Fashion Resolutions for 2014

Can you believe another year is over? It seems like only yesterday that I was getting excited about wearing Spring/Summer 2013 pieces, yet already it's time to start thinking ahead to next summer, and February will see the Autumn/Winter 2014 season trends being revealed. 

In early 2013 I resolved to spend less in order to save for travelling, and I'm pleased to say that I (mostly) managed to achieve this. I've now come up with three resolutions for the next 12 months of style...

A buttercup yellow dress on sale at Czech Labels & Friends, Prague

1. Continue to explore fashion around the world

This year I brought you shop windows from Rome, a fleamarket photo essay from Reykjavik and notes on what to wear in Thailand and how to dress in Cuba. 2014 will begin in Peru, where I'll be on a guided tour until mid-January, then I'll be back to tell you all about Peruvian style in two very different climates, from the warm coastal weather in Lima to the chillier mountain conditions.

Also on the cards are trips to some of Brussels' best boutiques, and I'm hoping to visit India as well, which has been on my wish list for some time. Wherever I go, I always carry that fashion mindset with me (checking out what people are wearing, eyeing up window displays, etc.), and I'm drawn to markets and shops just as much as the official attractions of a destination. 

 [Image via WeHeartIt.com] Marilyn Monroe, curve ambassador

2. Embrace the curves with more confidence

I've always been a staunch defender of the curvy girl but when I started blogging I was admittedly at least one size smaller (ok, two at a push, depending on where I shop) than I am today. I've come to terms with the fact that I don't have the flat stomach that I did back in 2009, and consequently I can't wear the same clothes, but what has been difficult is finding really flattering pieces on the high street. Many of the items in my favourite shops are designed for women with a small chest, washboard abs and skinny thighs, whereas I'm the one trying to work around boobs that generate turbulence when I dance, not to mention a muffin top and the rest. 

When I'm confronted with endless body-con dresses, high neck crop tops and unforgiving high-waisted pencil skirts in stretch fabrics, it can feel a bit demoralising; suddenly buying a last-minute outfit for a party becomes near impossible because the selection just isn't there. In 2014 I am going to try and look past this shortfall and really nail down the retailers that play to my strengths - the ones that don't mind a bit of cleavage or a skirt that's built to skim cleverly and not to cling. I'm looking for empowering pieces to add to my collection. 

 Keep it simple at Fashion Week and beyond

3. Be more minimalist - in outfits and in wardrobe volume

Every time I see Fashion Week street style photos, I always gravitate towards the minimalist dressers. They look so chilled out and mature compared to the fraught tension behind the eyes of the brand-clad hipster teens with their eyes rolled, and the girls with bunches and Harajuku dresses trying to look coy. Okay, so the minimal look might have taken just as long to put together in reality, but what makes it extra special is its effortless facade - simple shapes, one or two colours, happy to blend into the background at Somerset House and watch the performances of others. Next year I want to channel this look in my outfit choices, but also in the sense of culling the amount of clothes I currently own.

A spring clean of my wardrobe is very much overdue, taking the opportunity to get rid of all those pieces that no longer fit my shape or my lifestyle. I'm notoriously sentimental about the things I own, being something of a self-confessed hoarder who can always think of a not-so-plausible scenario when I might need to wear or use an item, and this means that it's hard to pass anything onto the charity shops. But 2014 feels like a turning point in many ways, as I'll be travelling and freelancing before seeking a permanent editorial role later in the year, by which point I will have also turned 25. Maybe all that change is the perfect opportunity to be a bit more ruthless and hold onto less of the past.

What are your fashion resolutions for the year ahead, and will you keep them? Let me know on Twitter (@misspallen). 

Saint Laurent S/S14: The waif chic look has gone too far

There's a point at which the banality of seeing size 0 models on the catwalk goes too far; when it stops being banal and starts being a cry for help. For me, that point came when flicking through the images of the Spring/Summer 2014 Saint Laurent (the brand formerly known as YSL) collection by Hedi Slimane.

Slimane, it's fair to say, loves the waif chic look through and through; he champions Pete Doherty, grunge and the faux-punk rebellion of the over-hyped Cara Delevingne, and he's previously created a book of rock photographs in his spare time. However, whilst I'm willing to accept the flannel shirts and rock 'n' roll attitude he brings to the brand, I am not at all comfortable with the aesthetic that his models are simultaneously bringing to the table. 

[Images via Style.com]. The Saint Laurent look for next season: worryingly thin.

The skeletal figures are not only upsetting, but they're also distracting, to the point where I can barely see the clothes because all I can picture are the jutting collarbones, alarming thigh gaps and paper-thin arms. I know that these models have walked other shows this season, that they look like hundreds of others on the circuit, but I've never seen their shape - or lack of shape - emerge quite so disturbingly from the catwalk before. This is not femininity or girl power; it is plain and simple deprivation.

Perhaps it's the slimline aesthetic of Hedi Slimane's designs, with the deliberately skinny ties and the asymmetric tops and dresses designed to highlight the shoulder and the collarbone? Whatever it is, it's not making me feel good about fashion or the health of these poor girls. Yes, they lead pressured lives and may 'accidentally forget to eat' sometimes or 'have a really fast metabolism', but at some point shouldn't the people around them intervene for the sake of their wellbeing?

Somebody please take these girls aside and give them a hug.

Besides the lack of professional concern for the models' physical and mental health, what concerns me is that these girls will be seen by the fashion world, and everyone interested in it, as perfectly normal, right down to the pre-teens who idolise them. Surely there is something wrong with the message being sent out here.

Considering the legacy of fashion shows past, I guess it shouldn't even be shocking to see such emaciated figures strutting down the runway, as the size 0 phenomenon has stayed with us since the 90s and shows depressingly little sign of disappearing. Maybe I was naive to hope that we'd get a bit more diversity in modelling in the 21st Century, with the healthier figures used by Mark Fast and, most recently, championed in the form of step dancers at Rick Owens' S/S14 show. But change is what we need, before we really do get stuck in a rut of terrifying proportions for the next generation of women seeking beauty validation from the catwalk.

Whatever Slimane might think, I do not believe that these girls should be modelling and I do not believe they should be part of his look. I really hope this show isn't the shape of things to come.

19 years on, Prada has cast another black model... yes, this is the 21st century

It feels weird writing about momentous news when it doesn't sound quite as momentous as it should be. I am so glad that Prada has decided to cast a black model in its ad campaigns for the first time in 19 years - the last lucky lady was one Naomi Campbell, when we were in the age of the supermodel, back in '94 - but how on earth has it taken so long? Why has there been no black model deemed suitable in the interim? Unless I'm mistaken, the past two decades haven't exactly been devoid of candidates. 

 Malaika's high-profile ad for the upcoming season [Image via Jezebel.com]

Malaika Firth, the stunning British Kenyan model used in the Fall 13 campaign alongside famous Chinese model Fei Fei Sun, has now broken barriers in the fashion world for marking the turning point in this designer's campaigns. Miuccia Prada, whilst being a supremely talented woman, hasn't exactly done much for diversity in the past (see Jezebel), until she brought Jourdan Dunn onto the runway in 2008, which was seen as a revelation; please bear in mind, this was 2008, not 1908 - it should not have had to be a novelty. We should have been stamping down inequality on the catwalk decades ago, not just letting it slide because it's the done thing. There's making a trend, and then there's being narrow-minded.

Naomi's 1994 campaign, shot by Steven Meisel [Image via Fashionbombdaily.com]

In case Prada wasn't sure who would have been good to hire between 1994 and 2013, here are a few suggestions for potential ad campaign stars:

• Sessilee Lopez
• Chanel Iman
• Joan Smalls
• Arlenis Sosa
• Liya Kebede
• Alek Wek
• Nyasha Matonhodze (I know she's not as high profile as the others, but I think she'd make a great Prada girl - did you see her cover for Love Magazine?)
  

Basically, as amazing as it is to see Malaika and Fei Fei being given the nod by Miuccia, I think it's really sad that they've had to wait that long for the tide to turn. How can it be that 19 years is allowed to pass, during which we can assume non-white women don't wear Prada, buy into its branding or worship its designs (and, if they do, they're left feeling alienated and ignored)? This has to stop. 

P.S. If you want to read more about my writing on the catwalk's lack of ethnic diversity, check out my blog series. For more on body shapes and equality on the catwalk, click here.

Lauren Luke for Refuge: How to look your best the morning after

Watch Lauren Luke's video and make a difference. [Video via Panacea81, Lauren's YouTube channel]. 

In a society where beauty bloggers and YouTube sensations have the power to influence millions of young women with their content, I'm chuffed to see that make-up artist Lauren Luke has taken advantage of this with a brilliant new campaign for the charity Refuge. You may know Lauren for her ability to replicate a celebrity look in just a few minutes, but this time she's focusing on something much closer to home, with a situation that none of us would envy.

Lauren's latest video sees our heroine teaching viewers how to cover up a black eye, a split lip and bruising around the neck - luckily these injuries are fake, as it's all part of her work with the domestic violence organisation. Looking after women who have been suffering attacks by the hands of those closest to them, Refuge aims to 'help bring the issue out of the shadows' and stop this being a 'hidden crime'. Just like Lauren, many victims will struggle to conceal what they've been through (both mentally and physically - but this campaign aims to tackle what is visible to the naked eye). Make-up is not the answer, which is where Refuge comes in. 

Worryingly, some of the comments on the video indicate that not everyone understands the point of the campaign and some people assume that the cuts and bruises are real. One user asked: 'are the bruises real or fake? i hope they're fake :(' [sic] and another posted the completely glib 'Get well soon :)' but fortunately these people seem to be in the minority and the message of the video seems to have got across to most viewers. Producing viral content such as this on the very channels that the next generation is addicted to is a great way of approaching a problem when straightforward advertising often falls on deaf ears. Lauren's status as a role model to women has been used to good effect and I think it's really positive that she's reaching out to her fans so directly, with the video being fully explained at the end but otherwise looking like one of her normal tutorials.

I wish Lauren and Refuge success with the campaign, which is so vitally needed at a time when we're being bombarded with promotional images for the singer Chris Brown's new album across billboards and magazine ads; this being the man who savagely attacked his partner Rihanna only a few years ago. If the media and society's conscience is so short then it's important to look at new ways to make powerful viral content that speaks out against domestic violence, which is why this video is so pivotal.

Watch it, share it and spread the word, using the Twitter hashtag #dontcoveritup. 

Has Vogue Italia's Black Issue Changed Anything? Part 3: Views on 'Blackface'

If you've been following my blog posts about the need for diversity in the fashion world, you'll know that it's time for the third and final part of the series (and those of you who've not seen part 1 and part 2 can quickly catch up!). Now it's time for some more analysis, with help from Jezebel.com, Sola Oyebade of Mahogany Model Management, and academic Carol Tulloch.

Models on the catwalk, and how this is inextricably linked to editorial content

It is also vital to consider the impact of catwalk shows on editorial content, because models that are frequently booked for the catwalk will also be used heavily in magazines, particularly those crowned ‘the next big thing’. Fashion shows are a great place to analyse the industry’s attitude to racial inclusion, especially as the designers themselves decide who will walk and who has the right look of the season. It is therefore unsurprising, in light of what I have previously discussed, that few designers actively support racial minorities on their catwalks and most are reluctant to discuss why this should be the case.

The website Jezebel has painstakingly analysed New York Fashion Week’s models in terms of ethnic origin and has written profusely on the findings. It transpires that non-white visibility has always been incredibly low and makes only small increases each season. By looking at the diagrams for the Spring/Summer 2011 shows provided by Jezebel, as seen below, it is easy to analyse the scale of the problem in the modelling industry. 

 [Image via Jezebel.com]

As the image depicts, Spring/Summer 2011 was still a heavily Caucasian affair, with 81.8% of show models belonging to that racial category. Catwalk reports revealed that many shows shared the same non-white models, so their figure of 18.2% could be even worse than previously suspected as the number of non-white models hired will not be as great as 18.2% in total. The accompanying graphic proves to us that the use of non-white models is not improving year by year, as the media would often like us to believe, and indeed it seems to fluctuate. Obviously with black models occupying 4.9% in Fall/Winter 2008 and 8.4% in Spring/Summer 2011 then promising results can be achieved, but this is not to say that the statistics will not decrease next season. There is no sure sign of improvement to be seen in these statistics and no way of predicting the racial diversity of the Fall/Winter 2011 shows in New York, or indeed any other fashion capital, because there are no guarantees here. One could have easily predicted a sharp rise in the number of models of African descent following Barack Obama’s electoral victory at the beginning of 2009 (looking at the Fall/Winter 2010 statistics compared to those of Fall/Winter 2009), but the increase here was only 0.5%. New York Fashion Week designers clearly have no great desire to jump on the Barack Obama bandwagon in terms of genuine ethnic visibility. 
 

Britain is not immune to such racial discrimination regarding its models, and several modelling agency C.E.Os have stood against the grain and campaigned for change. Two of these would be Carole White, of Premier Model Management, and Sola Oyebade. Sola, the founder of Mahogany Model Management, based the company around the motto ‘Injecting colour into mainstream fashion’. Mahogany aims to properly represent people of colour in the modelling industry and Oyebade has also become affiliated with the annual Top Model of Colour awards. He has protested against London Fashion Week’s lack of ethnicity, saying that the organisers ‘refuse to put a fair proportion of models of colour on the catwalk... London Fashion Week & the British Fashion Council are blatantly open about the "industry Apartheid" they are practising’ (2008). In response, a spokesperson for the British Fashion Council (BFC) suggested that it is a designer’s responsibility to choose their own models and the BFC has no control over ‘the aesthetic’ of a show. However the BFC offered to write to the designers ‘to remind them of the culturally diverse community we live in when casting models for their shows and ensuring that those models truly reflect that diversity’. They also reminded Oyebade that ‘Model of the Year at the British Fashion Awards 2008 went to Jourdan Dunn, highlighting the role she is playing in increasing the profile of black models’ which, though a brilliant achievement for Dunn, hardly indicates a seismic shift in the attitude of the fashion industry as a whole. 

Meanwhile, Carole White has been working as a modelling agent for many years and ‘after a brief golden age in the Eighties and Nineties, Ms White's analysis suggests that fashion show designers and the industry media have regressed to an earlier, more blinkered approach’ to black models (Sharp, R., 2008). 

What are the detrimental effects of white dominance in fashion?

The fashion industry plays a vital part in the economy and is highly effective at reaching out to consumers and influencing their lives. The clothes we choose to wear every day can often be carefully considered and millions of people consult fashion magazines for advice or inspiration, most notably young women. So what happens when this main audience is presented with racially biased content on a weekly or monthly basis, and it becomes alien to see a non-European face within editorial content?
  
Carol Tulloch, a research fellow in Black Visual and Material Culture at the V&A, believes that ‘young black people will not struggle to find role models if there are none in fashion magazines, as they can use other outlets. These days there’s YouTube, internet forums and all kinds of music channels which will give them a chance to learn about black culture.’ However, she admits that ‘black women are under-used in fashion’ and greater visibility would be a positive change (to Polly Allen, 2010). 

Even one of the most prominent and successful black models, Naomi Campbell, is little-used in fashion magazines and her personal problems often overshadow her working life. Whilst Campbell appeared on the cover of Interview magazine and the key fashion shoot was staged around her, the narrative of this shoot detracted from the positivity of her prominence. Interview magazine chose to show Campbell as a dominatrix, subjecting her male companion to violence and humiliation, which seemed to painfully echo her real-life reputation as an aggressive woman who has been frequently accused of physically abuse her own staff. This overshadows Campbell’s position as a role model to many non-white women, which was discussed in the accompanying interview by Tony Shafrazi, along with her humanitarian work. 

 Naomi Cambell for Interview Magazine, 2010, shot by Mert & Marcus. 

[Image via Fashionbombdaily.com]

Carol Tulloch, like many other academics specialising in black culture, believes that ‘Naomi Campbell broke barriers – I know it’s a bit of a cliché to say that, but she did such a lot for black women, especially when she worked with photographers such as Ray Petri, who used black models when not many others would’ (to Polly Allen, 2010). The photo shoot in Interview magazine does not present Campbell as breaking any barriers beyond those of taste.  

What conclusions can we draw from this? 

As the journalist Nell Frizzell questioned, ‘Will the recession make publishers, advertisers and editors even more wary of having black people in their magazines?’ and it is honestly difficult to tell. Publishers are genuinely suffering in the recession, but knowing the success of the Black Issue, maybe greater non-white visibility would gain readers for a magazine as well as media exposure and revenue. However, there is the opposite risk of magazines using the recession as an excuse for not using black figures, leaving them to “play it safe” with Caucasian-filled pages. 
    

The way forward, as I see it, would be to start with the catwalk and then magazines will follow accordingly. Robin Givhan, blogging for the Washington Post, admitted that ‘Sure, it would be nice to have a veritable United Nations on the runway. But this is fashion and it's all about personal vision, not we-shall-overcome’ (2008). If the designers begin to see non-white people in their creative vision then our fashion magazines will be the first to jump on that particular trend. Yet model aesthetics do not change as rapidly as the seasons of fashion; Supermodels held court for the 80s and 90s until the waif look arrived with grunge, and that malnourished look has remained popular for the majority of catwalk stars ever since. With every attempt at differentiation on the catwalk, waves of scandal have followed, so it’s hardly surprising that ethnicity will not be embraced overnight. 

In the words of Sessilee Lopez, ‘I’m hopeful that one day the industry will see that black — in all its shades — is beautiful’ (Blay, 2010). In light of Vogue Italia’s Black Issue, it is evident that using non-Caucasian models does not damage circulation figures in the slightest, and consumers are clearly supportive of diversity in fashion magazines and on the catwalk. There is no real excuse not to take a leap of faith and give the public what it deserves, which is a fashion industry that won’t just take the money of ethnic minorities, but will represent them and acknowledge them as fashionable too. Homogenous content is unremarkable and incredibly lazy in an industry which defines itself on being inspirational and creative, and it is time to move on.  

What do you think - is it time for things to change? Let me know.