Forget Pantone, The Colour Of Fashun Is Red
The Rolling Stones might have seen a red door and wanted to paint it black, but the fash jet-set and the catwalks of Paris and Milan were a triumphant shade of scarlet...
I’ve been obsessed with the colour red since, well, forever… My matric dance (prom, guys, prom!) dress was red. It was 1992. My wedding shoes were red. My fave lipstick? Well, its red - MAC Ruby Woo!. And yet when I think about how much I love it, I don’t own a lot of this banging shade. Things – however – are about to change.
One of the most fun things about this month of global fashion weeks – aside from all the endless celebrity watching and my running Pantie Count (words fail me) - is cobbling together trends at the end… What will us fash-lovin’ masses actually be wearing next season? Because for most of us, it won’t be off the runway. Sigh. We’ll have to make do with ferreting it out from our local Zara and knowing exactly what we’re looking for when it lands! Say hello, then, to the season’s most surprising and wearable colour. It’s red. Groundbreaking, I hear you and all the Devil Wears Prada aficionados groan. It is! It is groundbreaking.
Are you ready for a segue? So back in the 90s there was major buzz around ‘getting your colours done’. Not sure if any of you had moms who undertook the arduous fashion feat? You’d get your colours read and they’d offer up wild nuggets like ‘red is your colour, you fool, but only this exact shade of red’ and then you would - henceforth until forever – doddle around the shops with your IRL pakkie of colour swatches tucked into your handbag matching up your ‘colours’ and buying according to ‘your season’. Now, like all great things to be revived from the 90s – *NSYNC, satin slip dresses, the original supermodels – knowing your colour palette is again A Thing.
So, when I first spotted Sophia Richie Grainge with a little peep of red poloneck I did have a giggle. It reminded me so much of one of my mom’s old friends – a distinctly unsnappy dresser who preferred sensible brown to any other hue. When she forced herself to have her colours done, she was told red was her jam, but she could never quite bring herself to just go for it! She wore exactly the same tweedy brown clothes she’d always worn, but with a red bag. My mother, bless her, thought it was hilarious.
Sophia literally hit everyone’s radar earlier this year and has not had even a moment to step off the trend-set treadmill. It was a hard launch and she nailed it. Wondering who she is? Lionel Richie’s daughter. The other one. Not the Paris Hilton-Simple Life one. That’s Nicole. Also fiercely stylish but less on-the-scene.
Sophia is everywhere this year! Her signature Jo Malone fragrance? Best seller. Her hairstyles? Everywhere. Her street style? Copied to death.
PS… The Jo Malone is English Pear & Freesia and without being sycophantic to either Jo herself or Sophia, its is a gloriously fresh and summery fragrance! Try it.
Anyway, she landed on the fashion week circuit this year with a carefully curated wardrobe that always included a little pop of poppy red. Shoulda known right from the start that A) she was onto something and B) she already knew stuff. And then The Red just kept rolling. And I love it… The street style she brought to the party was so desirable and so wearable. Steal her style. Literally. Steal it. Here’s where we are at…
Others brought the street style with somewhat less wearable effect. Ahem, I mean you Lady In Red Pantie (not the Chris De Burgh version) at Ferragamo.
Both The Annas That Count – that’s Wintour (below) and Dello Russo (pic waaay above) – were spotted in the perfect shade of red, in my humble opinion. I prefer the slash of vermillion to the bricky reds. Those aren’t my, ahem, colour.
Alexander McQueen’s Sarah Burton in her last collection for the maison sent red roses down the runway – both emblazoned onto suits, but also pleated and perfectly structured into the most perfect - albeit Georgia O’Keeffey - dresses and mega corsets. Although it was the red stitching on black that got my temperature rising.
Valentino forgot about Piccolo Pink and hit the high notes with high gloss red bags and studded heels and sweeping floor length red evening skirts and shirts, worn with ties – ties with metal tips, mind you, hello again, Nineties, my old friend.
Jared Leto sported just one singular red glove. But what more does he need? He looks like some sort of sexy, glittery post- apocalyptic rock god anyway. All he needs is a single scarlet glove.
Zoe Kravitz teamed her red nails with a structured bag.
EmRata pulled on her pirate boots and offset them with off-the-shoulder red.
Cate Blanchett was business at the front, party at the back with this giant red bow as she headed off to McQueen in McQueen.
Then there were the flat peasanty-looking (only if you are in fact a stylish peasant) ballet flats at Stella McCartney.
This is all to say, look out for red, because all THIS happened in a week! But also to say: fear not - it’s autumn / winter next year that you’re looking towards, so still lots of time to gather your thoughts! For now, the summer season is BUTTER YELLOW! Forget everything I just said about red and remember to pack your yellow swatches when you hit the shops! Fashun. I know, she’s a bitch.