Fashion Blogs

It is a truism of the history of dress that decade-defining looks generally don’t congeal until quite late in the period they eventually come to represent. The miniskirts and Crayola colours of the 1960s, the power shoulders of the ’80s, the minimalism of the ’90s — all reached critical mass well into the midpoint of those eras, when whatever had been bubbling up in wardrobes and on sidewalks found its reflection in the wider world.

Well, the tectonic plates of fashion have shifted again. Look around: What do you see?

During the recent round of fashion shows, suits — and sleeves and long skirts — dominated.

“Women who once bought strapless dresses with a little skirt are now buying evening gowns with sleeves and high necks,” said Claire Distenfeld, the owner of Fivestory, the destination boutique on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

“Four seasons ago we couldn’t sell a blouse, and now everyone wants a blouse. Young women who used to come in and buy Balmain’s nonexistent dresses are leaving with knee-length skirts with a sweater or blouse by Emilia Wickstead.”

And speaking of Balmain, even that label offered long knits, long sleeves and long crocodile skins among the short-and-fringed styles in its last collection.

On the red carpet actress Ruth Negga owned the last awards season in a series of generously sleeved frocks, and then showed up at the Oscars almost entirely covered in red Valentino — long sleeves, high neck, long skirt — and making pretty much every top 10 best-dressed list of the night.

Ditto Jessica Biel (in long-sleeved, high-necked, floor-length gold KaufmanFranco) and Isabelle Huppert (in long-sleeved, crew-necked, floor-length white Armani Priv).

According to Ghizlan Guenez, founder of new fashion site The Modist, “It’s a macrotrend”. That is, a trend that goes beyond fashion. But what exactly is it?

Well, it’s the end of the naked look. And the beginning of a new age of female “pluri-empowerment”, as expressed through the kind of dress that prioritises the individual and her needs over the clichs of female role play.

Arguably, it began, as these things do, at least three years ago. But it is only now reaching critical mass, thanks to a convergence of social, political and cultural factors as reflected in clothing. And as far as those issues go: Women, fashion has you covered. In every sense of that word.

Consider it this way: In 2014, Rihanna accepted the Fashion Icon Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America in a sheer rhinestone-spangled scrim of a dress by Adam Selman; last November, she accepted the Shoe of the Year award at the Footwear News Achievement Awards in a long black Vetements X Juicy Couture velvet skirt, a long-sleeved shirt draped at the waist and long gloves, with almost no skin showing at all.

In 2015, Beyonc channelled Venus on the half shell in sheer Givenchy at the Met Gala, with only bits of strategically placed floral embroidery to keep her from arrest; this year, the Met Gala celebrates a designer — Rei Kawakubo — whose last show encased the female body in oversize armless carapaces that swallowed the Betty Boop and Botero silhouettes whole.

“We live in an age of reality TV and transparency, where everything is out there,” said Lucie Greene, worldwide director of the innovation group at J. Walter Thompson.

Technology has made us comfortable with sharing everything, from late-night parties to relationship status; with tweeting thoughts in the middle of the night or snaps of yourself in your underwear; with the idea of dating on television for all to see. Greene said the move to dress in the opposite direction was in some ways “a reaction to that — almost the anti-Kardashianisation”.

It is a sign of the times, though one with a touch of irony, that for Melania Trump’s official portrait, the first lady chose a black tuxedo jacket complete with black tie at the neck, a formal, almost military, and very covered-up look — as was the Ralph Lauren dress-and-bolero she chose for the inauguration, with its high neck and matching gloves.

“Images of women being intensely beautified, sexualised and shown like dolls over many years has had an impact on me, as I believe it has on us all,” Phoebe Philo, the creative director of Cline, wrote in an email. As an alternative, Philo has focused her work at Cline on designing clothes — often oversize, soft, enveloping — that act almost as a chrysalis from within which the woman can emerge.

This is one kind of aesthetic reaction, but not the only one.

It is not only about hemlines, for example, at least not in the vein of Newtonian fashion physics (everything that goes up must come down). It is not about power dressing in the old, battering ram shoulder sense, but in the sense that when you feel secure and comfortable and protected, you feel stronger.

It is reflected in both the hip historiana of Giambattista Valli’s floral silk chiffons with their long sleeves, sweeping skirts and chaste necks, and the head-to-toe character-actor dressing at Gucci; as well as in the boho Puritan lines of Pierpaolo Piccioli’s Valentino; the slouchy tailoring of Stella McCartney; the elegant rock-star suiting of Haider Ackermann; the windswept Victorian romance of Erdem; and the swaddling chic of Michael Kors.

“When people are seated at fashion shows wearing pasties, the only thing that could be shocking is a tailored suit,” Kors said, referring to the surprise appearance last month of Nicki Minaj at the side of Haider Ackermann’s runway show, her left breast almost entirely exposed. Also the fact that the whole look was still somehow much less seductively relevant than model Alek Wek, in a perfectly cut black cashmere tuxedo coat, skinny black trousers and black polo neck, sashaying her way down the catwalk in front.

That could be because, as Greene said, one of the hallmarks of these clothes is that to a certain extent they “reject the strictures of the male gaze”. “They are not about what men want any more,” she continued, “but about what women want.”

As women have found their voice politically, they have begun to express themselves sartorially, be it through white pantsuits, so-called pussy hats or the modest fashion movement. Clothes are an integral part of the debate over the freedom to make your own choices — whether about what you do with your body or who touches your body or what you put on your body — that began with the rise of gender-neutral dressing, picked up steam thanks to both the leaked tape of Trump talking about grabbing women and the debate over the hijab, and became even more visible during the Women’s March on Washington in January.

“Elegant” is a word that comes up a lot in association with the move to the more covered, as are “sophisticated” and “practical”.

“I am convinced,” Kors said, “that there is something far more alluring about women wearing things that give them confidence, that don’t make them feel as if they have to tug at their hemlines or yank at their straps.”

For Karla Welch, the stylist behind Negga’s awards season wardrobe, being covered up was “an answer to how men are dressed”. She said it was also rooted in a belief that there was no reason for her clients to be confined to the old boxes of strapless and plunging mermaid gowns.

“I personally was so done with that type of dressing,” Welch said. “I think there has been this awakening of women to all their different choices.”

As a result, she said, when it came to her clients Negga and Sarah Paulson, another actress widely applauded for a style that was less revealing than regal, “we were looking at clothes that were about expressing themselves, feeling comfortable as themselves — Ruth loved a sleeve — while at the same time shielding them in a way”.

“We’re political people,” she continued. “Clothes are a form of armour.”

And that is partly why Distenfeld believes this is not simply a seasonal trend, but a shift in the definition of image and of identity. “If you are speaking a new language and hearing a new language, you need to wear a new clothing language to express that,” she said.Read more at:http://www.marieprom.co.uk/evening-dresses-uk