This fall, it’s time to inject a dose of naughty into the nicety of your wardrobe built up over past seasons. Trends such as lady-like elegance, close-cut, androgenous tailoring, feminine detail, and hip swinger style haven’t been lost to another fickle fashion cycle. They’ve been picked over for their best looks, and pushed to the edge with touches of toughness and flares of rebellion.
The culprits of this rebellious onslaught of uptown, old money chic, are the young designers who have ascended the ranks of new and old fashion houses alike in the past couple of years. Christopher Baily of Burberry, Stella McCartney of Cleo, and entrepreneurs like Hamish Morrow, Adam Jones, and Viktor and Rolf have supplied a breath of fresh, crisp air into the static corporatized world of fashion. These and other youthful engineers of corporal style harbor a profound respect for, and knowledge of, the fine workmanship and luxury of the moguls of fashion past, but realize these influences with a mark that is distinctly new, edgy, and unfashionable.
That’s right. Fall fashion isn’t about looking fashionable per se, it’s about claiming a new style that is distinctly reflexive of the wearer, but never dull or cautious. The proliferation of looks, styles, and influences that surfaced not only from runway to runway during fashion week, but also on the individual runways themselves, opened the doors to the buffet-style sensibility of fashion in Fall 2001.
The name of the game is pi