Nowness is a blip on fashion’s wavery time line. Nowness is a fad that’s ripened into a trend that’s segued into a wave that’s swelling and rolling and you’d better catch it now, Right Now, NOW! or in a blink, it’ll be…
Not Now.
What’s now? Voxfrock picked three of the brightest blips on our infinite fashion horizon…
Iced and smoked grey hair
A backlash by rabid fashion individualists to the current paintbox hair colour trend. Since every girl and her poodle has embraced the vivid red, lazuli blue and pea green all-over hair colour trend, particularly in the past year, individualists who kicked it off need a new shock to stand out like dog’s proverbials in an average crowd. As they are wont to do.
Iced and smoke grey hair nicely does the trick, provided it frames a strikingly youthful face. The old hair/young face dichotomy creates the kind of visual tension that is petrol to fashion’s pump. The fad’s most recent outing, bar this one, was a few years ago when ardent American fans of teen blogging phenomenon, Tavi Gevinson a.k.a. Style Rookie, (pictured, in her youth) mimicked their heroine’s off-beat granny-tat style and spread from there. More recently, Nicole Richie rocked her goth/punk version of the look at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual Costume Institute Gala in New York recently (see feature photograph, above).
Miss Richie’s age and lovely face are a pore short of the “strikingly youthful” contrast you need for maximum visual tension, however, she powdered the do to such an arrestingly unnatural shade of grey it hardly mattered.
Tavi Gevinson
Photo: Guardian, UK.
The pumpkin silhouette
Stovepipe, hose or bare-legged bottom; bulky top to mid or upper thigh. Also known as the Paddle Pop or simply, Pop silhouette, the Pumpkin is not to be confused with the outline drawn by any old micro knickerflasher frocklet worn with leg-lengthening platform soled clodhoppers. The Pumpkin is defined by modern, waist-less, often exaggerated bulk.
Bulls-eye spring/summer 13/14 collections will fuel the fad with their fleshy, coated and otherwise neo-perene-like fabrics cut to exploit their stiffness, stick out well beyond the natural shoulderline and sit roomily away from the body. In winter,a perfectly reasonable, albeit softer, alternative can be cobbled with a bulky knit over heavy hose or skinny jeans, for example, wool and mohair knitted cardigan by Longchamp, pictured, with Gatsby sport boots. Go to our local Longchamp distributor for stockists: www.huntleather.com.au.
The ear cuff
It never ceases to amaze Voxfrock how relentlessly jewellery designers dream up new ways to decorate the human body. We recall our fascination when (Indian origin) nose chains linked to ears and lips, were first modernised. How exotic! Surely, an untoppable revelationary Zenith in jewel design? Then along came bum-crack bling and “vajazzles” for chrissakes. Who knew? Where next, we puzzled, for a decorative peppering of Argyles and Swarovskis: armpits, perhaps? Cleavage of toes? Soles of feet?
Voxfrock is chuffed to observe that Nowness in jewels is represented by a respectable cuff, attachable to one or both ears.
The ear cuff earring may be a backlash to the heavy, shoulder-grazing chandeliers that play havoc with a girl’s lobe piercings, or it could be just a terribly clever, terribly pretty, idea. Whatever. It subverts the diamond necklace-slash-bangle duopoly on uber-glamourous knees-ups that call for uber-glamourous jewels. Voxfrock has encountered enough cuffs at uber-glamourous occasions recently to mark it a genuine blip of Nowness.
Pictured, by the incomparable jewellery designer Sarina Suriano for The Dark Horse jewellery collection, Swarovski crystal ear cuff $200. Miss Suriano’s previous collaborations have included Collette Dinnigan, Paspaley, Ellery and Swarovski.Her latest can be seen and ordered in its sparkly entirety on www.thedarkhorse.com.au
By Janice Breen Burns, with research by Terry Carruthers, Candice Burke and Emily Wilson, intern@voxfrock.com.au
