CELEB CRAZE
Megan Fox and Kendall Jenner turn the cosy old cardigan into a cleavage revealing must-have item
Cardigans are back – but not as we know them. The cosy garment previously associated with librarians and geography teachers has had a serious fashion makeover.
It has been shrunk down, had its buttons removed and been reborn as the latest Instagram-approved way of flashing a barely decent amount of flesh.
Vogue has named it “the curtain reveal” after the V-shape created by the open cardi splitting wide to reveal the underside of the breasts and the stomach down to the belly button and beyond.
French designer Jacquemus put it on the catwalk in his autumn/winter collection, with seven variations of a cardigan or shirt held together by a long golden pin with the brand’s logo.
They range from a super-risque scrap of knitwear to a longer, more modest take on the look.
He sent Kendall Jenner down the runway in the skimpiest version, £200-worth of fluffy black angora struggling to stay fastened over her breasts.
She had already given the style her seal of approval, wearing a similar top with a hook-and-eye fastening days before the catwalk show.
That was enough to start the trend.
Sharp-eyed celebrities know a headline grabbing style when they see
one and Megan
Fox caused a sensation when she wore Jacquemus’s longer, ribbed cardigan in cherry red.
And where the famous faces lead, others are desperate to follow.
Global fashion shopping platform Lyst reports that searches for these tops jumped 78 per cent last month, with desperate Googlers looking for “front tie top”, “lace-up top” and “pin top” to recreate the look.
In fact, the curtain reveal is just a more extreme version of styles that have been around for a while.
TV presenter Storm Huntley’s wedding dress was a sophisticated take on the trend, with a narrow V neckline that plunged as far as her waistband.
Cropped shirts that tie under the bust, or with complicated arrangements of cut-outs and straps, were a summer staple.
Oh Polly, the fast fashion website that specialises in ultra revealing outfits, has several stretchy tie-front tops that pair with bikinis, plus a staggering range of tops that fasten in different ways to reveal varying amounts of collar bone, cleavage and abdomen.
And as soon as the pictures of Kendall, Megan and Bella Hadid dropped, all the big players in quick turnaround clothing will have had their designers at work on a budget version.
Jacquemus is a brilliant designer with a great eye for a viral trend. (He is the man behind the enormous straw hats of a few summers past and last year’s micro handbags.)
This time he has tapped into all the 90s nostalgia that is in the air. The
curtain reveal tops are a direct descendant of the silky cardigans that the It Girls of that era wore unbuttoned from the top and bottom. These were designed to show off a waif-like body, usually with a pierced belly button.
He has put them through fashion’s equivalent of a boil wash and swapped the buttons for the metal bar, raising the curtain on an autumn of underboob.
Jilly Isabella, Glaswegian Instagram influencer and founder of fashion label Dula, approves. She said: “I think they’re a really chic way to feel sexy. I don’t get my boobs out much but I would feel quite sexy in that top.
“After lockdown, everything trendwise now is just skin everywhere, little cut-out tops, bralets, low-rise pants. We’re just so sick of being in joggers and pyjamas. We want to go out, get our skin out and feel sexy.”
But she doesn’t think it’s a long-term trend. “It’s very much Instagram fashion. The Kardashians wear something, boom, it’s everywhere. Then it’s away. I think there will be winter versions, sparkly knits and little co-ords but that will be it.
“It will be one of those trends we will look back at photos and our kids will say, ‘Mum, why were you wearing that?’”