PICTURES: STYLE.COM
WORDS: Janice Breen Burns
Voxfrock presents your complete guide to Spring 2014, fully workable now.
Australians are blessed, down here on earth’s curvy bottom. “Down Under” is not only a trick of geographic co-ordinates, it’s a six month jump on Nowness. Our spring cranks up just as the most influential fashion designers in the world show their delivery plans for the same season Up There, six months hence. Future clues.
Barbara Bui captures a chic trinity of key spring trends: shorts, tailored blazer and midriff top in chambray’s ice-cream blue. (Myer carries Barbara Bui.)
We have only to take nonchalant note, then adapt, edit, purge and splurge and – ta da! – we can be rocking US/Euro spring/summer 2014 in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth before New York, London, Milan and Paris have even mothballed their winter woollies. Fashion is slow enough, stickyfickle and forgiving enough to aid the process. And, Amen to that. Whenever Voxfrock’s international visitors do comment, in astonishment, at the cutting-edginess of Aussies on key streets of Melbourne and Sydney, we take pains to explain precisely this phenomenon: our happy blip on the Frockosphere’s space/time continuum.
Martin Grant navy silk short and swingback top.
Now, let’s crack on with the point of this post. Over the spring/summer 2014 show series, Voxfrock’s team combed hundreds of runways, thousands of individual ensembles, and distilled the data into our list of Trends Most Likely. Some feel like old friends; they’ve been around so long, freshened season after season by canny designers. Others snap crackle and fizz with newness. All are guaranteed by Voxfrock’s lock-and-load contract, to be genuine bonafide components of Now, Right Now.
Burberry Prorsum -clean cut spring coat.
Below, we kick off with a key trend gallery plucked from the runways of all four cities, New York, London, Milan and Paris. To see the complete collections from each designer click through Style.com from here. The three galleries below key trends, deal with the surface of spring: the palette and patterns that will quickly define the season after US/Euro winter early next year.
TOP: City shorts at Jason Wu. Fash-mash mix at Prada. Leggings under skirt at Martin Grant. Clean graphic patterns and tulip skirt silhouette at Martin Grant. The neat tailored blazer at Giorgio Armani.
MIDDLE: The boyfriend jacket and hillbilly jean at Marc by Marc Jacobs. Transparency at Sass and Bide. The flagged trouser at Zac Posen. Midriff/belly crop at Dion Lee. The low-knee hemline and lattice fabric at Collette Dinnigan.
BOTTOM: Short skirt/skort under long jacket at Chanel. Optical white and crotch-peeper hemline at Balenciaga. Dropped/flapper “waistline” at Balmain. Flagged and cropped casual fisherman trouser at Paul & Joe. Extravagant embellishments at Miu Miu.
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OVERVIEW – THE SURFACE OF SPRING
There’s a sparkly freshness and cleanliness of line, a paleness of palette and crispness expressed in stiffer fabrics that cut like paper and hold their inherent inflexibility when folded, gathered and pleated.This is not the season’s only significant aesthetic. Muiccia Prada, one of many, best expressed its antithesis; a bold version of fash-mash in Milan. But it is the most forceful aesthetic in a season that is less about silhouette than surface as designers, once again, attempt to freshen what’s already working in our wardrobes.
Voxfrockian team members also agreed, one short of unanimously, that Aussie expat Martin Grant expressed a sharp and graphic minimalism that captured spring’s nowness most succinctly. If every girl owned a Grant frock or trouser and top or six, we reckon, the world would be a beautiful place.
SHEER WHITE LIGHT
The fresh aesthetic played best in white, almost white, optical white, blue-white and any other colour close enough to white it might as well be white. Best interpretations were sporty or had a classic American sportswear beat with pleats, blouses, crisp-cut skirts, skorts, city shorts, boyfriend jackets and duster coats, dagger-toe white shoes and flat, casual scuffs. Some designers went the whole white-light-hog and segued into light-emitting silver and/or light diffusing sheer silks.
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ORANGE POPS AND STATEMENT ITEMS
It’s not the only hue on spring’s chart, but orange was hands-down favorite of enough designers to warrant its own gallery. It pinged with white, enriched spring’s ice-cream palette, and sang whenever it was paired with peacock blue, navy, or in any graphic or paintily border and mural print. (See Ice cream, stripes and splashy prints.)
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ICE CREAM, STRIPES AND SPLASHY PRINTS
Creamy pinks, chambray blues and spearmints have a fingernail grip on spring 2013. Their time is now to blossom. They worked best in sundae mixtures and intensifying whites by juxtaposition. Stripes are also multiplying in the Zeitgeist, and the paintily silks at houses such as Dior and Prada prove spring 2014 is every bit as discordant at the current season’s wild and wonderful trendlist from fash-mash to monotone minimalism. Bon appetit from your Voxfrock team.xx
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Compiled by Terry Carruthers, Emily Wilson, Candice Burke and, with Voxfrock’s gratitude, two others; info@voxfrock.com.au and intern@voxfrock.com.au
