Post by simonsbanginbabe on Sept 12, 2005 14:22:12 GMT -5
www.sundayherald.com
British kids used to strive to be different, outrageous and a little bit offensive. Now they aspire to emulate bland American actors whose defining stylistic features are shiny hair and nice white teeth’
Sylvia Patterson
In 10 years’ time, when we’re all perched on our identical sofas imported from China for £1.99 a pair we’ll be watching I Love 2005 on TV screens the size of however big your living-room wall is. Apart from The News, which gets more Biblical by the day, everything else – the music, TV and especially the fashion – will be a dreamscape montage of indistinct, soporific pleasantry.
To the sound of Coldplay, Chris Martin anointing us all (“ah will fix yoooo…”) like pop’s own vicar in the parish of pleasant, the fashions of the day will slip across the screen like Brucie’s conveyor belt starring nothing whatsoever you would ever care to remember. Oh look, there’s some ‘hipster’ jeans. And a belt with a big buckle on. Crikey, it’s a pair of posh stiletto shoes. And a geezer’s suit. And would you believe it? Some trainers. And a big lime green bag that costs £1000. And a stripy top and sportswear everywhere and a backless dress for pretending you’re on a red carpet. And absolutely everything else is vintage. Which is to say, it was all someone else’s idea from quite some time ago and a much better idea than anyone’s come up with since. And so Brucie’s conveyor belt buckles asunder in billows of smoke and dies of cultural embarrassment.
This week, we were told almost a third of UK females aged 16-34 would love to look, more than any other woman alive, like Jennifer Aniston. Beyond her winningly pleasant features, expensively silken hair and unfeasible ability to remain thin in the face of divorce and humiliation, this is something to do with her ‘approachable’ style and fondness for high-street normality. We were told this, mind you, by Channel 5, the Poundstretcher of high-street TV but nobody can resist a survey, especially one that tells us most men, simultaneously, would love to look like Brad Pitt. Which means we’re all as straight-jacket enthralled by the pleasant as each other (a straight-jacket fashioned, surely, from Stella McCartney’s wardrobe of billowing cream-silk pleasantries). Charlotte Church, meanwhile, all booze-filled curves and fluorescent gowns gained the democratic votes of a mere three per cent of our pollsters.
While Pete Doherty polled one per cent for the blokes, proving a crack habit, a military hat from the army’n’navy and a pissed-up-jakey routine on the T-Rex karaoke is in no way the pulse of Now. Which is a shame, in many ways, the world wishing upon itself more Brad’n’ Jens, less Pete’n’Charlottes – who at least look like they use a bathroom now and again.
“British kids,” noted the Channel 5 presenter, “used to strive to be different, outrageous and a little bit offensive. Now they aspire to emulate bland American actors whose defining stylistic features are shiny hair and nice, white teeth. The eccentricity and imagination that once made Britain the global capital of youth culture has been replaced by mindless celebrity obsession.” So it’s the fault of celebrities, again.
A few months back, Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran – posturing peacock and sometime most fashionable male celebrity in Britain – had this to say about the current state of Fashion. “It’s a little drab isn’t it?” he pouted. “Music used to really drive the fashion industry, ideas starting on the street through the kids and the bands and working their way into the fashion houses and now that’s just not happening.
“The Seventies and Eighties were about individuality and standing out – Armani, Versace, Yogi Yamamoto, Commes des Garcons, Jean Paul Gaultier – whereas the Ninties and beyond has been all about fitting in. As hip-hop came in everything was about jeans and trainers and the right pair of socks. In the Ninties we had McQueen, certainly, but he wasn’t as daring. (And now designing, as it happens, for sportswear giant, Puma.)
“People seem much more afraid to take chances now. And that kind of safe environment breeds things that look and sound like things you’ve seen and heard before.”
Nick Rhodes, in fashion terms, is now a geriatric of 43. So let’s ask a young person, of 19, how she sees the era she’s defining. Mischa Barton, star of college-cult US TV show The OC (rich kids gone wrong, pleasant to look at) is currently the most fashionable teenager in the world, specialising in “boho chic” otherwise known as “stratospherically expensive jumble sale for toffs”.
“We live in a very superficial culture,” says the London-born Mischa who’s obsessed with Shakespeare, “and if I could’ve chosen when to live my prime years, this century wouldn’t be it. This era is driven by things that are so far from a human aspect. It’s all money. There’s much less freedom these days and we’re more conservative now than ever, more than we were in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties and it’s just becoming more conservative. Things are marketing-driven towards the young generation because people think young people have so much influence and are worth so much money. My generation is very competitive, from high school. By the time you get to college you pretty much plan out your whole life, a lot sooner than you might have a couple of generations ago.”
And what might this most sensible of 19-year-olds, the most fashionable 19-year-old on Earth, currently be wearing? “A woven brown skirt, a brown tank-top and my beat-up vintage boots.”
11 September 2005
British kids used to strive to be different, outrageous and a little bit offensive. Now they aspire to emulate bland American actors whose defining stylistic features are shiny hair and nice white teeth’
Sylvia Patterson
In 10 years’ time, when we’re all perched on our identical sofas imported from China for £1.99 a pair we’ll be watching I Love 2005 on TV screens the size of however big your living-room wall is. Apart from The News, which gets more Biblical by the day, everything else – the music, TV and especially the fashion – will be a dreamscape montage of indistinct, soporific pleasantry.
To the sound of Coldplay, Chris Martin anointing us all (“ah will fix yoooo…”) like pop’s own vicar in the parish of pleasant, the fashions of the day will slip across the screen like Brucie’s conveyor belt starring nothing whatsoever you would ever care to remember. Oh look, there’s some ‘hipster’ jeans. And a belt with a big buckle on. Crikey, it’s a pair of posh stiletto shoes. And a geezer’s suit. And would you believe it? Some trainers. And a big lime green bag that costs £1000. And a stripy top and sportswear everywhere and a backless dress for pretending you’re on a red carpet. And absolutely everything else is vintage. Which is to say, it was all someone else’s idea from quite some time ago and a much better idea than anyone’s come up with since. And so Brucie’s conveyor belt buckles asunder in billows of smoke and dies of cultural embarrassment.
This week, we were told almost a third of UK females aged 16-34 would love to look, more than any other woman alive, like Jennifer Aniston. Beyond her winningly pleasant features, expensively silken hair and unfeasible ability to remain thin in the face of divorce and humiliation, this is something to do with her ‘approachable’ style and fondness for high-street normality. We were told this, mind you, by Channel 5, the Poundstretcher of high-street TV but nobody can resist a survey, especially one that tells us most men, simultaneously, would love to look like Brad Pitt. Which means we’re all as straight-jacket enthralled by the pleasant as each other (a straight-jacket fashioned, surely, from Stella McCartney’s wardrobe of billowing cream-silk pleasantries). Charlotte Church, meanwhile, all booze-filled curves and fluorescent gowns gained the democratic votes of a mere three per cent of our pollsters.
While Pete Doherty polled one per cent for the blokes, proving a crack habit, a military hat from the army’n’navy and a pissed-up-jakey routine on the T-Rex karaoke is in no way the pulse of Now. Which is a shame, in many ways, the world wishing upon itself more Brad’n’ Jens, less Pete’n’Charlottes – who at least look like they use a bathroom now and again.
“British kids,” noted the Channel 5 presenter, “used to strive to be different, outrageous and a little bit offensive. Now they aspire to emulate bland American actors whose defining stylistic features are shiny hair and nice, white teeth. The eccentricity and imagination that once made Britain the global capital of youth culture has been replaced by mindless celebrity obsession.” So it’s the fault of celebrities, again.
A few months back, Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran – posturing peacock and sometime most fashionable male celebrity in Britain – had this to say about the current state of Fashion. “It’s a little drab isn’t it?” he pouted. “Music used to really drive the fashion industry, ideas starting on the street through the kids and the bands and working their way into the fashion houses and now that’s just not happening.
“The Seventies and Eighties were about individuality and standing out – Armani, Versace, Yogi Yamamoto, Commes des Garcons, Jean Paul Gaultier – whereas the Ninties and beyond has been all about fitting in. As hip-hop came in everything was about jeans and trainers and the right pair of socks. In the Ninties we had McQueen, certainly, but he wasn’t as daring. (And now designing, as it happens, for sportswear giant, Puma.)
“People seem much more afraid to take chances now. And that kind of safe environment breeds things that look and sound like things you’ve seen and heard before.”
Nick Rhodes, in fashion terms, is now a geriatric of 43. So let’s ask a young person, of 19, how she sees the era she’s defining. Mischa Barton, star of college-cult US TV show The OC (rich kids gone wrong, pleasant to look at) is currently the most fashionable teenager in the world, specialising in “boho chic” otherwise known as “stratospherically expensive jumble sale for toffs”.
“We live in a very superficial culture,” says the London-born Mischa who’s obsessed with Shakespeare, “and if I could’ve chosen when to live my prime years, this century wouldn’t be it. This era is driven by things that are so far from a human aspect. It’s all money. There’s much less freedom these days and we’re more conservative now than ever, more than we were in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties and it’s just becoming more conservative. Things are marketing-driven towards the young generation because people think young people have so much influence and are worth so much money. My generation is very competitive, from high school. By the time you get to college you pretty much plan out your whole life, a lot sooner than you might have a couple of generations ago.”
And what might this most sensible of 19-year-olds, the most fashionable 19-year-old on Earth, currently be wearing? “A woven brown skirt, a brown tank-top and my beat-up vintage boots.”
11 September 2005
