The Daily Telegraph - Features
The fad for sheer dresses? Let’s hope John Lewis sees through it
Sorry to ask, but if any of you are popping into town this weekend, could someone please swing by John Lewis on my behalf and have a look-see if everything’s gone see-through?
If red carpets in general – and the Met Gala in particular – are anything to go by, then summer 2024 will see the nation’s women traipsing about in transparent frocks and nearly-there knickers.
Forget the beach-body bullies exhorting us to get ripped for a fortnight in Zante; the style police have decreed we must vigorously exfoliate our nipples and bare our lady-bottoms if we are to belong to the fashion cognoscenti.
It makes me downright nostalgic for Y2K exposed thongs, which may or may not be making a comeback – so cross your fingers, Britney. Let’s not forget Christian Louboutin’s over-optimistic declaration in that “toe cleavage” should be seen as a “second décolleté”. Underboob? Underwhat? Sorry, Emily Ratajkowski, it was so your thing.
All of these sound ridiculous. But they each had their moment. It’s what psychologists call the bandwagon effect; the tendency to adopt certain behaviours or modes of dress because everyone else appears to be doing it.
The human brain is hard-wired to use heuristics, or mental shortcuts, to speed up decisionmaking and make effective choices. Add to that the power of groupthink, fear of exclusion and before you know it, it’s 1987 and you’ve bought your boyfriend a pair of MC Hammer pants to clash with your acid-wash jeans.
Women come in for a lot of stick for liking clothes and following fashion trends. Men – if they notice at all – might complain that those chic new shoe heels are ugly, the must-have dress too shapeless or that Rita Ora must be freezing cold in that beaded kitchen curtain.
But it doesn’t matter one jot because haute couture has diddly squat to do with attracting men and everything to do with impressing other women.
There is no greater form of upwomanship than being bang on trend. Better still, being at the very forefront of a trend, then, just as everyone else is scrambling on board, slyly giddying up and moving the bandwagon on.
In an instant the pack is wrongfooted, trailing in your wake and your status has been consolidated. I think there are probably sound evolutionary reasons for this but as I’m more of a late adopter than an instigator, I’ll leave it to the alpha females to fight it out, one lacy ruched hemline at a time.
That’s not to say I don’t care. Every few months, I go to the shops, not to buy anything but to check out what’s on display, then scamper home to pull something out of my wardrobe that can be gussied up, or down, and pressed into service once more.
To the best of my memory there’s nothing wafty or transparent enough to pass muster if Janelle Monáe is touting the nearly-naked look. The best I can rustle up is fishnet. No, not stockings. An actual fishnet
– a World Book Day creation, festooned with ribbons and woven through with plastic fish.
I have no intention of wearing it but as a metaphor for the way the clothes industry stitches women up like a kipper, it’s the ultimate fashion statement.