Is fashion starting to get interesting again?

[GarlicGrace]

It's been as boring as hell for years. Choose between straight lines in a limited palette of solid colours or droopy floral numbers. Lately we've had the exciting additional option of stripes, in combinations from the limited palette.

I'm leaving out the 'sexy' (tight) and 'classy' (beige) side-tracks as they will always exist, changing only slightly with each passing year. The S&B board used to groan under the weight of 'classy' with a smattering of 'sexy' and a surfeit of tediously comfortable stretch jersey. Suddenly, it's all changing!

I should probably note that, old and financially challenged as I am (with the body shape of a large carboard box), I'm wearing mostly straight-line stripy garments in comfortable fabrics. This doesn't stop me wanting fashion to Do Fashion, though ... and it looks like it may have restarted! Whoopee!

I've been up all night clicking fascinating links on here, then following through. Here are five images from my open tabs - and there's so much more! It's all so INTERESTING!

Now I have been up all night, I'm going to post & run. Further comments & showcases welcome, whether from Mumsnet fashionistas (current or superannuated like me) or those who think new stuff is just weird.

I'll believe it when I see it. There's still a lot of oversized/athleisure/flouncy Widow Twanky dresses crapola around. I'd like to see a return to proper fitted grown up clothes.

I get what you mean, @Brexile, but fitted affordable fashion's tricky, isn't it? We come in so many different shapes & sizes. Even as a young size 12 (old version), nothing fitted me properly because my hips are smaller than my bust, my shoulders are bigger than average and I'm tall.

I love Karen Millen but, back when I could afford - and get into - her designs, I had to accept they'd stick out oddly in the front because of my upper body proportions. Now, of course, my ballooning waist has worsened the non-standard proportionality and I'm squishy all over, which doesn't help. Dresses still have the waist too high. Without loose shapes and stretch fabrics I'd be screwed!

Proper fitted grown-up clothes can be made with Lycra mixes, though - I make some myself - and I think I'm seeing some more creative approaches to flexible fitting, with elasticated waistbands and adjustable fasteners that don't wreck the style. I'm sure all this adds to the manufacturing cost, though.

That thread, which was one of the most interesting threads I've read ... I'm not sure what is wrong however with an analysis of fashion.

It was! And, nothing

But volume is already a thing. Wide oversized baggy tops and dresses.

The oversized look of the 80’s and 90’s was relaxed by the close fitting baby t’s and low rise of the late 90’s.

Tgats where we are now.

I love a puffed sleeve, but not ruffles, or big Little House on the Prairie collars 😯

I like the first pic a lot! Wheres that from?

It's from Alémais, @Finlesswonder

I think the eras when fashion has been at its most creative and exciting were when it was more of a two-way process, with designers picking up on what they saw people wearing on the street and in the clubs. And least that's how I remember it and it's also how legend tells it. But since the 80s it's morphed into a product that we consume if we like it and complain about if we don't. And endless recycling. Not sure how that can change - there's so much money wrapped up in it now, who's going to take the risk?

I watched the Wham documentary on Netflix last week and was surprised by how current lots of the outfits in the video footage looked, yet it's over 40 years old! Fashion just keeps on going around and around, I still find it interesting regardless.

That just looks more of the same to me... more bluddy frills and nothing for anyone more than a B cup.

I think fashion hasn't been about self expression in a while.

I'm also intrigued at how despite the genderless and gender fluid social movement, hyper femininity and hyper masculinity have been at the forefront of mainstream fashion for a good 20 years now, I would have expected to see short hair on women and skirts/makeup on men becoming the big mainstream trend but it hasn't happened which is interesting.

Compare it to say the 80s where gender fluid didn't exist as a mainstream concept but was all over the place in how people looked

Following with huge interest. Love these type of threads, makes MN S & B interesting rather than bland 😊 Love the idea of fashion analysis threads too 😉

Let’s hope so! I can’t remember the last time I went shopping and felt inspired - although I think in part I’m struggling with having a young adult DD who is now wearing (and can buy since the shops are full of it!) pretty much exactly what I was wearing when I was her sort of age.

I can’t remember the last time I went shopping and felt inspired

It took me a while (years actually) to stop feeling guilty about the amount of time I spend scrolling through clothing websites. But then I realised I probably spent equivalent numbers of hours in the past, when I bought all my clothes in physical shops.

The time expended in the past decade and a half means I now rarely encounter disappointing online shops. And I’m habituated to noticing and seeking out new places. It makes browsing and buying a constant adventure.

(It also makes me impatient with the attitude of posters people resolutely stuck in the past, hostile to new shapes and new sources. Obviously people can dress as they want! But I can’t see the point of people coming onto a S&B board only to express shock and horror at anything they’re unfamiliar with. It only requires a bit of effort to ‘keep one’s eye in’.)

It makes browsing and buying a constant adventure

I live about half the year outside of U.K. and I’m really particular about fabrics so it makes online shopping really tedious unless I’m very familiar with the brand - I have a wardrobe half full of stuff I’ve bought and then not been able to return, so my preference is for actual shops, despite online shopping opening more avenues

same old know-it-alls with too much time on their hands

When you say ‘particular’ - d’you mean you have requirements that aren’t covered by the fabric info provided for each individual item online? Am curious because ‘Fabric’, or ‘Composition’ is the first thing I scroll to on any page. Instant rejection of even the prettiest or most bargainous thing if I don’t like the fabric content. (I don’t bother with sites that don’t provide clear and sufficient info.)

Same here. Exclusion of polyester and viscose or polyester and viscose mixes, will include tencel. I made a recent exception for a polyester jacket as it met other very specific criteria for shape of arms (needed to go over a very full sleeved dress) and colour.

Yes I don't understand how it's possible to buy something and be unaware of the fabric content until it arrives.

Under UK law you don't need a reason to return an item anyway, so even if that happened you could still return it (assuming it wasn't from Vinted)

Where’s better for in person shopping, @PegasusReturns - the UK or your other location? (Am very envious of people who ‘divide their time’! Have only ever done it within a single country.)

@CapaciousHag Oh god London without a doubt! Although perhaps that’s familiarity as much as anything and even so I think it’s getting more limiting year on year as stores have tendency to stock multiple similar items and leave the more interesting items for online only.

When I said particular about fabric, I meant it as short hand for a variety of things beyond the actual type of fabric. Like you I always check fabric but it’s very difficult to gauge weight/stiffness online or whether a pattern is printed or woven.

For example I recently bought a cotton skirt from Rio Farm and a cotton shirt from Maje, the skirt was a heavy almost stiff cotton which suited the skirt perfectly; whereas the shirt was a much softer washed style. I wouldn’t necessarily have been able to tell that online and if they’d been the other way round each item would have been a disaster.

Ah, I get you!

I didn't think any of that was fashionable at all. It depends on area though. Where I am it's still pastel colour blocked leisure suits.

It does depend where you are, @fancifulmanciful. Now living in the Town That Time Forgot, I can be fashion forward in chain-store clothes ... and they continue being 'forward' for years after 😂Well, I wanted to live somewhere cheaper!

I'm getting impatient now, though. I've bought a new sewing machine, the old one having died a while back. Fabric technology's incredible these days; I'm quite excited to experiment. Really good prints/patterns are hard to come by, except on cheap fabrics, but there are some interesting products at European suppliers. I used to get amazing materials from sari shops in London. Even those have gone mostly online now, and there sure as hell aren't any out here. I've ordered some from India but the quality's ... variable. It is fun getting the parcels!
Off topic, but what the hell

I saw a couple of young punks in town last month. Actual punks, the full deal circa 1977. It was so refreshing, I kept grinning at them like a loon. I bet I wasn't the only has-been showing delight at their breakaway from denim & sludge-coloured jersey. I'm pretty sure a 50-year rewind isn't the only way to be individual, but thank god some young people are bucking the groupthink.

@Floisme, you're dead right about the flow of ideas between kids on the street and designers. The massive shock inflicted on couture by young Londoners was a product of recession: I wonder if there's a chance this might happen again? (Well, something good's got to come from having to live on beans in shared rooms at 19, right? Right??)

Re affordable fitted clothed, I think there was a golden age in the early noughties when prices came down but quality was still good, and there were some lovely fitted style separates (along with some horrors). I don't know whether this can still be replicated in the current economic climate. I only wear second hand these days, and a glance at the fashion magazines is enough to remind me why!

The only improvement in recent years has been in the increased availability of petite ranges - finally I can wear dresses! But when they are all square polyester sacks it doesn't matter what size or fit they supposedly are.