What should a Spice Girl wear in 2018?
Their Nineties wardrobes set trends and were copied by a generation – but what happens when girl power grows up, asks Charlie Gowans-eglinton
When the Spice Girls entered the cultural consciousness in 1996, what they wore influenced a generation – mine, actually. Every girl had a favourite Spice to ape (mine was Ginger). It wasn’t that they looked good – they often didn’t, strictly speaking, as their clothes rendered them characters, not fashion plates. But they were having so much fun with clothes.
Long before trainers became the wear every where staple that they are today, the Spice Girls rejected the stilettos of their peers – because how could you dance properly? Instead, they wore chunky Buffalo trainers – the same styles that have inspired this season’s biggest shoe trend, the ugly trainer, and Balenciaga’s Triple S, which sold out in three hours on Matchesfashion.com. Sporty gave tracksuits fashion credibility; Baby made us want bunches. Geri Halliwell’s Union flag minidress, fashioned from a tea towel and worn to perform at the Brits in 1997, was memorable enough to beat Princess Diana’s wedding dress and Marilyn Monroe’s white halter-neck (the one that came awry over an air vent in The Seven Year Itch) to be crowned the most memorable dress of the last 50 years in a 2010 Telegraph poll.
Which is why, when the news that the Spice Girls (sans Posh) were reforming for a UK tour, I couldn’t wait to see what they were wearing. These were the women who gave us girl power, after all, and in the highly charged current climate – through the lens of #Metoo, the latest alleged case of which centres on Philip Green, a key figure in the British fashion industry – a 2018 update on their style couldn’t be more relevant.
Except that’s not what they delivered in the new portrait released on Monday. Instead, they seemed to have gone to pains to distance themselves from their characters. Melanie C had a Melania Trump over, swapping sportswear for soft-power tailoring, Geri looked like an Apprentice candidate, Emma a runner-up in the Great British Bake Off, and Melanie B seems to have stepped out of Boots’ Here come the girls Christmas TV advert. Girl power for grownups, this was not.
And I think they missed a trick. The Spice Girls of my youth didn’t take themselves too seriously – and as a result, their tongue-incheek style continues to be referenced to this day. So, consider this an open letter to the stylist booked to dress the Spices 2.0: please, put down the newsreader dresses and court shoes. Here’s what they should be wearing.