Trends – Page 7

Fashion like the flower, blooms and fades season to season. Yet each sartorial bud holds the seeds to future catwalk bouquets. The posy of the past continues to inspire the forsythia of the future. More veraciously than stating “fashion repeats itself,” fashion breeds its own posterity.

Take the floral print. At the dawn of the 15th century, only the flakey crust of the European upper class could afford the Ottoman price tag of Asian floral-flecked silk velvets and damasks. By the 16th Century, even the middle class coveted the floral textile of choice, block-printed Chintzes. But alas, stumped by the Indian calico cloth, the British mills banned the entry of expensive chintzes for nearly a century. By 1759, the British loom mastered the print, and paired with the boom of the Industrial Revolution, chintzey chintzes began pollinating wardrobes with wild abandon.

Jackie Kennedy in Marimekko, Inaugural Tour

However, up to the 1960’s, even the whimsical floral print continued to be contrived into a relatively restrictive costume for upper-class women. Around 1960 brands like Marimekko and Lily Pulitzer captured the organic freedom of the flower in simple shift dresses. Once modeled by Jackie Kennedy, both blossomed as icons of lifestyle fashion.

Lily Pulitzer Retrospective

Marimekko Spring/Summer 2012

2012 has seen the growth of florals once again, but with some fresh variations on the classic motif:

one-jcrew, two-send the trend, three-mary katrantzou

All-over: this time around the florals are applied head to toe matching suits or endless dresses. No inch is spared the decadence.

Bold: no dainty ditzy prints, the florals are electric and oversized, statements unto themselves

Digital: Many a floral print has been shared in futuristic flourish, not as a hand-blocked illustration, but an actual photograph printed onto the fabric.

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In clothing, how do you like your flowers delivered?

Feed me fashionably fresh

Around and around and around, hemlines raise then lower like mechanical horses, fabrics alternatively clasp then billow mirroring the track of a lilting looping melody. The carousel of fashion appears to revolve a limited team of posted steeds, upon which delicate variations emerge on archetypal themes. The future of fashion seems destined to reinvent the past.

At least that’s the livery landscape from my spectating seat. And to be frank and forthright, I prefer the subtle evolution of seams and zippers to the shock and awe of spontaneous generation. Revisiting the silhouettes of the past reinvented in modern fabrics and construction techniques promises a better breed of clothing.

Perhaps nothing has been reinvented more often than the sandal. Romans certainly didn’t invent it, but they did birth a particularly enduring breed. Their finest impermeable leathers were studded with hobnails to ensure coliseum champions could preserve the prestige of their footwear from bloody ruin. Shoes were designed by prominent artists, and prized sandals were often buried with owners. Even dead Romans, preferred not to be caught without this status-marking form of high art.

The gladiator sandal rested for several centuries but was awakened in twentieth century couture in the late 60’s. Rebellious flower children were willing to bear the flesh exposed by the warrior sandal, and the shoe species continued to cycle onto runways each decade until the early 2000’s, At the century turned, Gladiator swept the Oscars, including the award for costume design, and the populace demanded that their footwear follow suit. Yet this new iteration was washed of its historically tough and dirty tone in favor of sleek full fashion glamour.

Indeed dress designers and the glitterati have naturally selected a completely different breed of gladiator sandal, only loosely related to its Roman relative. Some of the trending traits which I believe to be most beneficial to the general public include:

one, two, three, four

Heels: The many straps of the original gladiator sandal may have stroked and flattered the muscles of the male calf, but it’s modern counterpart left most women with an heavily accented cankle. Height offered via a heel, a wedge or platform angles the calf, slims the leg, and ultimately narrows the ankle.

Ornamentation: Pre-modern iterations were strictly bohemian, recalling a natural, ethnic origin. New styles offer bows, tassels, or zippers opening the style up to romantic, modern, and dramatic dressers.

Color: Beyond beige, the evolved prototypes adapted to glamour and red carpets by adopting bold hues such as raspberry, lime, or at the very least metallics.

Today’s entertainment coliseum is certainly stoked with many a fashion warriors in gladiator sandals, but have they evolved to meet your needs? Are gladiator sandals the shoes to own this summer?

Trend-volution: Florals

Trend-volution: Gladiator Sandals