The rise of fashion’s frightful frill seekers

Is that a stick of candyfloss? No, it’s the hideous trend coming to the high street inspired by...

IT’S like an explosion in a candy-floss factory. A tsunami of rippling waves, frills, flounces and fins so sugary, I’ve got toothache. So ultra-feminine, you’d be forgiven for thinking Scarlett O’Hara was back among us.

It’s a difficult look to pull off – which is why, although the trend for frills started on the London catwalk for summer 2016, it has taken a whole year for it to trickle on to the backs of celebrities, mainly due to the fact the two hottest labels du jour have embraced the trend. In Milan, Gucci sent out a collection made entirely of the sort of concertina frills you find around Boursin cheese. While in Paris, Isabel Marant put the world’s hottest model, Gigi Hadid, in a Lurex top with voluminous bell sleeves, and the front row of movers, shakers and stylists sat up and thought: I too want to resemble something you might find covering the lavatory roll in the smallest room.

It’s a trend the high street has bought into, most notably at Topshop and Urban Outfitters (it has a ruffle gingham skirt for £59), but I doubt it will last long. Great swaths of fabric and complicated seams are expensive, which is why the Sixties shift stuck around for so long. And who on earth needs concertinas of fabric on their hips?

The look is all a bit Laura Ashley, too: florals, tiered maxi skirts and pie-crust collars. Modern women, who’ve spent the past 20 years in body con dresses and toothpick jeans, are unused to feeling so much fabric around their bodies. It’s a worrying trend that negates 40 years of feminism, putting powerful women in something Grayson Perry might wear.

I would normally offer advice at this point, along the lines of: ‘Want to wear frills? Keep the hair sleek, and expose some flesh somewhere, so people don’t rummage around for the Andrex.’

Instead, I’m typing just one word. Don’t.