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
Seriously, Sars, the “nipped waist” is why I have two sewing machines and a metric ton of corduroy on hand right now.
Yes, I wear a skirt every day. No, I do not have a ten inch differential between my waist and my hips. Nor do I want to appear to, because then my ass would seem alarmingly vast.
Well, without so much digging the idea of “nipping”, speaking as a long-torsoed 30″ waist x 40″ hipster, I have to say, it has been a LONG wait for those of us who can’t rock the low-rise and/or cylindrical waist pants. Seriously, I went about eight years without being able to find a pair of pants with a waistband which would come within shouting distance of my middle, if it fit my ass. Every single pair of pants I own (including the one currently gracing the office chair) has extra darts and taken-in seams. Believe me when I tell you that hanging around waiting since 1997 for pants to change back again has been an irritating slog.
This is actually a part of the reason I knew nothing about this whole belt imbroglio; for ten years, pants have been too low for me to be able to utilize a belt, and I haven’t been able to tuck a shirt in for so long a belt simply added insult to injury anyway.
For those of us who’ve been waiting for the fashion industry to remember that some of us *have* waists (and, equally to the point, beautiful and generous HIPS): thank GOODness for shapely clothing, again, at long last!!
While we’re ranting about ill-conceived fashions that look horrible on 90 percent of the population, you know what I hate? Any shirt that has a seam right below the bust. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the style, but like everything other women’s fashion item the shirts are inevitably designed for small-chested women, and on anyone larger than a B-cup the seam winds up cutting across the chest. No thank you, quadruple-boob syndrome.
It annoys me all the more because those shirts COULD look good on me; I’m short and skinny with a ridiculously disproportionate chest (we’re talking special-ordered bras here), and shirts with separate chest and torso sections would be useful, if only to make it look as though I actually HAVE a torso. As it is, I wear ribbed Old Navy tank tops every. Freaking. Day. Thank god I’m a grad student and I never have to dress up.
P.S. Add me to the list of pale, blue-eyed people who love jewel tones. And the list of sane, non-pregnant women who hate peasant blouses. If everyone hates them, WHY have they monopolized store racks for five years and counting?
I really hate Cosmo‘s overuse of the phrase “suss out.” I wish they’d suss themselves out a new hook.
Yes – orange is a neutral! I say so. I was going to link to a picture of my very neutral orange Seatbeltbag purse and laptop bag set, but they don’t carry the color any more.
You probably mean this heel
http://tinyurl.com/34kkvw
Have them, adore them, can’t walk in them. Not because of the comma or whatever, but because they’re 4″. I have a style from years past with more of a 2 1/2″ heel, same shape, that are perfectly walkable. I adore them. I adore Fluevogs, all heels, all styles except for the ugly man shoes.
I’m with you on everything else. And you, dear, are a Fall. As am I. Otherwise, we’d be psyched about the jewel tones.
Yep, that’s the one.
I am a 30-23-33 stick with broad 36″ shoulders, and NONE of the trends of the last few years look good on me. Empire waists, drop-waists, trapeze dresses, baggy shift dresses, billowy belted things, peasent blouses, bubble skirts.. I look like a scrawny 14-year-old drag queen. I don’t know why they don’t look as terrible on the runway models as they do on me, since I have a similar build. I can’t wait for waists to come back in. Mine is my only real feminine feature and I like to enhance it.. and I think everyone should. Not always with tight fabrics, of course, but it’s important to create a waistline in some way in every outfit no matter what your natural shape. All these waistless trends make most women look pregnant or masculine.
I love orange, but I look so terrible in it I stick to accessories. I have an orange bag and belt. I look good in pastels but I don’t like them, so I only wear grays, dark browns, off-whites and muted blues. And of course, way too much black, which makes me look a little ghoulish but I love too much to give up – even with three light-colored cats and dogs and a new white kitten!
I am apparently Sars’ fashion nemesis. I love jewel tones like ruby, emerald, and sapphire (“royal” being, to my knowledge, something other than a jewel). Also, I loathe orange and believe its resurrection to be the work of shag-carpet and wrought-iron loving, Dodge van driving throwbacks to the Polyester Era.
But if we’re talking true fashion evils, can we discuss the lowrise jean? Even size fours look like models for Kidney Fat Nation. It’s just..evil. They look hideous on just about everybody, yet I see women from 13-63 wearing them. HATE!
I think low-rise jeans get a bad rap. There’s low-rise that lengthens your torso (great for short-waisted, large-busted girls like me) and then there’s low-rise that requires you to keep your hands on your hips at all times. I find a lot more of the former, but the latter seems to be what people think of.
When I worked in retail, you should have seen the reactions I got when I’d tell people about pants that sat below the waist. “Oh no, I don’t want to look like teenager.” Ma’am, they’re black dress pants with a tuxedo stripe and they sit an inch below your waist; I don’t think that’s a risk.
Re the peasant/babydoll tops: I have one, and I sort of enjoy the “is she or isn’t she?” effect. With a chest as large as mine, I either look like a 1950s sweater girl or a grandma; the “she just might be pregnant” look is a happy medium.
Here here on the low rise jeans. Since I do not approach fashion model status, I was a little leery of them at first, then I tried a pair. For the first time I had a waist! A waist that was not marked by the bottom of my bra! The entire top half of my body is not made up entirely of boobs! They will get my low (mid) rise, boot cut jeans back when they rip them out of my cold dead hands.
Just as a rose by any other name….
Man, those are unattractive “comma” heels. I do not know the preferred name for them, but they appear to me to be just “different” for difference’s sake. Do. Not. Want.
I love emerald green. I look AAAAMAZING in emerald green, and I would knife anyone who tried to wrench it from my tiny pink hands.
Pastels, on the other hand, render me almost entirely indistinguishable from an Easter egg.
Also, I really shouldn’t say anything about my idea for nice-fitting pants, because right now the pants that look most kick-ass on me are actually flared capris. Oh yes, they’re all the rage in the Shire.
I also love lowrise jeans. Not the kind your butt pops out of as soon as you sit down, but the kind that sit 1-3 inches below your belly-button. I think they are universally flattering if you get the right pair. Since they are pretty much all super-stretchy, you can buy sizes larger than you would normally wear in order not to have a ‘muffin-top’.
High-waisted pants, on the other hand, I find terrible on everyone who isn’t slim with a small waist and some curve to their hips. I saw Cameron Diaz wearing a retro pair with her shirt tucked in, and thought she looked awful. They make your ass look flat and if you have some weight around your middle (as most women over 30 do) they grab it and make you look paunchy. I finally talked my mom out of her ‘mom jeans’ a couple years ago and I think she looks so much better.
Sars, that’s also known as a French heel, or a Louis heel (or a spool heel, if your reading matter is old enough); and it is my very most favorite, I would MARRY this heel if I could! Love. Love, love love. I think of comma-shaped heels as those … those other ones. The ones that look as if a parenthesis has latched onto the back of your shoe. Haaaaate those with the fiery passion of ten thousand burning nuns. I can’t balance on them, and they are ugly, ugly, ugly. They feel as if they’re about to snap off your shoe any minute – and no loss, either.
And I wear jewel tones, because I’m a winter, and the beautiful rich warm autumn tones you can wear make me look as if I need a toe tag. Also? Pass that belt over this way, thanks. You have that broad-shouldered, slim-hipped V-shaped torso that fashion magazines love. I’ll be over in the changing room, trying to wrestle my hips into a dress. Or skirt. Or jeans. Or anything, really; it’s been a few decades since an hourglass shape has been fashionable. I figure by the time the fashion cycle rolls around to that shape, either I won’t have an hourglass shape any more, or I WILL – but I’ll be dead. Fashion, feh! I hate you. I will resort to style, instead.