'80s-Inspired Fall Fashion Clothing

Everything from ‘80s-inspired clothing, western wear and bohemian chic is in fashion for fall, according to local retailers.

High school and college-age girls have plenty of options when shopping for back to school.“Plaid is huge,” said Mary Lucy Yowell, manager of Belk department store, adding that the tartan-style plaid is widely popular. Denim is another must have for fall from skinny jeans, barely boot-cut jeans (a cross between a skinny jean and boot cut), baggy boyfriend jeans and distressed jeans, even though most of those can’t be worn to high school.

“Borrow your boyfriend’s jeans or buy a pair for yourself,” said Judy Goldie, owner of Trendy Pieces on the Public Square.Mallory Rickman, assistant manager of Delia’s at The Avenue, said everything from plaid dresses, shirts and scarves are hot for fall. “We can’t seem to keep the plaid in stock,” she said.Taking plaid even further, A’GACI Co-Manager Jamie Johnson said the country western look is the latest look in fashion. "It is really cute,” she said. The look is complete with long button-up shirts and ankle boots, sometimes called booties, Johnson said.

Yowell said boots are in fashion in a big way this fall from booties to western-style boots. Goldie said the slouchy jacket also is back for this fall and winter. “Throw it on with a pair of fitted dress slacks or jeans or over a mini-dress,” she said. Vests are another must have this fall, according to local retailers. They range from the hippie chic to motorcycle chick. “All kinds of different vests, you name it,” Yowell said are in fashion, adding that more structured vests are widely seen but vests also are being seen in sweaters.

Longer vests worn over shirts and pants are being cinched with a belt, Johnson said, adding that it is a really cute look for teens. Express at The Avenue is even carrying leather, motorcycle vests. “Those also go great with graphic tees,” said Erica Phemister, from Express.

V-neck graphic tees are a big seller at Express, she said. Graphic tees could have anything on it from peace signs to flowers and embroidery. But fall fashion is dominated by looks from the ‘80s, Phemister said, which means lose shirts, leggings and bright colors. “Cowneck sweaters are coming back in and off the shoulder tops,” she said. “Leggings with tunics are really in right now.”Goldie said printed leggings and tights will “throw some fun into your outfits.”Along with that this fall is going to be filled with “plenty of color,” she said. “Neon will be big and also gorgeous jewel tones, purples, teals and deeper blues.”

Bright colors are showing up in corduroy and other types of pants. “The girls go crazy over them,” Rickman said. But don’t forget about your hair, which completes any outfit. Stylist Kenneth Darrell of Studio 627 said one of the latest looks is a side ponytail. “They are fashionable, in style and easy to achieve,” he said. 

Other looks include side swept bangs, which are sometimes braided or French braided and wavy hair. Sue Millsap, owner of Salon 536, said the graduated bob with a disconnect at the sides for above the shoulders and chin length hair is one of the latest trends in hair. Also, full bangs with an edge with catch some attention this fall.

Source: The Murfreesboro Post

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Fashion Secretary

Since Ikram Goldman, owner of the eponymous Chicago boutique, became the unofficial Secretary of Fashion to whom Michelle Obama turns for all her key sartorial decisions, East Coast arbiters of chic have been as twisted up as a braided leather belt. How can a mere retailer, not to mention one from the famously frumpy Midwest, have so much fashion clout? Oscar de la Renta, Arnold Scaasi and others say they don't understand why Mrs. Obama relies on a shopkeeper, when she could - and should - be going directly to them. "I don't think the inaugural gown was flattering in any way. She could have looked much better," sniped Scaasi in the New York Times with the cattiness that comes so naturally to those in the fashion world. He added that it was "strange to think that the wife of" a head of state "would choose clothes from only one store."

Apparently, he's forgotten about Marie Antoinette, the world's first clothes horse, who, like Michelle, relied mostly on one retailer to choose her outfits. Rose Bertin was a fat, porcine-faced seamstress who owned a fancy dress shop in Paris, where the French queen liked to shop. During the eighteenth century in France, dress merchants, called marchands de modes, were the most powerful style arbiters, and Bertin, thanks to her association with Marie Antoinette, grew to international fame, while setting a standard for fashion excess and snobbism that's endured to this day.

As a result of Bertin's power, according to Joan deJean in her book, The Essence of Style, the taste and aspirations of the queen's subjects were greatly elevated. So eager were women to ape Marie Antoinette's look that many were driven to squander family fortunes or accumulate staggering debt. Some of these Emma Bovarys before their time even fell so low as to take lovers to pay their dressmaker bills, thus leading to accusations that Marie Antoinette's fashion passion was destroying the morals of the nation. Could it happen here? In this economic climate, I wonder.

Since it opened in 2001, Ikram has been a favorite of the city's most fashionable women, including Mrs. Obama, who's been shopping here since her husband's books became best sellers several years ago. But now with the Obamas in the White House, and American women eager to emulate Michelle's elegance, Ikram's influence has grown. Suddenly, this pudgy, 41-year-old mother of infant twins, has a Bertinesque power to shape the fashion choices of women across the land.

In 1991, when I moved here with my family from New York, I felt as if I'd been exiled to Style Siberia. About the only good news on the fashion front was that my Bergdorf Goodman credit card worked at Neiman Marcus on Michigan Avenue, where my first year in town I found a black Marc Jacobs dress at half price. I also bought a Prada skirt on sale at Ultimo on Oak Street, the only place in Chicago that sold anything even remotely hip. Thanks to a couple of lively boutiques I'd ferreted out in my neighborhood on the near North Side, I managed to uphold a semblance of Manhattan chic. I'm proud to say I never once succumbed to crewneck sweaters, shapeless parkas, dowdy blazers or galoshes, and, as the years went by, it got easier to dress well. I've watched Chicago's fashion life evolve, and recently, there's been an explosion of design talent and independent boutiques across the city. Only now, though, with the Israeli-born Goldman, has Chicago reached its style apotheosis.

I've walked by Ikram many times, admiring the Lanvins, Yohji Yamamotos, Alaias, and Narcisco Rodriguezs in the window. One Christmas my husband gave me a gorgeous pair of silver drop earrings with green crystals from the store. And once, I actually talked to Ikram herself. I called her about a story I was doing for a magazine, but when I mispronounced Proenza Schouler, the high end brand co-designed by two former students of the Parsons School of Design, she snapped at me officiously: "If you don't know how to say it properly, you shouldn't be asking me about them." Then she hung up.

Remembering that experience, I've been afraid to go in the store -- until last week, when curiosity overwhelmed me, along with a need to buy a cocktail dress for several upcoming spring events. As a buffer against what I expected to be the sales staff's disdain for my mid-priced, cloth-coated person, I took my friend, Monica, a willowy, black-haired beauty who looks as if she knows not only how to pronounce Proenza Schouler but how to wear it well.

We walked over on a gray, blustery morning. I let Monica, dazzling as usual in leather pants and a full length fur, push through the glass doors first. Though the boutique has strong Asian accents - filigreed wood doors hanging on the back wall, exotic ceramics and dark wood display cases that look as if they came from a Chinese museum -- Ikram has the feel of Paris: everything is exquisite and très cher. Immediately, I saw ten things I wanted, including what looked like a zebra fur handbag with a sculptured silver clasp and a pair of diamond earrings by Loree Rodkin.

Ikram Goldman was no where in sight. Several sales associates, dour looking women in black, and one glum man in a white polo shirt, stood around. They didn't appear to have much to do. Besides us, there was only one shopper in the store - a stocky, jeans- clad woman who was shopping for tee-shirts, a strange pursuit in Chicago's temple of style.

"Are you looking for anything special?" a pretty Asian girl in an adorable green print dress by Tracy Feith asked with a bright smile. She said her name was Jun and asked us our first names. When I recovered from the shock that Jun wasn't a snob, I explained to her my need for a basic spring cocktail dress. As Jun set off cheerfully to search the racks, Monica and I inspected the arched nooks holding shoes and scarves, handbags and sweaters.

Eventually, Jun led us to the rear of the store, to a circular fitting area lined with mirrors and fawn velvet covered benches. A beige carpet imparted a boudoir hush, drowning out the sounds from the rest of the boutique. I tried on seven dresses. The least expensive, at $1,250, was the same red and black print silk Thakoon that Michelle Obama wore the night her husband was nominated for president, only cut several inches shorter. The most expensive, at $6,745, was a structured black silk and chiffon column embroidered with white birds by Alexander McQueen.

I modeled each of the dresses for Monica and Jun, enjoying their exclamations of enthusiasm. Jun was really getting into it, finding different shoes to try on with each dress and offering suggestions for alterations (an extra charge). There was one dress, we all agreed, that stood out - a violet silk blend Jason Wu with embroidered black florets. It had a fitted bodice and straight skirt that reached just below the knee and a graceful neckline that draped over the shoulders. It fit perfectly, as if had been made for me. It was the most beautiful dress I'd ever worn, and I understood perfectly why Michelle Obama is so drawn to this young designer. The only problem was the price -- $3,900.

If I put the dress on my credit card, I'd be doing my part to stimulate the economy. But then I'd have to pay for it at the end of the month. I left Ikram empty handed. Emma Bovary I am not.

Source: The Huffington Post

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Inside Report On Couture

"Cost is not an issue.” I am sitting in the Plaza Athénée hotel in Paris, talking to three South American couture customers in the hope that I might uncover some of the mysteries of the world of high fashion. Who buys? How much? Is the credit crunch biting? “You mean you pay whatever?” I ask. The ladies look at each other and smile. “You realise,” the youngest says, “buying couture is not like buying other clothes. You don’t buy, wear for a season, then throw away.”

“Oh, no,” her friend interjects. “At couture, you buy for life. Some seasons you buy a lot, others nothing.” “A lot?” I query. “Maybe three or four evening gowns, say from Lacroix or Elie Saab. A silk undercoat from Chanel. Couture is made to last. I send things back to be altered as the fashion moves and my figure changes.”

“So, how much do you pay?” Laughter. “You are an English gentleman. You cannot ask a lady that!” “Would your husband tell me?” More laughter. “He would hit you on the nose!” And that’s as far as I got. But there are ways of working out probable costs. When, for example, a couture evening dress is sent out to be photographed by a magazine, the insurance is usually about £100,000.

So, what about the customer base — and are more clothes being ordered? I asked Daphne Guinness, one of the few British women who regularly buys at this level. “It depends,” she says. “Last season, I bought nothing. This time, there are some things at Chanel that I like. I always look to fill holes in my wardrobe. I love Dior.” The Dior show cost £2m to put on. “Rich people haven’t all gone into hiding, you know.

W “Anyhow,” Guinness continues, “the big corporations have kept young designers like Gareth Pugh out for far too long. Maybe they can get a look-in now. And of course couture will survive. The world needs to be filled with romance and otherworldly dreams.”

So, who is buying? Chanel’s fashion president, Bruno Pavlovsky, tells me that, since 2007, demand for couture at Chanel has increased so much that a new atelier has opened; they now have 200 couture specialists. “We are putting a lot of resources behind this current collection,” he says. “We sense a great need for couture at this moment. We expect good sales worldwide.”

It’s important to remember, though, that sales of the showstoppers in any house are usually confined to no more than three per continent. The purpose of couture is publicity, which stimulates the market for less stratospherically priced clothes ranges, beauty and make-up, all bearing the company name.

Middle East sales are static. Surprisingly, all houses report keen interest from America. Russia is wobbling. Asian interest is not high. But it is the French who buy couture in serious numbers, often from the smaller couturiers such as Dominique Sirop, Stéphane Rolland and Franck Sorbier, who, along with Elie Saab, have healthy sales because they give sophisticated working women individual clothes at prices their high salaries can cope with, and which fit their lifestyles.

In terms of quality of fashion, it was a better couture week than most. The most dramatic statement was at Dior, where John Galliano continued along his tactful path of using Christian Dior’s thinking as the basis for his own statement. The mood was a continuation of 1950s Dior (though there was a spectacular new take on Bar, the iconic black-and-white suit in Dior’s first collection in 1947), all flouncy full skirts and needle-thin elegance. And, like the maestro, Galliano focused on corsets and the underpinnings of couture.

At Chanel, Lagerfeld gave us refinement, delicacy and a monochrome palette. It was very Chanel, personifying her comment that “as a woman advances in years, she should wear white . . . White smooths out everything”. At Gaultier, things looked up after a few lacklustre seasons. This was high-camp high fashion of the sort Paris does best. Razor-sharp tailoring, straight-cut shoulders and Gaultier’s trademark lingerie looks — very 1980s. More delicate but just as consummate, Christian Lacroix referenced the theatre, circus, corrida and a whore’s parlour in a gloriously colourful collection.

Of the others, Versace Atelier was a virtuoso performance of brilliant cutting and fabulous colour; Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy presented a beautifully feminine parade of brilliant shapes and cutting in a preponderance of beige tones. The same soft shades were clearly up the street of the customers at Elie Saab, which is why it is the only fashion house in Paris with seriously substantial sales at this level.

To quote Chanel from the 1920s: “The poetry of couture was responsible for cocktails, balls, dinner parties. The champagne flowed . . . we walked on a floor strewn with orchids.” Let’s hope couture can pull it off again to brighten these cash-strapped times.

CAN LUXURY SURVIVE THE CREDIT CRUNCH?

In his new book, The Luxury Strategy (Kogan Page £30), the marketing expert Jean-Noël Kapferer says brands such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Cartier, whose core profits come from their high-end goods, should come through the credit crunch unscathed. Those who rely heavily on sales of handbags, make-up and cheaper accessories will be harder hit.

“The luxury brand is the ordinary of extraordinary people and the extraordinary of ordinary people. Slashing prices makes you more for ordinary people. And that’s the beginning of the end.” Eek. “Luxury is about timelessness,” he goes on, saying it’s no coincidence that some of the most successful brands are family-run. “Cartier will tell you they’ve been through two world wars, one economic depression, three slumps . . . They take the long-term view.”

His advice: don’t panic. And employ counterintuitive strategies. “Raise your prices. Don’t pander to your customers’ wishes. Make it more difficult for your clients to buy. And don’t compare yourself with others. Gauguin did not compare himself with Renoir.”

Then he quotes a high-up executive at Mercedes-Benz: “ ’Our job is to make people dream of new products. As soon as they have money, they will buy. Life goes on.’ ”

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Fashion Style - Austerity Age

If the world's leading designers are to be believed, we now seem to inhabit an Elysian underworld, an earthly paradise where financial concerns are as far from our minds as, say, a desire for anything as obviously user-friendly as a classic, black jacket.

And so, what British Vogue described only months ago as "the new austere" – read play-safe (if beautiful) fashion that strives to be socially responsible and exudes a certain sobriety – has given way to less obviously pragmatic designs.

The new season decrees it is the job of fashion to provide an escape, to let unbridled fantasy and creativity run riot, safe in the knowledge that, with the economy on its knees, it is romance, opulence and individuality which will prevail.

We may not all be able to afford these clothes but we have the ability to dream about wearing them. Moreover, what is the point of a woman investing in a tailored trouser suit when work-wear is becoming increasingly irrelevant because, put bluntly, less people have a workplace to go to?

It would be misguided to draw any conclusions concerning fashion's future from the haute couture collections paraded in Paris this week. The jewel in the French fashion crown, Paris Haute Couture Week is aimed at no more than a few hundred women who have the inclination to part with thousands of pounds for a one-off, hand-made garment fitted to their every curve. This is the preserve of the super-rich and stylists of Hollywood A-listers in search of a grand statement for the Oscars. More significant is the recession's effect on the ready-to-wear collections: it may be cold outside but spring/summer's designs are making their way into stores. "If people are going to invest in fashion now, they need to know it's worth it," says Alexander McQueen. "They're not going to want to buy a cashmere coat they can wear any season, they are looking for something more individual, and from a more individual designer. Fashion is about fantasy as well as being commercial and sometimes people lose sight of that."

From McQueen we can expect impossibly elaborate, highly engineered clothing intended to make its wearer stand out: wood grain-printed all-in-ones, crystal, enamelled flowers in tulle and more.

McQueen is not alone. At Prada, home to ribbed socks, A-line skirts and round-necked sweaters, we find lightweight sweet nothings cut from what looks like gold leaf and trimmed with ribbons and bows.

At Louis Vuitton, it is maribou feathers in tropical colours and the most over-wroughtly high sandals imaginable. For Dolce & Gabbana, never a label aimed at the understated, shoulder pads just became even larger (and circular), embroideries more intricate and accessories more ornate. Then there are polyvinyl dresses that look like deflated footballs (Comme des Garcons) and others that appear to have been made out of high-end tablecloths (Vivienne Westwood, God love her), a "fur" coat of platinum blonde wigs (Maison Martin Margiela) and Elizabethan-style ruffs the size of car wheels (Gareth Pugh).

Fashion has historically flourished amid adversity, creatively if not financially. As with any cultural pursuit, when the going gets tough, the frontrunners rise to the challenge. The most celebrated work of Botticelli, which followed the Medici Bank crash in 1494, through to the Golden Age of Hollywood, the fruit of the worst financial crisis in Western history, have roots in adversity. Fashion, perhaps the most visible symbol of capitalist excess, is no exception.

It is no coincidence then that John Galliano, the creative director of Christian Dior, chose to revisit the most famous creation of the house's namesake: The New Look. Unveiled in February 1947, the New Look was possibly the most potent example of fashion excess alleviating hard times. It wasn't new at all but romantically retrogressive. As a reaction to wartime austerity and fabric rationing, Dior harked back to the Belle Epoque by sending out round-shouldered, wasp-waisted jackets and skirts so voluminous they caused an outrage. But if politicians – including Harold Wilson, then the president of the Board of Trade – criticised the frivolity and "let them eat cake"-type disregard for reality, women the world over sought out the New Look. Then, as now, only a handful would wear the originals but copies spread fast, like wildfire.

In the 1970s, the floral-printed, Edwardian-inspired designs of Laura Ashley were a quaintly British take on bucolic life in better times. More importantly, the three-day week and the winter of discontent spawned first punk and then new romanticism, both of which dictated that mainstream attire was for the middle-aged and out of touch. These were clothes for anarchists and were notable for their over-turning of convention and the fact that even the main protagonists – Westwood and her then partner Malcolm McLaren – were advocating a DIY approach that suggested style need not be bought.

Anyone courageous enough could, and did, rustle up an approximation of the look, customising second-hand finds from Oxfam and cutting up black bin-liners in a manner which makes today's slavish attachment to budget high-street fashion seem unimaginative to the point of banal.

When recession hit at the end of the 1980s, power-dressing Dynasty-style gave way to deconstruction – conceptual fashion was born. Japanese designers Comme des Garcons and Yohji Yamamoto introduced an oversized, dark and distressed aesthetic that undermined our preconceived idea of status to the point where some of their most memorable early work came peppered with holes. The bourgeois fashion establishment was, quite simply, lost for words and it was left to critics of art and architecture to wear and write about this look. Later, the Belgian designer Martin Margiela turned clothes inside out, literally sewing the shoulder pads that had come to represent the brash dress codes of the era on to the outside of clothes.

Fast-forward 20 years and, with the value of hindsight, fashion offers up a dazzling amalgamation of all these things and more, united only in an apparent disregard for convention and what is widely assumed to be the strictures of "wearable" clothing.

"We don't all want to dress like soldiers, in the same uniform, for the same price," says McQueen. "There is a viewpoint that people should play safe because they can't afford to frighten their customers but, in fact, the opposite is true. You have to push forward and realise the power of fantasy and escapism if you want to survive."

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