Think On It

Ready to wear 2008

February 23rd, 2008

I started thinking the other day about fashion and clothes. I have a lot of fun when the runway shows are on and I love to talk about them and post pictures from them and surmise what will have the legs to reach the market that is us, more or less. It suddenly hit me that the “us” of whom I speak is no longer me. That “us” was a working professional with a need to look on top of things and as attractive as possible. The expense could be justified by that image thing and I had just enough of a social life, too, to make it a pleasure to think out pretty clothes and spoil myself a little. And I was a lot younger. It stymies me to realize that some of the nicest looks are denied to women my age. Just when we need to disguise our bottoms we are told that full skirts make us look like mutton dressed as lamb. Someone made fun of me for wearing a stitched down pleated skirt three years ago. It didn’t stop me wearing one, because they make too much sense and certainly don’t have to be worn schoolgirlishly, but it did make me start paying attention to that issue a bit more.

One thing and another, it all adds up to the idea that runway clothes can only be fun, like going to Chick Flicks. You go for fun, and you have no expectation that you will advance humanity or your understanding of it a bit. I like to see what can be pulled from the pool of insane creativity and used in a sane wardrobe. But it looks to me as if no one does that any more.

There are a few people who have websites in which they show what they design, adapt and sew to wear. There are others that shoot photos of street style in cities around the world. There are a few who report on wardrobe building, trends, fad avoidance, bargains… and I enjoy all of these ventures. One I love that is rarely updated is written/drawn by a fashionista rabbit who shows herself wearing her choice of runway fashion. I asked for permission to link to her, but didn’t get it, so you’ll just have to hunt if interested.

The real ground floor to this subject, however, is this: if you can’t buy it you can’t have it. That means that it isn’t runway fashion that is ruling us, but prèt a porter fashion. Many of us won’t spend the money for even that, and unless we are very creative we will have to settle for the bits that filter down a year or two later into what the British call high street fashion, or the kind of fashion you find in Main Street shops and department stores.

So I have been pulling together what it takes to see what there is in prèt a porter. By ten last night my eyes were swimming with images of what’s in the boutiques this spring for 2008. I wanted to get up and start cutting and sewing, but then I remembered I am really not very good at that and besides I can’t fit myself, only someone else. Another thing was the awful feeling that I might be a bit too old to get away with it. I need to go somewhere where there a lot of chic ladies of a certain age and see just how straitlaced I must be. I know I can wear big hats and big sunglasses, but it doesn’t seem enough.

The other discouraging thing is what women themselves tell me about what they really wear. There seems to be some idea that comfort can only be achieved in clothes designed for active sport. IT IS NOT TRUE. Comfort can be achieved with clothes that have form, with underwear in full complement, and with shoes that are made of leather and are not padded. Trust me on this.

Still, I hear from women that they “live in” yoga pants, sweats, running suits and balloon shoes. I despair. I despair of a population willing to all look that much alike. I despair of any group of over six people willing to wear baggy and odd-colored sets of things. That’s what basketball players wear, but they get paid a lot to do it. My own daughter tells me that no one wears anything but jeans at her techie workplace. She loves gorgeous clothes, but I know if they don’t go with jeans, she will never wear them, no matter how sincere her passion.

As to sex and romance, well, I won’t go there because I am told I don’t know what modern young men want, and that would be true. If they would tell me, I might believe them, but they always tell me they are looking for the right mind and soul. It was my belief that in “When Harry Met Sally” he ran away frightened after their first romantic interlude, it was not because he felt proprietorship and coupledom so scary, but because she wore those little white socks in bed. That is scary, that she could leap directly to bedsocks in one night. I suspect it would take me a lifetime.

So I am hoping that there are at least some of you who still have your latent princess within and still think that comfort is nice but beauty is equal. As I rip into the marketplace, once a week I will show you a look one can actually buy, now, this year, in 2008.

Entry Filed under: Fashion, Brains, Beauty