Breton tops. Everywhere. Why?
John Crisp, by email
It's. Very. Simple. For about the past year or so, the French ingénuelook has become what we in the business call "very big", although with respect to my fashion colleagues and our lingua franca, this term is actually completely inappropriate here because a major part of this look's appeal has been that French ingénues tend to be très petite. But it's Monday morning, let's not get all linguistically clever-clever, OK?
This all started when everyone in the world became obsessed with how the staff at French Vogue dress. Yes, everyone: me, John Crisp, Ann Widdecombe – everyone. Even if you and Ann didn't know it on a conscious level, John, on a subconscious level you were totally gripped by the way French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld gets her hair so straight, and how the fashion editor Emanuelle Alt gets the shoulders of her Balmain jacket that sharp. But while Balmain has now been deemed "a bit 2009" (ew!) and most people have revealed that flat hair looks good on pretty much no one, the French Vogue Furore (as it shall be known in history books) has passed on to be replaced by a perennial obsession with how the staff of American Vogue dress. But I digress.
The point is, the one lasting legacy of the French Vogue Furore has been the popularity of the Breton top. This is surprising on several levels. First, it's kinda weird that the denizens of French Vogue wear Breton tops as that is surely like Anna Wintour wearing an "I Heart NY" T-shirt (which, to my knowledge, she doesn't). But it is not for this humble column to suggest how the French Voguettes should roll.
More surprising has been how much the rest of the world and its mother loves the Breton. Everyone from Céline to Zara (which, I should stress, are brands, not friends of mine) has knocked out a Breton this summer, and the people are buying them.
Now, sure, they're very chic in that Gallic way – I can vibe with that (as they probably don't say at French Vogue). But while I have little patience with fashion rules as a whole, there are some that are stamped indelibly on my soul:
1. Double denim is the uniform of the devil
2. Uggs are the footwear of Satan
3. Horizontal stripes make one look like the Michelin Man crossed with a test pattern.
The first two remain clearly true. The third has been consistently disproven to me by the many young ladies in this country whom I see wearing the Breton top with aplomb. But I – I just cannot. I do try, but whenever I put it on and prepare to leave the flat, I pass a mirror and the words "Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man" echo in my cranium. And then it's back to the plain Gap T-shirt for me. But I always was more Sharon Stone than French Vogue, I guess.
Have playsuits peaked?
Penny, by email
Sadly, yes. This is a tragedy for those of us who have been working the playsuit for years, with it possibly constituting the hardest work we've done in that time period. And now, after years of general neglect, the floral playsuit has become this summer's little floral dress, meaning it is the ubiquitous festival uniform and, thus, ruined for us loyalists by overkill. For example, let me tell you a fascinating story about me.
So I went to a festival a few weeks ago and found myself, as one often does at a festival, standing in a queue. Behind me were two young ladies who were talking extremely loudly about "facking Londoners" (the festival was in London) and "facking festivals" (we were at a festival) and how facking hilarious it was last night when "facking Stuart" got so "facking munted". (I do not know what this means, but it sounded unpleasant.) Drawn to the horror, in the way one cannot help but look at a squashed pigeon in the road, I turned around. They could well have been a decade younger than me but it was hard to tell beneath the three inches of foundation on their faces. I am sure they each had three cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, but that may be poetic memory licence, but they definitely both had massive tattoos on at least one shoulder. Worst of all, they were both wearing playsuits.
Dear reader, I got home that night and threw out my extensive collection of playsuits, and when I say "threw out", I mean put them in the back of the closet until certain images faded from my mind.
Like the maître d' in Ferris Bueller, I weep for the future.
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Sorry for the lack of outfit posts, I shall do some soon, I promise!
Daisymay X
