The looks!
A tale of lockdown dressing How we’ve styled out 2020 so far
Lily Allen
DOUBLE – EVEN TRIPLE – LEOPARD! MULLETS AND COWBOY BOOTS
The most unlikely style icons of lockdown were the possibly villainous, deeply questionable stars of Netflix’s hit documentary Tiger King. Carole Baskin (above) and her nemesis Joe Exotic brought us extraordinary distraction from our plight, but also: silken shirts, cowboy boots, flower crowns, fringing, tassels and animal print in configurations so daring, it quite took our breath away. Of course we took inspiration! How could we not?
DFZ (DRESSING FOR ZOOM)
It took us – what? Three Zoom meetings? Four? – to realise that if we wanted to make our presence felt, visually speaking, on this piece of tech (of which we hadn’t even heard, just 10 days earlier, only now, the words ‘waiting for host to start meeting’ ruled our lives), low-key neutrals, all black, chic simple jewellery and unconsidered optical wear were not going to cut it. Gold – a lot of gold – in the form of heavy chain necklaces, epic hoops and (my own particular secret Zoom-stealer) the oversized, vintage-looking rims on my fave specs, which glinted so becomingly in my chosen light source: gold was key! Also: contouring make-up, the OTT nature of which would be diminished by Zoom’s low resolution, a pretty, lairy top from Rixo or Rouje; nowt but your pants and socks below. Pop yourself on mute for the dullest segments because, my friend: your work here is done.
BACK GARDEN, RED CARPET
As awards ceremonies adapted for lockdown, celebs got all dolled up as if for the normal thing, posed for pics on the stubby, sun-singed bit of lawn behind their house, and wept on hearing they’d won, against a backdrop of lush foliage (see Sian Clifford in The Vampire’s Wife dress, above).
TIE-DYE
No research exists to support its calming properties – but I’m fairly sure it has them. It’s the distilled essence of surf-shack chill, at the very least. No wonder we’re finding more incarnations of it than Carole Baskin found ways to wear leopard print.
SOFA STYLE, SHED STYLE, STEP STYLE, STOOP STYLE
When lockdown struck, street style dissipated like mist; so those who had formerly dominated it started showcasing looks from the safety of their own isolation circumstances, publishing the results on Instagram. Monikh’s patio doors, the bench directly outside Pernille Teisbaek’s apartment, Camille Charrière’s communal hallway soon became as familiar to us as their breathless way with Those Frankie Shop Tracksuits.
THOSE FRANKIE SHOP TRACKSUITS
Banana yellow, cosy as hell: directional cocooning, a classic of lockdown chic.
ELEVATED SLIPPERS
If we were no longer required to wear dressy, showy shoes… Our desire to own them did not diminish, merely morphed, to suit our reconfigured lives. Enter Ugg’s extravagantly coloured fluffy Yeah slides, which stole le tout Instagram in mid-spring, eventually superceded by…
ELEVATED SOCKS
Nike swooshed tube socks for all!
CARDIGANS
If Katie Holmes kick-started the cardi-lution pre-covid, with her Khaite + bra set, cardigans certainly came to make a whole load more sense again, in Covid. Easy but sort of ‘done’ sexy, but subtly so; the blazers of now.
GREY MARL
Scientifically proven to activate a calming response on a primal level. No – really. No wonder we yearned for it, in greater and greater quantities.
SHORTS
Having grown accustomed to not really bothering with our bottom halves any more, sartorially speaking, the relaxing of lockdown and our subsequent re-emergence into a more completely dressed society would have come as a bit of an intrusion, if it hadn’t been for shorts. Lycra cycling shorts. Nike men’s swimmers (in XS, thrown on over a cossie). Winter’s jeans, cut down to Carrie Bradshaw-ish mid-length. Two-in-one runners’ shorts, worn with ‘proper tops’. Shorts have been a revelation, an unexpectedly fashionably impactful compromise between being dressed, and not being; and one of my favourite things to arise from The Chaos.