The Voxfrock team trawls the AW13-14RTW trends-most-likely.
The seasonal RTW circus is over. The last spotlight winked off over the last runways of New York, Milan, Paris. Autumn-Winter-13-14 is a smorgasbord of fadlets now, open to as many minuscule manipulations and interpretations as there are women in the world with the price of a frock and a yen for Nowness.
Australians especially, have the jump on Nowness, located as they are at least three full months ahead of the US/Euro time, space, climactic and catwalkian continuum and retail drop zone. Yep, this is us Downunder; poised with purses open on the lip of another winter, just as northern hemispheric fashion followers start jotting their tips for the same season not properly due for another six months.
What to wear now? Well, duh. Australian women, particularly in certain Melbourne circles and to a lesser extent, Sydney, aren’t increasingly renowned among the better dressed and fashion-informed in the world for nothing. No, they remain watchful and canny as fashion’s global elite roll out their predictions. And they don’t wait. They wear them now:
The materials.
Fabrics stiffer and thicker than the silky, rippling and fluttery stuff of the technical draping era that dominated fashion for so long. Tweeds, worsteds and other tailoring wool blends, neoprene, leathers of all species, metal-shot fabrics, lacquered and coated materials and others so thickly embellished or textured they behave like clay in a sculptor’s hands. Often cut in smooth and wide coat panels and pencil, waved or A-line skirts to the luxurious mid or low-calf hemline or into thigh-high frocklets, these fleshy new fabrics sit relatively still or stiffly, or undulate heavily as you walk.
The silhouettes.
Shoulders often jut well beyond the real bones and slope down, softly bulking in shawl jackets or wide-sleeve frocklets. Silhouettes abruptly narrow below into pencil skirts, clipped cigarette trousers stopping a chic short of the ankles, or, more dramatically into a sliver of pleat skirt or bloomer-style bottoms over bare legs and boots (or over-the-knee tubular gators) for a new take on the “pantslessness” look. (Think Paddle Pop on two sticks or the fast re-emerging junior market’s “pumpkin on a stick” silhouette.) A shapelier shape comes when a jacket or tunic, or coat’s bulk is clenched at the waist, bathrobe style, or tighter, cummerbund-style, over wide leg oxford or cullotte-style trousers cropped at lower calf or left to flap and graze the floor. In dresses and some blouse-and-skirt or jumper-and-trouser combos, the classic, shapelier shape of 1940s and 50s-esque silhouettes more truly echo the lines of the body beneath.
The bits and tricks.
Trousers and skirts in matched sets, all fabrics, with jackets or tunics. Classic pencil and full, swishy waved skirts and frock coats cut to below-the-knee and mid or lower calf hemlines. Natural peplums sculpted from jackets and tunics robustly clenched at the waistline with belts and ties. Bathrobe-style coats. Pleat-front oxford-style wide legged trousers cut long enough to drag on the floor over heels that can be as deceptively high as you like. Transparent lace and sheer fabric skirts over fingertip and hip-length jumpers and jackets. White blouses and collars worn to “crisp up” coloured layers or to counterpoint winter’s dominant blacks, greys, navies and dark metallics. Deep textured hemline and cuff border details including particularly, fur. Placement digital motif and border prints. Extravagant zips. Assymetric or side-dragged hemlines and tailoring. Short-and-long combination hemlines including extravagantly front-scooped dresses, coats and frock-coats, and combinations of micro-frocklets or tiny skirts worn under longer, calf or floor grazer coats. Aesthetic drama by juxtaposition: the delicacy of lingerie lace with chunky tailored over pieces, a charmingly flowery cocktail frock with laced-up flats. Thick embroideries, silken fringing, crystal and paillette crusting, ombre-effect glitter coatings, laminated lacquer layers and 3D surface textures including feathers, silk villi, and intricately stitched bugle beading. Flat shoes including boots and oxford lace-ups.
Words: Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au
With: Clarice Burke, Michaela Summers, Terry Carruthers, info@voxfrock.com.au
Photos: www.style.com
