5 things currently annoying me in fashion magazines
The proliferation of “in” belt styles. It seems like, in ages past, you had one kind of standard belt at a time — one width. In high school, skinny belt. After college, wider belt. You could get the belt in different colors, but you only had to worry about the one width. Now, you need like four different widths, each in a couple of colors so you can match/not clash, AND you have to get a couple of them in different sizes because you wear some in your belt loops and others over your clothes. Add to this the fact that one of my streaks of irrational cheapness is occupied by belts — I just really hate paying more than $20 for something that it is possible I could have made at camp — and I’m just over it.
The comma heel. I think I remember reading in Glamour or something back in the day that the comma heel is without question the worst for your back and ankles. No stability, throws you out of alignment — just bad. And now it’s back in. Also, it’s ugly.
Jewel tones. Every fall-fashion guide I’ve read from Lucky to InStyle has got the happy flails about “pops” and “shots” of “rich” color, which is all well and good in theory, but in practice, not everyone can wear emerald green without looking washed-out. First we have to sit politely while neon is exhumed from the ’80s like the victim of a murder that was never solved (other victims: Esprit; everyone else), and now they’ve got to crack the casket seal on royal blue? It looks like ass on me! Hot, smelly, Duran-Duran-video ass. The other problem here is that my mother got the idea at some point that I look grrrrreat in royal blue. This is incorrect. I look like a back-up dancer in Consumption: The Musical. She also thinks I look really wonderful in bright purple. What she really thinks, of course, is that I wear too much black, and I did used to wear too much black, actually, but a) that isn’t true anymore, and b) I don’t really wear that much in the cool end of the color spectrum. Red, orange, brown, I wear a lot of that. Royal blue, roy-hell no.
And now, I will bore you with my orange/neutral theory, because if I try to bore Wing with it once more, she is going to origami an Elle subscription card into a dagger and bury it in my eye. (Other Sarah pet subjects that Wing is extra sick of: how the Mr. T show last year was the awesomest thing ever televised; using salt to pick up stains; the time I met Weird Al; and “Oh my God, you know who has the best pignoli cookies?”) The theory, in brief: orange basically goes with nothing, therefore it kind of goes with everything. If it goes with everything, it’s a neutral. End of theory. Feel free to use it as an excuse to buy this, as I recently did.
Trapeze dresses. The shape per se is fine; I can’t wear it because: tent, but I can’t really wear pencil skirts either and it doesn’t mean I don’t approve of them. Here’s what I don’t get — maybe I misinterpreted, you know, every single fashion layout of the fall, but it appears that the whole point of the trapeze dress right now is…to belt it. So…what’s the…point? Of…the trape…zoidality? You know? Just make the dress using the same cute print, but in an A-line. Right? I mean, what do I know about anything, I’m wearing Chucks, a vintage men’s watch, and a Crew skirt from two years ago that I spilled latte on (brown skirt, though — frumpy like a fox, I am), but I think that’s dumb.
The phrase “on trend.” Sick of it. So so sick of it. Kind of sick also, now that I mention it, of the fact that every accessorizing touch that makes an otherwise unremarkable outfit “on trend” in Lucky costs $675. “Piling on a handful of delicate rose-gold chains from Bulgari makes this sleekly modern outfit perfectly on-trend!” Or however it’s hyphenated — I want the term killed so I don’t care. One of these days I’m going to go through with those little stickers and mark every fashion-writing usage tic in that mag, but “on trend” is the worst, and it’s spreading like typhoid fever in a mining camp. I should say here that I like Lucky, and that saying the same thing every month AND writing short is tough; I’d just caption everything “…Pretty!” or “…Rad!” and give up, probably. Still: enough with the “on trend.”
Tags: publishing retail
That is an adorable bag and I agree with you about orange, and how reds and browns (and creams, for me) look way better on aerodynamically curvaceous women than any jewel tones, and belts are too much effort now.
Preach on, Sista! Trapeze anything is the bane of the existance of ladies with more than an A cup.
Yes! I hate “on trend” too! Something else that’s really been bugging me in fashion mags is “of-the-moment”. It stands in for “this-will-be-unwearable-next-year”.
And stop telling me giant strapless clutches are the bag I MUST carry around this fall, when they’re a cumbersome pain in the ass. Grrah!
I’m another orange devotee; it’s my absolute favorite color. It makes my own consumptively pale skin look much warmer, and, indeed, because it’s the ultimate anti-neutral it functions as the ultimate neutral. I have proselytized about it from many a soapbox.
YES. Someone told my mother that my sister and I are “winters” when we were, like, 5 and 9 years old, and to this day she STILL buys us everything she can find in emerald and turquoise.
I can get behind your orange/neutral theory. Unfortunately, with my hair/skin color, I can’t wear orange. In addition, I don’t look good in yellow, red, pink, white, or jewel tones. Basically, I can wear 3 shades each of blue, green, or purple. Black doesn’t look great on me, but I wear it.
I hate belts. I think they look nice on other people, but I’m not big on accessories. If I could walk around without a bag, I would. Plus, you have to fidget with the ones worn over clothes. Who needs the aggravation? That being said, if you want to take part in the jewel tone resurgence without submerging yourself in Royal blue, you could buy some cheap accessories. Or merge the two and buy a jewel toned belt. Then you’d really be on-trend! ;)
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I cannot handle it when magazines proclaim how “cheap and chic!” a certain accessory is … and it’s $500. Um, yeah, cause if I had that kind of cash to drop on giant (fake!) cocktail ring, I would either be investing it, or stashing it in a fund to buy some real jewels. I’ll drop the rent money on a fabulous coat or some item that I’ll wear forever, but not on this season’s “must have bangles.”
I’m with you on the orange. I myself am on my third red/cranberry/burgandy/whathaveyou purse because that way it NEVER matches my shoes, so obviously it wasn’t supposed to! So it always matches yay! That particular bag is super-cute. I would get it, but it cost more than twenty dollars, so I’d feel bad if I got tired of it.
As for belts? I don’t even own one. My pants stay up because I have an ass, thanks, so I don’t need a belt, on-trend or not. Saves me the trouble of caring about which ones are “in” right now.
Aagh! Belts! I have a belt. A super leather belt that can be converted into wrist restraints, no less (I got from my university`s sex resource centre a year ago). It`s great for casual wear as well as being surprisingly dressy and there’s always the added ‘no one has any idea!’ factor, which is always a source of juvenile giggles. I`m going to be starting my very first Grownup Job soon, so I went shopping for appropriate office wear with a friend. This friend helped me find some amazing pieces that in turn made me look and feel like a zillion bucks. But my god! Every single time we stepped into a store, my friend would zip over to the belt rack and hold up some three-inch wide raincoat-yellow or Muppetty teal monstrosity and swear up and down that I needed it in order to be a happy and productive member of the workforce, if not society in general.
And don`t get me started on the trend of belting the damnable things below the bustline….
Count me in on the “orange as neutral” train. Though to be fair I think those of us who wear orange well tend to like this argument more than those for whom orange is a death knell.
Why must you link to that SITE???!!! I have a small child and therefore cannot buy anything there unless we could eat it. Sigh…I do love her so. …The CHILD I mean, not the Orla Kiely. Really.
Yeah. Re. Lucky, my best friend and I used to occasionally count up our [least] favorite word tics–luxe, “toughens up,” wildly, and the worst offenders (those these aren’t as bad anymore): brilliant and brilliantly. GAH. And I’m a magazine writer, so I know how tempting it is to fall back on some words or phrases when you have 12 words to sum up why someone should spend $565 on something useless, but…gah. I will admit to having used luxe, though. Dammit.
Glossed Over has written a lot about this, to good effect, and those entries are linked from this awesome Jexabel post: http://jezebel.com/gossip/maghag/lucky-magazines-subtle-feminine-chic-annoyingly-one+track-mind-286638.php
I will agree with the orange as a neutral rule in theory, and agree that your reasoning is solid, but the one exception would have to be for redheads. If I wear orange I clash with myself, and it does strange things to the color of my freckles. Being clashy with other clothes is acceptable, being clashy with my own self is not.
Oh, and my sister feels you on the jewel tones. Dark green makes the poor girl look like she’s violently ill.
Hey, A-cup girls can’t wear trapeze dresses either, if we have anything resembling hips or an ass, as I do. I have a pear shape all on my own without the help of eighty-seven yards of gauze. Thank Jeebus I wear scrubs for 75% of my waking life. Makes getting dressed a lot easier.
See, I’m kind of psyched about the resurgence of royal blue, because it looks great on me. I’m pale, but with pink-y undertones, and it’s good on my eyes. I do agree with you on orange, everything looks good with it, except, unfortunately, my skin tone.
But the belts! Oh, the belts…. (That’s a weary, fist-shaking “Oh, the belts,” not a rapturous one, to be clear.)
AMEN, Sars and Sarah Gee! Maybe the whole Empire waist/belt below the boobs look works on Kiera Knightly and other similar reedlike women, but on the rest of us, big boobs tend to equal big stomach/big butt, and you end up looking like a pregnant giftwrapped apple. As for the trapeze dress, belted it’s just ridiculous, and unbelted you have to be so thin–anorexic, cocaine, Nichole Ritchie thin–to wear it, it’s pretty much off limits to ninety percent of women out of puberty.
I’m with you on belts, too. I didn’t fall for ugly-ass belts back in the eighties, when I was a teenager and therefore should have fallen for anything, and I’m not falling for them now.
Word on so much of this. Trapeze dresses make anyone, should they have the tiniest little bump of a tummy, look pregnant. How is this a good idea? And the other dress trend of the “bib dresses”…makes me sad. They looked cute when I was five. Now? I’m way too old for u-shaped fabric where my cleaveage should be.
Kate, that link is hilarious. Other hated Luckyisms: any phraseology involving “edge” or “edgy,” “punky” (esp. used in conjunction with “vibe”), the tendency to Germanize opposites (i.e., “punky-sweet”…I just hate the word “punky,” I guess), and I agree that “wildly” is way overused in that book. There’s a limit to how psyched you should get about a lipgloss tin.
Yay orange! I shunned it until I was watching What Not to Wear and Clinton recommended it for blue-eyed blondes. Now I have the awesomest orange tops, orange-accented bags, and so on. Another What Not to Wear color tip was that coral/salmon pink (which I always found kinda pukey on the rack…) looks good on almost every skin tone. And lo! I look cute in that, too! They’re so smart.
I must be a neutral, though, ’cause I can also get away with royal blue, green, and so on. But my fave color palette revolves around denim and chocolate brown.
Okay, I am a fashion moron. The last fashion magizene I read was a ten year old issue of Sassy. So can someone please tell me what Comma heels are?
Thanks!
I’ve decided that any color can be a neutral color, if it looks good on you, and you commit to it. I use pink as a neutral all the time in the summer, and teal in the winter. They look nice on me, and I wear them enough that they can stand in for black or brown.
And my purse is turquoise, purple, and lime green. Because that combination is really aggressively anti-neutral, and, as such, matches everything.
Orla! I honestly don’t know if those bags are a good proof of how orange can go with anything. (Though it does kinda work…hmmm…but not like, red. Or yellow? I guess I disagree!)
Down with you on orange, trapeze dresses, belts, etc., but… what the hell is a comma heel? (That’s how very not-on-trend I am, especially given that this is the first I’ve heard of that phrase.)
First…don’t hate me because I’m a winter and look GREAT in royal blue….and I wish there were a store called Jewel Tones R Us…
but I’m with you on the belts. Every time I see a layout with the wide belts all asymmetrical across the hips of someone who weighs 80 pounds, I want to barf (then I remember that bulimia is what got us to this situation).
I actually have a condition where I try a belt I like on at the store and like it, and it fits, and I buy it, then I pull it out of the bag at home and it curls up like a cobra on my bed, hisses at me, and will not longer fit around my waist….whaddya call THAT????
I have a love-hate relationship with the trapeze tops – I’m not exactly little, so they all make me look pregnant. BUT, on days when I want to throw something comfortable on to either lounge around the house or run errands, I’m really really glad that micro-mini tops that have a tendency to roll up over my belly are no longer the style-du-jour.
Plus, if you accessorize the trapeze top correctly (not belt it, but with, say, a cute cardigan or sweater vest or hoodie), you can generally downplay-eliminate the “I’m 27 months pregnant” aspects of the look.
Flip side – my best friend just had a baby last week, and she was very happy that this season’s style meant that, for tops at least, she could shop in old navy up until the very end, rather than overpaying for maternity-specific wear.
I Googled for an example, and interestingly, I discovered that a comma heel is apparently this: http://www.shoeblog.com/blog/friday-comma-miscellanea/
That actually doesn’t look that bad, and in any case isn’t what I had in mind at all; I meant a heel that bows under, sort of convexing beneath the heel instead of being straight or concaving: http://tinyurl.com/2nflmr
That isn’t as severe an example as some I’ve seen, but it looks like it would jam up your balance while putting more pressure on your toes to compensate, and it looks…I don’t know, more cheaply made than a standard pump heel. Like the manufacturer didn’t know the proportions.
I’ve been seeing it a lot in the mags this season; if there’s a different name for that heel, please share it, but I always thought that was a comma heel.
Also with you on the orange, though I’d never really thought it out before – it was just lurking there subconsciously. Thanks for bringing it out into the light of day!
I’ve heard that heel style referred to as a “banana heel.” By any name, it’s terrifying. Here’s another example: http://tinyurl.com/3bu2r5
Yeah, it seems like if you put set your heel down with any sort of backwards pressure, you’d go ass-over-teakettle.
No. Orange is bad and evil, much like the dreaded gold or deep yellow. I will allow it to exist as an accessory but it shall never touch my person. This is from a Cleveland Browns fan living in Syracuse Orangeman territory. You do the math. Trust. Orange, me no likey. Orange to me is like Royal Blue to Sars. Orange makes me look sallow and jaundiced due to my olive brown compexion.
Trapeze is good for no one who is not pregnant. Because trapeze makes you look pregnant. So if you are going to look pregnant, you may as well be pregnant.
Katherine and greer- word on the pregnant thing. It isn’t just dresses, either. All those peasanty tops that are in right now, especially if they go past your hips, make anyone who is not a size 0 look preggers. They look sooooo cute on the display, I try it on in my size, and think “Huh, I haven’t been getting sick in the mornings, sooooo . . .”.
My solution on belts is that I don’t buy belts. I love belts, but I agree with Sars. I refuse to pay more than, like, 15 bucks on a belt, and I can’t find any cheap ones that I like. My poor, unused belt loops. Also, it seems like colored belts are in right now (cloth and otherwise) and I refuse to pay money on a belt that only matches one outfit, no matter how cute said outfit is.
I actually hate the concept of “neutrals.” I’m a very pale strawberry blonde with blue undertones to my skin, and so-called “neutrals” make me look awful. They’re not neutral for me, they’re my sworn enemies. I love orange as a color but I can’t wear anything remotely yellow or I look jaundiced. On the other hand, jewel tones, pinks, purples, and bluey-greens are great for me. I’m excited about the return of the jewel tone–it’s like when periwinkle was the trendy color for a season; half my wardrobe dates from those halcyon days. Because sometimes none of the cool colors work for me at all.
Thanks Sars! Learn something new everyday.
I will sign your “on trend” petition. As an itinerant copy-editor, I’ve had to fight the urge to cross it out on many fashion-mag layouts… in fact, the first time I saw “on trend” I think I actually did query it (‘word missing here?”). That’s how not-on-trend I am. Now that it’s established magspeak, I have to stay on top of whether it’s hyphenated or not at various magazines (check the style guide!), and it still makes me grind my teeth a little. But it’s been my experience that the eds-in-chief get sick of newish terms and coinages after six months of very heavy use — I’ve worked at magazines where “thisclose” and “bling bling” were verboten — so I predict it won’t be long till “on trend” gets banned and the style guides are updated accordingly. Fingers crossed.
I totally agree that orange is a neutral, which is how I justified buying orange shoes and an orange bag — they go with almost everything. Of course, I’m also of the feeling that the louder a bag or shoes are, the more they actually go with, because the whole point of them is that they’re A Little Crazy.
I like the trapeze dresses, though. So comfy!
I don’t care if you call it banana, comma, bridge or origami heel there is no way in heck you’re ever going to see me attempting a flight of stairs in those monstrosities… I have enough trouble with coat/hair/handbag wrangling as it is.
Secondly the trapeze dress, I have two problems with this style.
First is the oft mentioned body shape issue where if you don’t have the proportions of a lollipop you regularly have people coming up to you on the street and asking ‘so when are you due?’
Secondly is the errant gust of wind factor, you’re walking along and suddenly ‘Oops’ skirt up over head and undies on display to the whole world. Always seems to happen when you’re crossing the road for some reason.
That’s a comma heel, huh? It’s not “back” is it? Cos I’ve never seen it before except at Fluevog Shoes, old JF’s had them for a while, and I thought when I saw them, “oh crazy Fluevog man, though I usually love your expensive but worthwhile footwear investments, that is not a look for me!”
Mind you, I tried on an example of said heel in Fluevogs, and while I didn’t buy it, it was nevertheless perfectly well balanced and walkable. I think that’s part of the Fluevog Magic though. Which is why I keep dumping three to four hundred dollars apiece on his shoes. Weirdness you can walk in — can’t beat it.
re bristlesage: those pradas are divine. i’d like to at least TRY to walk in them. can’t imagine what they’d do to my back meantime, though. ah, the wide world of shoes i can’t afford.
Amen, greer. Orange… makes my skin crawl.
I have no idea how it looks on me, because I just can’t stand any permutations of orange-ness (including orangey yellows or reds), and learning that it looks good on me would make me very sad.
I also confess to having no idea what comma heels are. They sound rather unpleasant, though, and it’s probably safe to say that they will go the way of orange in my mind.
Oh how I hate the trapese dress. But I adore the trapese top! Especially since it’s so wrong on anyone who is not either 90 lbs or over 6 mos pregnant – it means they are all on sale!
I have quite the collection from Old Navy – cinch them right under the boobs with a ribbon belt poached from an old dress, and it’s a cheap maternity top. And soooooo comfy.
For the masses though, bad trend indeed.
With you on most of these ones. I love bright colours though, I hate pastels to girly-girl for me for years. I was the tomboy who wore my brothers hand-me-downs and actually liked them ’cause they wern’t dresses. Would’t work now though ’cause Boobies! big ones and the thus hating of the trapezoid dresses and bib tops. I have a belly too and don’t need help looking pregnant when I’m not; I can do that well enough on my own.
The only folks who this seasons trends really favour are those hiding an eating disorder needing to look not so super super skinny so f&f don’t notice whats up.
1. Orange! I love orange. LOVE IT. I too have a giant orange purse (and two pairs of shoes, and travel coffee mug, and toothbrush, and dining room ceiling, and lots more; my husband laughs at me because I stop in stores to drool over anything that is orange, even boring things I don’t need like Tupperware or extra bed linens.)
2. Salt to get out stains is the most amazing trick in the book. The night after we watched that episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, our dog knocked over a glass of red wine onto the beige living room carpet…and we both squealed like happy little children and ran for the salt and soda-water to try it out. I too have bored many a friend with my proselytizing on the subject ever since.
Holy smokes, I am so glad I absolutely never pick up magazines of any kind at all. I haven’t read a fashion rag in over fifteen years, and wasn’t dedicated to them even then. I am entirely innocent of pretty much everything of which y’all have spoken.
Strangely, people tell me on a regular basis that I have great style. It’s a piece of personal arrogance that I tend to assume this is precisely because I am a contrarian against “fashion” and prefer to dress myself to flatter, regardless of current dictates …
I have another theory on who can use the trapeze dress–celebrities who are actually pregnant and want to hide the fact from the press for as long as possible. You could get up to about 7 months before people were really sure that it wasn’t just the dress making you look pregnant.
BetsyD, I know what you mean about color trends all too well. I can basically wear nothing that is considered a ‘spring’ color, so there are times of the year when I better hope I don’t need to buy a couple of new blouses. (Since I’m the mother of a young child and terribly, I sometimes have to replace wardrobe items more frequently than I would like).
And sometimes it can be frustrating to find that a color you love has vanished. Like when purple disappeared and you could only get shades like grape and violet and lavendar. Check your crayolas, fashion people, and give us some purple. And of course two years later, there’s purple everywhere.
More than 20 bucks for a belt? Aw heeellll naw. Not even in the West Village in 1992 with the oh-so-cool pyramid studs/bullet studs. NO.
I’ve tried to rock the peasant shirts since 10 years and 50 pounds ago (on the incline, ugh). There was a time when you could get a metric ton of them at Urban Outfitters for like, a dollar, and even when I was (NO LIE) 5’7, 34A, and 97 pounds and looked like I just escaped from a refugee camp, I still looked pregnant in those damn shirts. Let’s just say when I came to my senses and started eating like a human being, the shirts were disposed of. And let’s all bow our heads in gratefulness for THAT.
How I wish we were still in the age wherein we could wear trapeze dresses with flannel shirts (so to squoosh the…trapezeness) and Docs a la “My So Called Life”. So stupid. So comfy.
My fashion mag peeve is their insistence, every damn fall, that PLAID IS BACK. Plaid did not leave, plaid just went to the ladies’ room for, like, five minutes. I remember the heralding of plaid’s amazing! fall! comeback! as far back as Barbie Magazine in 1986, so I have to assume it dates back even farther, probably to Godey’s Ladies’ Book, or whatever it was called, and possibly as far as the Bayeux Tapestry.
Why “on trend” and not “trendy,” which is shorter and an actual word? Does trendy sound more like a word that describes a fashion victim instead of a stylish person?
I think “trendy” has a pejorative connotation now — there is that fashion-victim implication, usually. It’s kind of inching closer to “faddish.”
SallyRufus: Oh my goodness, YES. Plaid comes “back” every damned fall, along with menswear-inspired clothes. Then ladylike clothes come “back” every late winter/spring and brights come “back” every summer. I’m so tired of editors acting like they’ve just discovered these things.
Can we all just agree that nothing ever “leaves,” it just does a lap? So long, turquoise and fuschia, we’ll see you in a year, after you’ve done your stint in the southern hemisphere.
“So long, turquoise and fuchsia, we’ll see you in a year” — I am not exaggerating when I tell you that if I could stand on the porch of May 15th with a shotgun to prevent that from happening, I would.
The other thing that comes “back” in every autumn: opaque tights. Thanks ever so much for the tip, Bazaar, but those of us who don’t live in St. Tropez and despair of the dollar-to-run ratio of hose are already on the case.
I also read somewhere recently that a nipped-in waist is “now.” Not over here in the kingdom of Cheesesandwichsylvania, it ain’t. You want this shit nipped in, you can FedEx a hungry bear to my apartment. Or one of the belts I refuse to buy.
In conclusion: I hate Anne Slowey.
Seriously, the peasant tops/bib tops/trapeze dresses/whatever flatter absolutely nobody except really slim women with really narrow hips and biggish breasts. I know exactly one person with that body shape :)
On the other hand, I wish I could hasten the comeback of nipped-in waist, or indeed, any waist at all. I’m 5’2, with small breasts, wide hips and shoulders, narrow waist and short back. Anything loose-fitting makes me look like a dwarf with a cylindrical midsection.
I have pinkish, fair skin and blue eyes, and I stay firmly away from anything green, yellow or orange, because they make me look like I’m about to puke. Earthy tones make me sallow, so I stick with pastels and jewel tones.