Ankle strap? Check. Peep toe? Oh yes. Stiletto heel? And how.
Right now, the high street has got some high heels on offer that are so retro style-y that they wouldn’t look totally out of place on a dance floor in the 1920′s. Maybe it’s the Great Gatsby effect – Baz Luhrman’s remake is out in less than a month now – or maybe it’s an offshoot of the nineties ankle strap heels trend, but whatever the reason, I sure do like them. The open-toe style and manageable heel height make them a decent investment for wedding season, because let’s face it, a strappy sandal goes with almost anything, plus you just know you’re going to end up doing the Macarena with your Nan/little cousin/unidentified drunk relative at midnight so you may as well get your dancing shoes on. Here are five of my top picks.
I have to say, I never thought I’d have a craving to wear tweed, but Gracia Woman’s ‘Cliveden’ jacket has given me one. There’s something timelessly British about it. Perhaps all this Royal Wedding/Jubilee/Olympics stuff is finally getting to me. Or maybe it’s the fact that I’m marrying an American – something about looking pointedly British is suddenly very appealing. Another tweed trigger is bound to be those stylish Downton Abbey ladies. Let’s all put on our riding jackets and go hunting, what what?
Just as a side note (you all know how obsessed with ethical fashion I am by now), Gracia Woman happens to be ‘eco-luxe’. They were recently awarded the Positive Luxury Blue Butterfly trust mark, and design all their pieces to last using Scottish Glen Mills tweed and fine Italian wool, keeping important European skills from dying out.
Raquel Gracia of Gracia Woman says: “Having a Blue Butterfly trust mark helps communicate the values of Gracia Woman – that fashion can be luxurious, beautiful and ethical.”
In other exciting Downton related news, if you enjoyed Vogue‘s Downton Abbey fashion shoot earlier this year you’ll be glad to hear that Vintage Seekers, the British website dedicated to original 20th century design and collectibles, are going to be adding to their couture dress collection with a selection of 1920′s original beaded pieces. Just in time for the film release of our favourite 1920′s trend setting classic, The Great Gatsby, too. Have you seen the trailer yet? It’s spine tinglingly cool.
I’ve got got goosebumps from watching this magnificent trailer for On The Road, Walter Salles’ adaptation of Kerouac’s classic novel, and I can’t wait to see the trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s version of The Great Gatsby, set to be released in cinemas in December.
I recently wrote a piece about literature and fashion for the Alliance of Literary Societies‘ annual members’ journal. You can read the full piece here, but here’s an extract:
The fact that the 20s and 50s were post-war eras of economic boom in the US (in salient contrast with our own time), where decadence, along with a certain frenetic energy and nostalgia for the past marked the fashion trends of the day, makes the two heroes of these classic novels doubly attractive to the fashion world today. Imitating the style of those decades is a kind of wish fulfillment, escapism, precisely because of the financial depression we now find ourselves in. Luhrmann’s new film of The Great Gatsby will be in 3-D. However you feel about 3-D cinema, it just goes to show the extent to which the director wants to push the aesthetic world of Fitzgerald, bringing the textures and colours alive. The visual element of Fitzgerald’s work has always been important, and this year sees his aesthetic influence reaching from the page to the screen and onto the catwalks and viewers – or readers – themselves. Fashion is, in many ways, the physical embodiment of ideas, of an ethos.
Fitzgerald’s descriptions of Gatsby’s parties evoke images that are incredibly familiar to the fashion world: ‘the air is alive with the chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.’ It could, after all, be a scene from any London Fashion Week party. The Jazz Age and the Beat Generation portrayed in The Great Gatsby and On The Road may be solid enough visual cues to draw the fashion industry into imitation, but their philosophy and their heroes remain tantalisingly out of reach; the ultimate fashion icons, in fact. They are awful in their moments of degradation: when John Galliano was exposed for making anti-Semitic remarks last year, no one in the fashion world knew how to react. We never actually want to see through our heroes, because in them we see what we might wish to be – they represent precious ideals.
High fashion, then, is the communal stamp of approval upon something that must go on to become a very personal quest. Fashion is simultaneously something that is, and is not, learnt. Gatsby’s gypsy butterfly girls flitting from group to group in their ‘gas blue’ silks and pearls are on this personal quest, chasing something elusive on the spray of champagne. Sal and Dean are on this quest, catching a glimpse of America as they wind down the windows and make love to the night as it pours in over the dashboard, lifting their sweaty palms in an ecstasy of rhythm as the trumpet player blows his heart out in a grimy club. It is something you can’t ever quite put your finger on, but you know it when you see it. The worlds of fashion and literature have this great Aesthetic Mystery in common.
I was such a big fan of Valentino‘s Autumn/Winter 2011 collection that the other day I was considering doing something that only die-hard fashion obsessives do: watch a live video of the Spring/Summer 2012 show in Paris. In the end, I didn’t have time, but when I got around to catching up on what I’d missed, I was not disappointed.
The hems might have gone up and down, and the pops of bright pastel throughout the show might have been thoroughly modern, but the billowy sleeves, intricate embellishment, high neck lines and elegantly nipped in waists were very late Edwardian. It reminded me of the costumes of Downton Abbey, when fashion teetered on the brink of the loose waistlines of the 1920s and it was all about masterful drapery.
The barely-there sandals made it look like the models were walking barefoot, ready to run through a field on a summer’s day with their hair in elegantly dishevelled crowns of plaits (and we know how I feel about those). The lace, the sheer, flowing fabrics – it was all so pretty and just very… well, sweet. As Lisa Armstrong put it, it was full of old school charm. What I love so much about the Valentino dresses is that they look like pieces of unselfconscious art, effortless in their understated beauty. They look like the kind of dresses you would want to pass down to your children and to their children, for each generation to tenderly unwrap from the tissue paper and wear to Gatsby-esque parties, where “men and girls [come and go] like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars,” and the band plays “yellow cocktail music” as the “lights grow brighter [and] the earth lurches away from the sun.”
Whether it’s just shy of the 1920s, or full blown Charleston-dancing, flapper style dropped waistline, there’s no doubt that the big trend for women’s silhouettes this year is a loose and yet feminine shape. These soft fabrics suggest, but never give it all away.
