It's Sheer Or It's Printed, Which One Are You?
It's international fashion week season so here's fair warning - and a trend update! - that you'll soon be finding lots of nearly-nude skirts and panties-as-outerwear at your closest Zara stat.
Drumroll please, it’s fashion week – the month-long travelling circus that gets fash eds and buyers out of the office for four weeks of criss-crossing the globe - in great shoes - between New York, London, Milan and Paris. Yes, I did open this, erm, literary foray with Julia Fox in no clothes, a few well-managed medallions and a coat, because what is fashion week without a truly crazed ode-to-fashun lewk?!
I have been obsessed with fashion weeks since I was first writing about them in the early Noughties. Back then, they appeared mannnny months later as a great big trend report, spanning many pages, in monthly magazines. This eventually segued into serialized weekly updates in Grazia by 2012 – oh to be so up to date that you only had to wait til next week Friday to know what was trending on the catwalks! Bless. Now it’s live action Insta from the FROW - appearing in your feed faster the models are disrobing backstage.
I am still obsessed, btw, I love nothing more than oohing and aahing over these beautifully constructed clothes works of art, as I sit bundled up in a cardi in the distinctly unglamorous rains of the Cape.
What’s always been more fun for me though is the street style that fashion weeks bring with them – that was the real juice! How real - albeit ridiculously stylish - people dressed. When I was lucky enough to be attending Milan Fashion Week – thanks again, Grazia! - the Euro fash eds would roll up dressed in skinny black cropped trousers with tousled hair – tousled because it was Actually Tousled without the artful assistance of ghd. Everyone smoked cigarettes, drank Diet Coke and mainlined espressos. They barely wore make-up, their blazers were sharply tailored perfection with pushed-up sleeves and they were just so forking cool. The profesh set had shiny black town cars and drivers to get them from one venue to the next, the rest had to contend with tottering down cobbled streets with a bit of pace - because every show ran late so you are constantly hustling. But that never stopped the schedule from packing them in.
That’s a thing they don’t tell you about fashion week - without a car, you’ll never make any show on time except your first one of the day. Also, the show itself runs shorter than the wait time to get in to see the show. Yep, really. And the reason why Anna Wintour dashes out just before the end of every show is because leaving involves a kill-or-be-killed doorway scrum that only the most sharp-elbowed or buffest can truly survive unscathed. Now, where were we?
Early morning, you’d pick up your pile of stiff, embossed invitations, your name transcribed in perfect calligraphy and head out, moving like a shoal from one venue to the next well into the night. If there were outfit changes (spoiler alert: there weren’t) they were taking place in the back seat of the aforementioned vehicle, as you flung yourself into your new lewk, smoked your fag, chugged your caffeinated low-cal soft drink and made it to the next catwalk. It was the year of Our Lord 2000-and-something.
The first person I properly saw paying any kind of real interest to - and affection for - the street style photographers was Anna Dello Russo. This Anna did not ascribe to the black cropped trousers rule, nor the ‘no one changes’ rule. She was already a burgeoning fash icon on the scene – OTT Italian and the editor-at-large of Vogue Japan. I’d flipped through her street style images hundreds of times by that point. In Milan I saw it acted out for real for the first time… Her teetering on a minuscule sliver of pavement between two lanes of cars, a yellow swathe of fabric billowing out behind her, one heel kicked up, endlessly long tanned limbs, laughing and smiling and hair flipping for the cameras. It was sheer, sunshiny perfection! And I saw those shots everywhere that week.
Everyone still carried a notebook, where trends and looks would be hastily scribbled in near-complete darkness, resting on one bony knee, as models stomped up and down. No one – and I really do mean no one – used a phone to snap a pic. I sat opposite a pocket-sized Salma Hayek at Fendi. She was clad in purple leather corsetry and looked sublime. People barely batted an eyelid. I was nearly fainting, but I was bedecked in Country Road’s finest, so was hardly worth worrying about, despite my front row seat – again, thanks Grazia.
This year, we’re halfway through September’s fash weeks and, true to form, the street style is where the action is at… As with all things 2023, its super individual – some arrived dressed for biz and comfort (black pants, trainers), some arrived dressed for paparazzi (no pants, trainers) and some arrived dressed to socialize (a heady combo of the above).
Here’s a lil catwalk round-up so you can get in on the fash action early, if you are so inclined…PS, florals are still heavy hitters.
In London, Simone Rocha went backstage at the English National Ballet for a bows and pearls and flowery prettiness. Erdem gave a nod to heirloom fabrics in soft printed dresses reminiscent of a 1930s aristo darling. Sticking with prints, Emilia Wickstead hit up ‘summer in the south of France’ with bright stripes and cocktail dresses, while Ashish Gupta presented what Business of Fashion described as a happy-go-lucky rainbow sparkle fest. Roksanda Ilincic, whose guests were the most sunshiny bunch of Bright Young Things, took on her trademark use of colour against sculptural silhouettes. So damn gorgeous.
But it was Burberry that everyone was waiting to see – the marketing budget was clearly vast. Burberry rebranded the entire Bond Street station Burberry Street, rounded up old school English icons like Mary Berry to drink tea in a Burberry café with Burberry cups, clad in Burberry scarves, perched alongside Burberry curtains. The iconic Burberry check which new-ish designer Daniel Lee had made much use of last season was not be found in this collection, replaced instead with a new print - a take on the brand’s ‘equestrian knight design’… The jousting knight on horseback. Loads of silky, sinuous prints in blue and white, the classic Burberry trenches in two-tone fabric, floral jacquards and strawberry prints. And a front row celebrating all that the eye could see…
Over in NYC, Michael Kors has never been one for understatement, so he said howzit to white lace a la 60s St Tropez (in my imagination, not necessarily IRL) and long gauzy skirts. Gauzy is a word I am about to use a lot.
For those of you who have been following along on Insta, I am having something of what would be considered A Hard Time understanding why everyone is hitting the scene in nothing but a pair of panties. Yes, The Pantie is a hot fash item or rather, Going Pantless is a lewk right now. Very wearable, I know, dears, I know.
If it’s cold, The Panties are often teamed with a pair of tights. These poke out the top of The Panties much like you would have worn your school tights with a double pair of panties so the crotch didn’t slide down to your knees during the school day. Anyway! Underpants are absolutely front and centre. Whether worn solo with a cardi and brogues or underneath every sheer item that was presented. And there were lots.
Altuzarra showed see-through sheer skirts and dresses, sparkled up with a few artfully placed sequins. At Tory Burch, they weren’t pantless exactly but the mini skirts were so infinitesimally micro that they might as well have been. And honestly, mere mortals defs battle, especially when sporting an oversized blazer to accompany said lewk, invisible to the naked eye. Gabriela Hearst also hit the catwalk with net dresses, Carolina Herrera lavender lace.
You thought summer bodies were made in winter? Think again. This is way scarier than having to hit Plett in a bikini after months of Cape Town’s worst winter, the spring tides and KZN cyclones. These are Going Out Clothes. Are You ready? Milan and Paris are next!
PS I’m holding out for winter 2024 and the return of all this tartan and plaid! Because this is what the front row was wearing, if not the actual models.