Why it’s alright to be a fashion victim
Style icon: Kate Moss
Being into clothes doesn’t mean you are shallow or self-obsessed, according to a new book, The Meaning of Sunglasses
So that’s it then. Just when we finally figure out how to ‘work’ our winter wardrobes, the sun decides to hang around for a few extra minutes each day and renders our winter collections suddenly redundant. It’s time to ditch the woollies in favour of – what? What exactly should we be wearing this spring?
How much should we spend?
Who should we turn to for guidance? And more importantly, does our interest in fashion mean we’re shallow and self-obsessed? If anyone can answer these questions, it’s Hadley Freeman; deputy fashion editor of the Guardian and a contributing editor to Vogue.
Her new book, The Meaning of Sunglasses, has just hit the shelves and it’s the perfect cure for fashioninduced stress. It’s full of sense; fashion sense, common sense; and, best of all, Freeman’s sense of humour.
It tackles all those thorny fashion questions including how Kate Moss ruined your wardrobe, the point of lowslung belts, the pitfalls of patterns and, naturally, the meaning of sunglasses.
But should we be reading a book on fashion at all? Does an interest in fashion suggest we’re superficial and narcissistic? Not at all, according to Freeman.
“It’s never been clear why fashion is denigrated as shallow when similarly aesthetically-based industries like, say, cinema, art or theatre are lauded as spiritually enriching. All three involve huge amounts of money, attract appallingly egotistical people and tend to exclude anyone below the middle classes. Yet if you spend an evening watching some poncey folk ponce about on a poncey stage you are lauded for cultural pursuits, whereas if you while away a harmless afternoon admiring some pretty dresses in a shop you are irredeemably selfindulgent.”
Or irredeemably masochistic. Some women may flick through fashion magazines to indulge their feelings of self-loathing but most of us just flick because we enjoy it.
“Sometimes its nice to read something that is just for us.
Not about our kids, our boyfriends, our jobs, worthwhile cultural pursuits or political causes,” says Freeman. “It’s about escapism, not masochism.”
Not that magazines are the bastions of taste and objectivity they’d have us believe. Much of their content is dictated by advertising executives and the ulterior motives of editors.
Best-dressed lists, in particular, have more to do with the editor’s personal agenda than the clothes they feature.
“It’s an easy way to suck up to someone the editor would like to interview one day or justify next month’s cover star,” says Freeman. “It is also a good way to slag off anyone who has had the gumption to turn down an interview for the magazine.”
If you’re one of the rare few who actually reads the text between the pictures in fashion magazines, then be prepared to decode the ‘fashion speak’.
‘Homage,’ for example, may sound complimentary, but as Freeman explains, it’s a “conveniently trussed up word for blatant copy and can be used without the niggling fear of litigation”.
‘Experimentation is key,’ is another favourite employed by journalists who either haven’t a clue or are hedging their bets: “This season’s de rigueur shade of bright mandarin looks just great against most complexions but experimentation is key.”
Kate Moss may be a perennial fixture in most fashion magazines, but women have yet to benefit from any of the trends she foisted on us. Moss is, after all, responsible for the painful rash of pirate boots, hot pants, skinny and highwasted jeans.
“All harbingers of more aesthetic harm to the female populace than hair crimpers,” says Freeman.
Happily, while Moss may have the edge in most things fashionable, we’re all equal in the world of accessories.
Accessories are the great leveller of the fashion world; they don’t make us feel fat and, more importantly, they don’t necessarily suit Kate Moss any better than the rest of us. Score one for the average woman.
And the good news just keeps coming; the vast improvement in both the quality and variety of clothes in chain stores means we no longer have to overspend to sparkle. But occasionally we’ll stray into the designer section and find ourselves tempted by something ‘whose price makes our knees crumple in agony.’ The best way to resolve this ‘should I buy it or leave it’ dilemma, according to Freeman, is to ask yourself : ‘Will you actually be excited when you wake up tomorrow and see it in your wardrobe or will it be like the morning after a particularly misguided one-night-stand… without the mitigating factor of being able to get it out of your flat before breakfast?”
If you’re buying an outfit with a view to seducing the object of your desire, then steer clear of that species of clothes that Freeman refers to as ‘fashion-that-boys-don’tget’.
Carrie in Sex and the City was a true champion of this style. ‘The fact is that most of the time Carrie looked really, really silly. To boys, that is – the girls loved her,’ says Freeman.
Patterns are a prime example of fashion-that-boysdon’t- get: “She sees a patterned dress and thinks, ‘Golly, isn’t that summer dress with an old liberty print rather fabulously kitsch’. He thinks, ‘I never noticed before how much she resembles my grandmother’s sofa’,” explains Freeman.
The appeal of wedges also lies in the gender of the beholder. Women may see them as ‘cool in a 1950s pin-up kind of way’, whereas men see nothing but orthopedic shoes.
But if that patterned dress keeps calling to you - just grab it and repeat your new Freeman-inspired mantra as you make your way to the check-out: ‘You’re not eating small children, you’re not flogging arms, you’re just buying a damn dress’.
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