Winter '10 Trend Spotting

Something I found really interesting when I went overseas back in '07 was the fact that the trends that I saw taking shape in Europe, London especially during their Autumn transcended into our Autumn Winter Trends '08. I've talked previously on this blog about trends filtering down from high fashion/haute couture to 'normal' fashion.

Although a quick check on the Chanel website shows you that the gladiator-sandal trend is only just starting in places like America where Summer '10 is just starting to get a foothold (...foothold, ha, get it? Shut up.) trends are just starting to move forward here in Oz and therefore, with the usual jibber-jabber commentary, heres TutBlog's Autumn/Winter 2010 fashion trend predictions:

(ps: This is aside or on-top-of the 'duh' seasonal, time and time again trends of: Trench Coats, Boots, Beanies, etc.)

1. Over the Knee Boots

(photo credit: NatsNice)

This trend I think I saw for the very first time in 'The Devil Wears Prada' a couple of years ago and has been making headlines on the runway ever since (or maybe it's just one of those things like when you're made aware of something you start to see it everywhere, like bad fake tans and Fiat 500s). Anyway, I love the look, primarily because I've always though of over-the-knee anything as quite flirtatiously 50s, although with killer stiletto heels and leather outer, these new breed look a little more Madame Pain's S&M dungeon than the Bo-Peep charm over-the-knee stockings have always carried for me. Nevertheless, they're chic and are sure to crop up in chain shoe stores this winter.

2. Ripped tights and stockings, edgy stocking styles such as thigh high, suspenders etc

I'm citing this as an up-and-coming because of 'Gossip Girl's'  seemingly infallible ability to influence trends in chain stores and collections alike. Jenny Hunphrey, is of course the character in GG Season 2 who goes a little wild and edgy and seems to wear alot of leg bling (stockings, tights, stay-ups etc) on and off set. The following pictures are from GoFugYourself, which if you have a spare minute, is the best (fashion) time waster on the internet. 

As with a multitude of fashion trends  (Blair's cutesey colourful suits, Serena's crossover dress, statement necklaces, headbands, bows, headbands with bows etc) I predict that stockings, especially ripped, opaque, patterned black ones will become the new leggings, although I hope not in the sense of trying desperately to replace pants, as leggings tried and failed to do. In the eternal words of Blair Waldorf, season 2 : "How many times do I have to tell you? tights. aren't. pants."

3. Statement collars

Chanel uses a statement collar, almost always in black and white monochrome in their Fall/Winter 2009/10 collection. Mark my words there will be some lower-brand form of this out by July.

4. Thin belts

In the Dior Ready-To-Wear 2010 collection, inspired by Mitzah Bricard, and the vamped-up Versace Fall/Winter 2010 runway show there is an abundance of thin, often patent, leather belts. Hmm...while belts are always 'in' in one form or another, it will be interesting to see if thin, shiny belts take precedence over the thick, highly decorated ones of recent seasons, this winter.

Sadly though, with fashion moving faster on and off women's bodies than Tiger Woods we are already seeing the backs of some really fab trends, here are my Favourite Trends of 2009:

(in no particular order) 

1. Platform shoes

2. One shoulder dresses

3. The Maxi-Dress

4. Vintage style-jeans

5. Sequins

And with all that said:

Here are my Top 5 Trends I Will Be Glad to See the Back Of in 2010 aka The Naffiest of the Naff '09

(in no particular order)

1. Leggings (as pants)

2. Fluro

3. Chunky embellishment

4. Statement t-shirts

5. Sequins

Thanks for reading,

B. 

Leggings as Jeans - Worse than Crack

Dear Friend,

You're the sluttiest girl at school, you're the toast of the year below me, you're the girl who sits opposite me on the bus, you're the secret virgin, you're the big-and-proud-of-it girl, you're the gym freak-ette who's bum looks like two oranges wrestling in a sock, you're the rich girl with no fashion sense and the trend whore with the air-freight Vogue tucked under one arm. You are every girl. Well, every girl that wears leggings as pants, anyway.

It seems to me that you have not grasped the concept of pants yet. Oh I know! It's so in right now, so chic, so fashionable, everyone's wearing them- STOP! No, No, No, NO! Period.

Leggings are not pants, and they never will be. Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

Beatrice, your friendly neighborhood watchdog.

Okay, a little dramatic but no, it's not okay. Whether you are a 6, 16 or 26 leggings as pants (no matter how svelte you legs or how cool the leggings are) are not OK.

They look silly. Silly and sheep-like and cheap. There are billions of cool legging designs out there are yes, Agy does look smashing in them but wearing leggings as pants with any sort of very short dress or top and they look on par with wearing pajamas out of the house. Granted, on days when you have one class, wearing pajamas to school does seem tempting, but in the end, it just looks odd. Odd, showy, silly and really quite lazy. There are girls at my college that wear nothing but leggings as pants. Every. Day.

While some leggings are very cool, edgy and on-trend (see below) and I have many a time been tempted to buy a pair of leggings and wear them as pants, it only took me a second to remember, I can afford actual pants.

Sometimes I want to run up to these girls, embrace them and whisper in their ears "It's okay, we all feel lost sometimes" with a tear running down my cheek, before subtly slipping them a twenty with 'For the Pants Fund' note attached. Maybe it's a goal we can all work together to achieve.

On another note, since leggings worn with suitable overclothes can be hideously cool, here are some of my faves:

A: B:

C: D:

A + B: AMERICAN APPAREL

C + D: TOPSHOP

Ps: I suppose some people are wondering why I haven't mentioned jeggings, the infamous leggings with tacky faux denim printed on them and pockets sewn to the back. Answer: they don't deserve a mention. They deserve to go to the fashion mistake cemetery and lie in shame forever with the likes of balloon MC Hammer pants and Boy George hair.

Beatrice

Prada Wears The Devil

Dear Amateur Fashion Fans:

I have been waiting for the perfect moment to rant about an atrocity so Ultra Naff, so indescribably stupid, without reason and incredibly self serving that it makes me type like Mike Tyson (I don't know exactly how he types but I can imagine it). 

Many of you, if not all, will be familiar with the super-brand, high end, mostly couture, Italian fashion label Prada. What you probably wont be familiar with (unless you have no life like me)is Prada's signature styles, colours, cuts etc that are 'Pradesque' (my word, not theirs) and therefore immediately trendy. You may also remember this quote from the movie-The Devil Wears Prada.

Andy, the inexperienced assistant annoys Miranda Priestly, the editor of Runway, by calling some haute couture accessories "stuff". Miranda then flawlessly delivers a reply. 

"This... 'stuff'? Oh... ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff."

You just feel like saying ZING! after reading that.

If you haven't seen the movie I highly recommend it even to people who couldn't care less about fashion journalism simply because Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep are amazing, the script is witty and sharp and it even has cool music and a smokin' Adam Grenier from Entourage. 

Anyway, this quote from TDWP sprung to my mind immediately after my eyes were violated by the picture below in the fashion section of the Good Weekend Magazine a few weeks back. 

This is from Prada's 2009 Spring collection Im pretty sure.

I know, right? I just sat there thinking: "Wow, Prada, you can come up with the 2008 Prada Resort collection and then create this monstrosity?

I think I know how it happened:

Some low level shoe designer had a big weekend, then came into work on Monday and got sprung with the memo of a Design Meeting in 5 minutes. So he/she hastily scribbles down the first thing that comes into his/her Sangria-addled brain: Thigh.High.Gumboots.

The designer goes into the meeting and after the boss designer retracts his jaw from the floor he screams at the designer for getting all Sangria-ed the night before the design meeting. Because he/she's scared of loosing their sweet job, the designer meekly lies to the boss that 'its all the rage in Paris'. The Boss freezes for a second and then tells the designer that of course he knew that, he was just testing him/her before snatching away the drawing and making sure that Prada have that thigh high gumboot out ASAP to beat France to the punch (which they rarely do in terms of trends). And the boss adds suspenders, cause France aint gonna think of THAT!

There you have it, the conception of the world's most hideous designer shoe. In reference to the quote from TDWP, I think that Prada is setting an irresponsible example for the fashion industry. It's more than likely that this Ultra Naff design will filter down through the layers of cool and someday descend into our realm of fashion and then who will we have to blame when the 14 years old that shop those kind of trends are walking around in rubber hooker boots? 

What's that you tell me? They already are? No silly, thats just the Supre sales staff.

ZING!

-Beatrice

Sneaky Sound Style

Last night I went to see Sneaky Sound System at the UC Refectory. I had seen them once before at the Big Day Out but minus the heat and pushy-shove nature of the BDO, it was much more intimate (also the vibe was far more energetic) and because it was 10:30 at night and not 12 in the afternoon, it was dark and you could dance like a maniac. The longer performance also gave me time to mull over their outfits.

My friend and I noted that front-woman Miss Connie wore almost exactly the same outfit she wore at the BDO a couple of months ago; a white t-shirt with feathered, poofy capped sleeves, a thick white belt around her middle and a PVC looking skirt (at BDO it was blue, last night it was yellow). Can't remember her shoes from the BDO but last night she wore faux-leather leggings and white peep-toe slingbacks (fab or fug? I couldn't decide).

The whole outfit really threw me because I really could not decide if she looked like she belonged in Nylon Magazine or whether she looked like a hooker from Watchmen. Either way, my favourite bit was her necklace (last night, not BDO) which was a massive black and white plastic Chanel symbol on a plastic link chain that looked pixel-ized.

It really was just one of those outfits that looked cool on her but if anyone else tried it they would look like they had raided Dolly Parton's closet from 20 years ago.

Heres a pic of the top she wore both times. Couldn't find any of the skirt.

The rest of Sneaky Sound System went kind of plain in terms of dress, MC Double D (aka The Blonde Guy) wore a white bonds singlet and jeans but accessorized with the most awesome fluro yellow watch to match his fluro striped mic (Miss Connie had a sparkly one).

Now for the Ultra Naff of the Day:

This hideous little number comes from the surprisingly tasteful Kate Moss for Topshop collection. For those of you who dont know, Topshop is a bit like an upper class British Myer. Anyway most of the KM stuff is really nice, especially as she incorporates Liberty prints into alot of sundresses, tops etc which makes them much more innocent and pleasing to the eye than what you might expect from a collection piloted by Kate 'heroin-chic' Moss.

Anyway, this Frankenstein creation is part of the SS09 (Spring Summer 2009) collection which is in stores now and while being surrounded by cute frocks and demure maxi-dresses, this minidress seems to have been lost in the hassle of adding charm to every garment. The dull colour and pattern of the print is only matched in icky-ness by the cut and style of the dress (too short down the bottom and weird neckline at the top that would in reality leave your chest exposed to the elements). There's also the question of what it's made out of (from what I can see its the 100% polyester, mesh-y kind of thing you see on the $5 rack at Supre).

The most hilarious thing though? The price tag- £120 (Au $245).

-Beatrice

I'm not normal (if this is normal)

If you are reading this blog because you're a fan of amateur fashion or street fashion then you may read, as I do, the 'URBAN Style' section of the Sun Herald on Sundays.

For those of you who don't read the page, its basically a collection of stylish supposedly normal Sydneysiders and their (usually designer) street fashion. Having indulged in reading this page for a few years now Im familiar with the (model-esque) "normal" beauty and the just-out-grabbing-a-sandwich attitudes of these cooler-than-thou individuals that make the page. This past weekend, though, (the April 26th edition) just seemed to really push my buttons.

First of all, the page reads like an advert for Australian edgy fashion brand Ksubi. Dont get me wrong, I adore Ksubi, but do "normal" people actually wear so much Ksubi on a regular sandwich-grabbing basis? I think not.

Also, the author and photographer of 'URBAN Style', the obviously trendylicious Fernando Frisoni, has a strange tendency for running into the same people to photograph, for example Tali Shuvalov.

In last Sunday's edition she was one of the Ksubi examples that caught my eye. Lounging on some steps with a 'well excuse me for being so utterly chic' look on her face she wears (from the Sun Herald) an Isabel Marant top, Chanel ankle boots, bracelets from Ksubi and House of Fetish and tops it off with a navy blue Balenciaga bag. Well excuse me for shopping at Target.

So on the Sun Herald site is Frisoni's cute little section brimming with sexy 'normals' all stepping out for the night in various groovy locations and oh wow, heres Tali again, looking grande in a ra-ra red Isabel Marant dress, and a belt by Alexander McQueen. Does Tali know Frisoni? Maybe he was tipped off. Maybe it was just a happy coincidence. Hmm. I'll leave the verdict out on that one. Heres Tali on he Sun Herald website:

I do love that dress though.

Anyway maybe Im jaded as when I usually look at street fashion its at the Melbourne site which is mostly complied by one of my favourite bloggers, fashionhaley. I love that the people and the outfits on melbourne street fashion never look manufactured. They just look like naturally gifted people who can string together a groovy outfit whether it cost $400 or not. Here are a couple of my favourites at the moment. Credit goes to Hayley Hughes and melbournestreetfashion.com:

I just noticed how similar their outfits were. Ah Well. Fab clothes, not a single item is designer and the two girls manage to look chic and cute to boot.

Now for the Ultra Naff of the Day. Since this is my first blog, just to explain, Ultra Naff is a name I give to outfits/clothing etc that I smack with a big, fat question mark. Why the f*#k are you wearing that? Maybe they just got dressed in the dark...while drunk.

Anyway, heres the outfit of the day from the (you've got to admit) easily targetable Lady Gaga. Full credit for the picture goes to one of my favourite websites to cruise; gofugyourself.

Duuude. Seriously? The Hat, the glasses and especially the purple lipstick are all pretty ok. Even the weird umbrella-at-night-even-though-its-not-raining thing is passable cause...well...you're Lady Gaga. From the waist up its ok that is. From the waist down who ordered a Flashdance with a side of hooker-boots plus laces? Yikes.

-Beatrice