birthdays. I love finding old clothes that
haven’t been worn for
years; it’s like free shopping. But there’s a
reason that they’re still in the wardrobe and have
not yet been consigned to the loft – I can still imagine
myself wearing them. The clothes in storage are time capsules
of me from a bygone age – my teens. The reason they
are there is because I could never imagine myself wearing
them ever again. I guess I never imagined being old enough
to see things from my own era being rehashed and revived.
So
I’m making a stand against one-shoulder dresses.
I don’t want to buy replicas of perfectly good items
that I’ve already got sealed away in an air-tight bag,
but at the same time I’m not willing to go rummaging
through garments that I have long since consigned to fashion
room 101. Fashion from the 90’s making a revival? Pah!
I will refrain from revealing a single shoulder – largely
for the fear that I might reveal the (increasingly sizeable)
chip that resides there…
The
difference being that I will have kept my clothes, finely
preserved, in the loft, as some sort of meagre inheritance.
In my wardrobe I have things that are so old that they must
be nearing tenth birthdays. I love finding old clothes that
haven’t been worn for
years; it’s like free shopping. But there’s a
reason that they’re still in the wardrobe and have
not yet been consigned to the loft – I can still imagine
myself wearing them. The clothes in storage are time capsules
of me from a bygone age – my teens. The reason they
are there is because I could never imagine myself wearing
them ever again. I guess I never imagined being old enough
to see things from my own era being rehashed and revived.
