Its ONJ Fashion For Always

Saying goodbye to fashion icon Issey Miyake, but also to Olivia Newton-John who I realised this week, is actually my fashion icon

But first, a quick whoop whoop for the fact that you all LOVE signet rings almost as much as you love Johnny Depp… Thanks for the outpouring of DMs about your loved-up fingers! Winning image has to go to Joey who sent me this heavenly reference so now I want to upgrade ALL my fingers.

While we were all off celebrating Women’s Day weekend in South Africa -which I incidentally celebrated mostly with laundry and grocery shopping, sighhhh -  the world lost both Olivia Newton John and Issey Miyake.

An Ode To ONJ

I have four versions of Olivia Newton John that consumed my fashion choices and quite possibly still do! There was - as Young Punk used to call it when she was a muuuuch younger punk - Sandy From The Start Of Grease, Sandy From The End Of Grease, Xanadu and Physical.

Sandy From The Start Of Grease informed all the clear-skinned, wholesome glossiness I hankered for when I pulled on my socks and white sneakers. Sandy From The End Of Grease continues to inform my obsession (no other word for it) with leather pants of all descriptions and red shoes (ditto) – still a killer combo. And I spent an unreasonably large amount of my childhood practising her perfect stomping out of the cigarette under her most excellent shoe. A skill I didn’t need in the 80s. And don’t need now either. But I remain extremely well practised! Xanadu ONJ offered me lipgloss, flicky hair, glittery outfits and cuffed disco pants. Watch it here … Again, never met a sparkly outfit I didn’t love and still love any version of a harem pant, cuffed trouser, jumpsuit! And then there’s Let’s Get Physical… endlessly dancey and the hottest mish-mash of lycra I’d ever seen. I’m still working a clashing Lycra when I hit a workout. Although I have since lost the belt.

“But “Physical” came close, taking an aerosol hairspray can to a fitness trend — dance exercise — that was already poised to light up the decade. Not just because of the dance-centric pop culture phenomena of the decade (“Fame” in 1980, “Flashdance” in 1983,“Footloose” in 1984) but because of the re-emergence of a textile invented in 1958: Lycra, known generically as spandex.”

Which Olivia were you?

What Issey Miyake Brought To Fashion

Before there was fit tech, wearables, smart trainers, 3-D cut sneaks and laser-cut lace, there was Issey Miyake - best known for pleats and Steve Jobs’ iconic turtlenecks. As The New York Times said: he was the original champion of fashion tech, so it makes sense that he was also dressing Silicon Valley like a uniform. As Gawker wrote, the turtleneck ‘helped make [Steve Jobs] the world’s most recognizable CEO.’  Bloomberg called it ‘the vestment of a secular monk.’ 

“Even more than his Levi’s 501s and New Balance shoes, the turtleneck became synonymous with Mr. Jobs’s particular blend of genius and his focus: the way he settled on a uniform to reduce the number of decisions he had to make in the mornings, the better to focus on his work. It was an approach to dress later adopted by adherents including Mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama. Also his ability to blend soft-corner elegance and utility in not just his own style but the style of his products.” - NYT

1988 - Issey Miyake’s research into the heat press, led to the creation of his legendary knife-edge pleats, which by 1994, made up their own line, Pleats Please.

1997 – a continuous piece of thread fed into a knitting machine created a piece of cloth with built-in seams that could be designed and manufacturerd without waste – yep, APOC (A Piece Of Cloth) was the front-runner of fashion’s zero waste movement.

2010 – inspired by the work of computer scientist Jun Mitani, 132 5 comprised flat-pack items in complex origami folds that popped open to create 3-D sculptural pieces.

“They are extraordinary — soft sculptures that morph and move with the body — but what makes them singular is that they were conceived not just as beautiful things but as solutions to everyday needs.” - NYT