Who, what, where The year’s wardrobe influencers
From blue-blood muses to the well-dressed TV we’ll be bingeing on, our editors share their fashionable guide to the year ahead
The return of ladylike
When Off-white, a streetwear label best known for hoodies and T-shirts swots up on Princess Diana style, you know fashion is caught in the cross-hairs of two concurrent but opposing ideas. On the one hand, the luxury athleisure which many houses are still plundering – cue more silky trackpants and alligator bumbags and trainers – on the other, Off-white’s unexpected stab at something more classically feminine.
This was an irony-free, comprehensive swerve through the Diana files, from Shy Di and Dynasty Di to Thorpe Park Di and Vengeful Di – and it signalled, if not a one-way ticket back to ladylike, then at least an alternative to comfortwear and the frilly Victoriana that have been the main options on offer for the past year or so.
Other houses flirted with relaxed interpretations of womanliness – fluid skirts and feminine knits at Hermes, for instance. Jewelled, duchess satin dresses à la The Crown at Erdem. In the stores: Look out for pencil skirts, low pin heels and pastels, fashion’s new Holy Trinity of Ladylike.
Lisa Armstrong
Culture Clash
The late Azzedine Alaia, the “king of cling” and “titan of tight”, built a legacy on clothes that celebrated women’s bodies: everyone from Tina Turner to Michelle Obama has worn his designs. Along the way, he also built a reputation as a character in his own right, refusing interviews, celebrity meetings, and even the fashion week schedule. It’s certainly interesting ground, to be covered in the Design Museum’s retrospective – an exhibition the couturier was working on before his untimely death in November. The other hot ticket is the V&A’S Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up, which shares clothes and personal artefacts that were locked up for half a century after the Mexican artist’s death in 1954. The exhibitions open in May and June respectively, so you can make a day of it – but expect to see many a flower-garlanded homage and body-con nod well before then. Charlie Gowans-eglinton
The red carpet goes black
Actresses are vowing to swap their usual spectacular, carefully strategised looks for sombre black at this Sunday’s Golden Globes.
“This is a moment of solidarity, not a fashion moment,” Eva Longoria told The New York Times. “For years, we’ve sold these awards shows as women, with our gowns and colours and our beautiful faces and our glamour. This time the industry can’t expect us to go up and twirl around.”
Hmmm. We get Longoria’s drift, although the last time we looked, most of these women had made quite lot of money out of twirling their sponsored frocks. And we doubt any of them will look actually plain come Sunday.
Meanwhile, Georgina Chapman, the soon-to-be ex-wife of Harvey Weinstein, who used his power and, erm, influence to get many A-listers to wear her Marchesa label, is planning a comeback at New York fashion week. Will she do black? Whatever, meaningful fashion statements are set to reign. A white, green and purple colour scheme to mark 100 years of votes for women at the Baftas, perhaps? Done right, this could be fashion at its powerfully symbolic best. Bethan Holt
Wild West (London)
Expect school runs to look like Old West saloons as soon as deliveries of the new season’s boots arrive. Western-inspired boots appeared in Natacha Ramsay-levi’s debut Chloe collection and Clare Waight Keller’s first outing at Givenchy, as well as at Isabel Marant, Coach and (loosely) Off-white. This trend divides the Daily
Telegraph fashion team, but since it kicked off with the striped black cowboy boots in Raf Simons’s first runway show for Calvin Klein nearly a year ago, we say it’s got legs – but do leave the ten-gallon hats to the pros. Emily Cronin
When Victoria met Reebok
Victoria Beckham used to be the woman who never appeared in public wearing lower than a 10cm heel. It was a comfort-snubbing gesture of mind-over-bunion, intended to stake out her chief characteristic as one of plucky derring-do. Florence Nightingale had her lamp, George Eliot her pen, Victoria Beckham her Christian Louboutin Pigalles.
But fashion has a habit of slashing and burning through chief characteristics. It has decreed that flats and trainers are (still) the most modern way to conduct one’s daily business and so, displaying a different kind of derring-do, VB has teamed up with Reebok for the ultimate fashion hybrid. Coming later this year, if it’s half as popular as her make-up
collaboration, standby for a sell out. Or rather, don’t. Run. LA
Pantone purple
“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple”, runs Jenny Joseph’s rallying cry for defying convention. But anyone looking to subvert the dominant paradigm in 2018 will have to look elsewhere, as purple has been named Pantone’s colour of the year. This is no apologetic shade of lavender or lilac – it’s a wallop of bright purple, named Ultra Violet. Gucci and Carolina Herrera have already shown the shade on the catwalk for spring/summer, but you should expect to see everything from front doors to dresses turning violet by autumn. A purple rinse never looked so tempting. CGE
Original divas
Rihanna and Beyoncé may have earned first-name status, but Cher trod the stage before they were twinkles in their parents’ eyes – and she set the costume bar high. Now, the original diva is back, with a scene stealing part as Amanda Seyfried’s gatecrashing grandmother in this year’s Mamma Mia 2. She’s not alone in her career comeback, though – Madonna and Kylie (note the lack of last names) are both set to tour this year, with the latter also releasing a new album. Though if she wants the number one slot, she’ll have to fight Celine Dion for it. After personal tragedy, Dion immersed herself not only in her work, but the fashion world, enlisting the help of a new stylist and courting the press in over-the-top designer catwalk looks – so her forthcoming album will no doubt make a fashion statement, too. The divas are back. CGE
Tune In
“I had everything I wanted: I had you, I had your sister, I had Chanel and Dior,” Oksana Godman, the matriarch of the Russian family at the heart of Mcmafia, says in the series’ first episode. It’s one of the first salvos in a television season that promises plenty of style. There’s also The Romanoffs, Matthew Weiner’s first project since Mad Men; an ITV remake of Vanity Fair; and American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Starring Penélope
Cruz (opposite page) as Donatella and Édgar Ramírez as Gianni, it’s sure to inspire a few late-night ebay purchases – not to mention Hallowe’en costumes. EC
Will 2018 be the year sustainability gets sexy?
Sustainable fashion: yawn, right? Not so fast. In 2017, sustainability – a catch-all term referring to a company’s social and environmental impact – evolved from a niche selling point into a more mainstream value. So much so that you can search “sustainable” on Net-a-porter.com and come up with a raft of designer brands (Tome, Mara Hoffman, Re/done) that match aesthetic appeal with sustainable credibility.
On the high street, Arket includes supplier information for every item on its website and fellow H&M group brand Monki is working toward making its full product range vegan.
It’s enough to make vegetarian designer and sustainability pioneer Stella Mccartney look like the Oracle of Delphi (or Paris, rather). Until the fashion industry overcomes its central paradox – that the large-scale selling of goods requires the large-scale manufacture of goods – it’s encouraging to note that responsibility has made it onto more corporate agendas. As Marie-claire Daveau, Kering’s chief of sustainability, told us in 2017: “We’re a company that makes things, so the question is, how to do that in the best possible way.” EC
What will Meghan wear?
Come May 19, the aisle of St George’s Chapel in Windsor will become the world’s most-watched catwalk as Meghan Markle unveils the wedding dress of the year. Will she go the full Hollywood in Vera Wang or Oscar de la Renta? Or acquiesce to her new role as a duchess with something made in Britain by Erdem or Roland Mouret? Ever since she chose couture Ralph and Russo for her engagement portraits, the money is on Markle amping up the glamour. After all, if you wear £55,000-worth of tulle and crystals for a stroll in the garden, your wedding gown limits are bound to be off the scale. BH
Cinema style
There’s a slew of filmic style cues coming our way. Later this month, you’ll be entranced/weirded out by Daniel Day-lewis’s (rumoured) final film, Phantom Thread, which offers a bewitching insight into the world of British couture in the Fifties with its recreation of salon shows, fraught fittings and the obsessive work habits of Reynolds Woodcock, DDL’S Balenciaga/hardy Amies-inspired character. Saoirse Ronan’s laid-back grunge look in Lady Bird offers excellent millennial spring wardrobe inspiration – think vintage prom dresses and boyish blazers. With Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett and Helena Bonham-carter among its all-female line-up, Ocean’s 8 promises wardrobe delights galore, if the publicity shots of Blanchett in a leopard-print coat are anything to go by. And how will Claire Foy segue from The Crown’s regal glamour to Lisbeth Salander’s Scandi punk in The Girl in the Spider’s Web? We’ll have to wait until October to find out. BH