The Danish concept of cosiness has struck a chord this autumn. Now it is fashion’s turn to embrace the feelgood factor
Hoo-gah. Repeat after me. Rhymes with hula, as in hoop, but with a more pronounced stress on the first syllable. It matters, because this autumn you either need to master the water bottle challenge, or you need to learn to pronounce “hygge”. If you don’t know what the water bottle challenge is, that puts you automatically in the hygge camp.
Hygge is a Danish word that roughly translates as cosiness, conviviality, intimacy. It is a homespun, Nordic take on the French concept of joie de vivre. Coffee pots, cinnamon buns, candles; cashmere socks, hands wrapped around mugs. It is a chic way to bow out of the frenzied jollity of party season, but more sociable and fun than the yoga and clean-eating lifestyle. (Hot chocolate and red wine can be hygge, you will be glad to hear.)
Like Woody Allen, corduroy doesn’t quite mean what it once did
Corduroy makes you look intellectual. You can add a slim volume of poetry peeking out from a blazer pocket if you wish, but this probably labours the point. Just the fabric itself has enough of a campus-dwelling, Woody-Allen-watching vibe.
But like Woody Allen, corduroy doesn’t quite mean what it once did. Thirty five years ago, wearing a corduroy jacket meant something quite different (maverick anti-establishment) to wearing a tweed jacket (old duffer.) But that distinction is lost on anyone who is under about 35. Wearing cord and wearing tweed are now more or less interchangeable. Both mean: old person, or person who likes to spend time in the countryside, or person who reads actual physical books.
The second collection by the model and broadcaster launches next week at Marks & Spencer. Here, the Guardian’s fashion editor gives her review
Alexa Chung’s first raid of the archives got a thumbs up for bringing some much-needed cool to M&S, but this second season is the one that has us reaching for our wallets. Think same purity of fashion content, approximately 50% more wearability.
Take the pie-crust blouse, an Alexa signature. Last season, it was a trophy piece, but tricky IRL, thanks to the stiff back-fastening collar and the slim sleeves. In this collection, which drops on 1 November, a pale-blue style fastens down the front and an elasticated button loops at the cuff, a practical detail borrowed from the M&S school-uniform department.
The midi skirt, like a good pair of black trousers, is relaxed without being scruffy
The midi skirt – by which I mean a loose skirt whose hem hits a little below the knee – arrived in my wardrobe as a seasonal visitor, granted a temporary visa by dint of being on trend. Silver, with a pleasing swishiness, it was meant to represent a short-term, casual kind of hook-up, so I was surprised when this skirt made itself indispensable and moved in on a permanent basis. Our happy relationship has borne fruit: I now have five midi skirts, including a second silver one. (Yes, I do need both, thank you. The new one is pleated, so it’s quite different.)
The midi skirt, which you would imagine to be an almost polar opposite look to black trousers, has unexpectedly edged them out of my wardrobe. Weirdly, despite its vaguely housewifely air, it ticks lots of the same boxes. Looking smart makes me feel more confident up to the point where looking smart crosses into looking dolled-up, when it makes me feel more self-conscious. The midi skirt, like a good pair of black trousers, is relaxed without being scruffy. Also, it works with flat shoes as well as heels, both stylistically (there is something pleasingly modern about a loafer or trainers with a longish skirt) and from a self-image perspective (your legs don’t need to look longer if they are hidden by your skirt). And you can walk fast in it (can’t stand anything I can’t march in), and you don’t need to wear tights unless it is really cold.
Hoicked-up bosoms in push-up bras have all but vanished from fashionable circles – and the more natural ‘70s boob’ is making a comeback
There is something missing from fashion in 2016. It hasn’t been there in any of Alicia Vikander’s Louis Vuitton romantic, softly scoop-necked gowns, on the premiere tour of The Light Between Oceans. It wasn’t there on the best-dressed lists of the Met Gala in May, which were dominated by Beyoncé in high-necked skin-toned latex. It didn’t happen at Cannes, where Bella Hadid slayed all pretenders to her fashion throne in a red satin dress with a deep V to the waist, the smooth line from navel to waist accentuated by her swept-up hair. It was nowhere to be seen at the Oscars, where Jennifer Lawrence’s black lace Dior gown was free of obvious cantilevering.
Victoria’s Secret, spiritual home of the pneumatic cleavage, is marketing a new range of 'bralettes' without underwire
Minimalism. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? In theory, you should able to whack on a white shirt and black trousers, and sit back secure in the knowledge you were the epitome of minimal chic. But that’s not quite how it works. Some seasons a white shirt and black trousers is unbeatable. Others, it’s fine, but nothing more. And this autumn is one of the latter.
The waters are muddied here by the fact that some women can slay any room, anywhere, anytime, in a white shirt and black trousers. I know this for a fact because they are a hazard of the job, working in fashion. There I’ll be, slightly effortfully glammed up, and she’ll slink out of some atelier, emanating self-possession and making the rest of us feel like Cinderella’s stepsisters, wearing too much perfume and trying to jam our feet into uncomfortable shoes. It is unbelievably annoying, and also misleading, because this type of woman makes it look as if a white shirt and black trousers is always the answer. And it’s not.
From The Crown to Prince Harry’s new girlfriend, Meghan Markle, we are as obsessed as ever with how the royals look. Is it because, like them, we are all on public display now?
To be honest – and I say this as an unashamed Downton obsessive, so making no claim whatsoever to modish tastes in television – I didn’t think I was going to much like The Crown. It sounded to me like the kind of British national portrait whose value resides in its high resale value to American audiences. It felt like anachronistically well-trodden territory, in the Netflix age; as kneejerk-compelling yet as fundamentally “so-what?” as the redesigned shape of a Toblerone bar. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel as if I have been deprived of thinkpieces on the lines of “Not the Union Jack Waving type but the Queen is Actually Rather Marvellous”, over the past couple of years.
Sportswear integrated into your ‘smart’ wardrobe has been a theme in style for a while now, and this is the logical next step
You will have gathered by now that the fashionable way to wear your coat this winter is not just unbuttoned, but falling off your shoulders. The way it might be if you got home and then remembered, halfway through taking your coat off, that you’d left your phone in the car. Or if you were arriving at the opera and had arranged your mink stole to warm your upper arms without obscuring your diamond necklace.
I mean, I’m sorry, but – really? Even by fashion’s standards, this is madness, and that is saying something. And if it didn’t make much sense when it was on the catwalk in March, or first seen in glossy magazines in early September, then it makes a whole lot less sense now, when you put your coat on because you are cold rather than to model it as an objet d’art.
The president-elect’s infamous hair and tanned skin have been mocked for making him look absurd, but they are choices that suggest there is no one in his life who can tell him he is wrong
In the normal run of things, it would seem inconsequential to be discussing as fatuous a matter as the president-elect’s skin and hair before he has even set foot in the Oval Office.
However, given the circumstances, I am going to go right ahead.
Its festive ad may elicit tears, but squeeze on clothing business has resulted in tighter collection that adopts catwalk and street style for M&S customer
Technically, the Marks & Spencer fashion showcase is a reveal of hemlines and heel heights, but within two minutes of arriving at the new season preview I am talking feelings with the retailer’s CEO, Steve Rowe.
Silver shoes are my version of red lipstick: just impractical enough to lighten the mood, without causing any problems
I would love to be the sort of woman who wears red lipstick, but I have made my peace with the fact that this isn’t going to happen. I eat too often, check my reflection too infrequently, and anyway my mouth is too big. But – especially on a dull day – I love seeing the cheery, chin-up vibe of red lipstick on other women.
Silver shoes are my version of red lipstick. They are just impractical enough to lighten the mood, without causing any problems. A metallic leather is every bit as eye-catching as, for instance, a pale pink suede one, but you will not be scuppered by the first puddle you come across.
As worn by Alicia Vikander at the Oscars, Beyoncé in Lemonade and now Emma Watson as a feisty new Belle, the yellow dress is a curveball piece for a curveball era
This has been a year in which supposedly well-informed people have turned out to be woefully wrong in their predictions about many things, some of them really quite important, which makes me feel slightly better about what I am about to admit. OK, here goes: I was wrong, in February, about Alicia Vikander’s Oscars dress. I was right to say that she was channelling Belle from Beauty and the Beast, in her lemon strapless dress. But what I failed to grasp was that, in 2016, this was in fact a good thing; that Disney’s Belle was about to be rediscovered as a feminist hero by actor and UN goodwill ambassador Emma Watson. In an upcoming live-action film, Watson plays her as “a feisty young woman who spoke her mind and had all these ambitions, and was incredibly independent, wanted to see the world and was so smart”. In the new film, Belle has been brought up to date and given a career as an inventor. The yellow dress from the 1991 original, however, retains pride of place on screen – albeit with the sickly, 90s shade of the original (very Cher in Clueless, looking back) filtered into a softer mid-century yellow, the sort of shade that makes for a chic velvet sofa against a grey wall.
Get in the party spirit – but leave the dress at home
I am not one of those women who doesn’t like party dresses. That is not what this column is about. I sometimes think I would quite like to be that type, because women who scoff at frocks seem terrifically sophisticated, compared with my irredeemably basic instinct to start swooning over black lace and velvet and cut-out shoulder details at the first whiff of mince pie season.
But even though I am a party dress person (if you opened my wardrobe before you met me, you would think I didn’t have a job) I don’t always want to wear a party dress to go out. There are some nights when a fancy frock feels absolutely right, as much an after-dark classic as a straight-up martini. Other nights, the idea of putting a dress on feels a bit office party. A bit Here Come The Girls after their pre-drinks in All Bar One. Not feeling that vibe so much.
Samantha Cameron is launching her own fashion brand in early 2017. Is it a case of the former PM’s wife monetising her status, or does she know what she’s doing?
The launch of Cefinn, a new fashion brand by Samantha Cameron, confirms that first lady chic is the defining look of our era. They say that the mood of a decade crystallises halfway through and, as this one comes into focus, the preeminent style icons are variations on the theme of soft power. From the Duchess of Cambridge’s globally documented royal wardrobe to Michelle Obama’s three Vogue covers, the consort in the corridors of power is the supermodel of our time.
That our focus has drifted away from policy and toward the more glamorous, ephemeral elements of public life is so 2016. That Samantha Cameron is the first first lady to embark on the spousal equivalent of the after-dinner speech circuit by monetising the modern obsession with her wardrobe is a mark of Cameron’s instinctive grasp of fashion, business and the modern world. (Those who quibble that Samantha Cameron was never, technically, a first lady might want to consider whether they are guilty of the kind of pedantic establishment mindset that the global electorate has summarily rejected this year.)
Jeans have climbed back up the food chain, from being clothes for a Monday off to clothes for a Saturday night out
I’m not big on nostalgia, but I do quite miss the dress code that served through much of my youth, which went: “jeans and a going-out top”. This was as close to a formal dress code as evening engagements – as we never, ever called them – got. It worked a treat. You had a favourite pair of jeans, and then just swapped the top in and out as if you were dressing up one of those paper dolls with tabs on them. No heart-searching over whether you should wear tights, no need for complex underwear “solutions”, and no colour clashes to think about, because denim goes with everything.
Jeans-and-a-going-out-top hasn’t worked as a dress code for ages. Instead, we’ve been expected to either lean in to the party spirit with frocks that add to our to-do lists (fake tan application Friday morning, dry cleaner dropoff Saturday) or create dashing androgynous lines set off by impossible-to-source obscure Japanese trainers. And sometimes you think, “I’m not styling a look book here – I’m going to the pub. Can I not just keep my jeans on, step into high heels, put on a snazzier top and be done with it?”
From a Richmond by-election to Trump and more, look back on our real-time discussion about the week’s news and comment
Ok everyone. I will be heading off now, but please feel free to continue the discussion below the line. Thanks all! Email over thoughts and suggestions about this feature if you have any (sarah.marsh@theguardian.com)
They are always welcome!
I had one of those moments parents dread this week. Just as I was putting the kids to bed my eldest, aged 7, asked “Does Father Christmas really bring us the presents, or is it you and mummy who get them?” The question took me aback, and I’m afraid my reply was the rather unconvincing fluff of “Well, what do you think? It’s magic.” She said to me “Look me in the face and say that, so I can see if you are lying.” I was most conscious though that this was all in earshot of her 3-year-old brother. It’s been my policy not to lie to my children about anything. If they’ve asked where babies come from or questions about religion they get a very biological or honest answer. “Well some people believe Jesus was the son of God. But daddy doesn’t believe that.” However, Father Christmas, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy all make an appearance in our household - which I guess makes me a bit of a hypocrite on the honesty front. I was pleased today to find out I’m not alone, here is a lovely little collection of what parents tell their kids about Santa which is well worth your time.
The idea that NHS treatment should be denied or delayed for people who can be blamed for their condition is poisonous. It will lead to the end of an NHS founded on the principle that treatment is free for all, when they need it, regardless of their status, their worth, their morals, their state of mind. It didn’t surprise me that lot of smug people wrote comments after my piece praising the Vale of York NHS, backed by Downing Street, for putting obese people and smokers to the back of the queue. People like to feel good about themselves by imagining they are superior to others, the unlucky, the addicted, or the unworthy. Which of us, really, is so virtuous? Let’s have empathy and support for the people who need it most when they are ill and treat everyone according to need.
Forget Sam-Cam’s fashion range, one reader has other ideas ...
I'm just looking forward to Jeremy Corbyn's range of jams and preserves.
Samantha Cameron’s intention to launch her own fashion label has been the worst-kept secret in fashion. This week it was confirmed with an announcement that the Cefinn brand will go on sale early next year. So far, all we have to go on are two outfits, and the fact that the brand logo is eyebrow-raisingly close to the Celine font. More details will be in the January issue of Vogue, which is out on Monday. But the news got me thinking: why is it that we are so fascinated by the wardrobes of public figures? And what does using a spell in Downing Street as a launchpad for a fashion or lifestyle brand say about modern politics?
Another view on those bank notes from the comments
I don't believe so as it's just a slaughter by product, and if it's more efficient to use by products than we should go with that. Having said that we should do everything we can to reduce beef and dairy consumption, as it's not the by products but the big market for those main products that are environmentally unfriendly and unsustainable. So lets focus on the real culprits, not the by products.
The nation’s wombs were a battleground this week, as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists recommended that sufferers of severe pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS) should be offered cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).
The severe form of PMS affects about 2% of women, and is defined by psychological symptoms that interfere with work, school performance or relationships. According to the experts, CBT is a more effective treatment than antidepressants. Which sounds fair enough. But, of course, no.
I think it’s a reasonable demand that people who abhor and won’t partake in the death or suffering of animals to ask for alternative to a product they have no choice but to use. It’s funny how easily people can trivialise others’ beliefs when they’re not their own.
And if you get about 40kg of tallow-worthy fat from the average cow, how many cows would you need to make every single £5 note in circulation?
JUST OVER HALF OF ONE COW
We talked lunch this week, something that – perhaps because this feature runs around midday on a Friday – often comes up below the line. More specifically, it was the office lunches and your feelings towards your colleagues’ habits that turned cogitation to conversation.
Even though my co-worker re-heats fish at her desk (gag), she actually makes fun of me/picks on me for "taking a lunch break" (as she calls it) because I leave the office for lunch.
That is what I find most depressing about the al desko (as the author calls it) trend. It makes leaving the office something to be ashamed of, whether it is your right to do so or not: many appear to think you are not working hard enough because you've left your desk for lunch
Never mind the smell - it's working during your lunch that should be socially unacceptable. Previous generations worked hard to get us mandatory lunch breaks, but we willingly erode these rights with the creeping expectations of 'professionalism' - a mythology of sacrifice and work obsession that negates our own interests.
Less bothered by smells (unless they are incredibly vile) and more bothered by people who; eat with their mouth open / have weird clicky jaws / make weird munching sounds / take 2 hours to consume lunch.
I quite like having a nose and seeing what everyone's eating.
Today’s political news might be all about the Liberal Democrats’ win in Richmond Park, but next week a byelection happens in very different political territory. The Sleaford and North Hykeham constituency is in the Brexit heartland of Lincolnshire, and 62% of people in the relevant local authority area voted to leave the EU (in Richmond, 70% supported remain). As part of the Anywhere But Westminster series, I went there not to cover the electoral race – this is a very safe Tory seat – but to find out how the aftershocks of the EU referendum were playing out far from the capital.
Some are looking not only to Richmond, but to Sleaford, Lincolnshire, where there will be a byelection next week.
The result, along with the previous one at Witney, means that there's rich-pickings for any openly anti-brexit party. Sleaford could stop the bandwagon next week though.
37% of voters put the Conservatives into majority Government in 2015. 48% of voters supported Remain in 2016.
Here’s one of your views on that Richmond Park byelection:
I think what it means is that the country is more polarised than ever. Richmond is the kind of place where most people voted Remain. Rather than simply accept being told to "shut up" every five minutes, these people are now digging their heels in. The country is going to be divided for a very long time over this and the name-calling, wilful disregard of facts and tabloid hysteria have not helped one little bit. Neither, for that matter, has a government which has decided that "the will of the people" excludes millions who wanted exactly the opposite and that the referendum is a mandate not only to leave the EU, but to leave the single market, insult our neighbours, threaten people living legally in this country and sabotage the future prosperity of the nation. Paradoxically, both the Libdems and UKIP will be boosted by all this.
Our colleague James Walsh has been speaking to readers in the Richmond Park constituency, resulting in this piece which is worth a read:
What does the Lib Dem victory in Richmond mean? Could a pro-EU message take a swathe of seats from the Tories? This graph by pollster James Kanagasooriam suggests that around 20-25 seats have enough people who voted Remain to overturn the Tory majority from 2015, so would be vulnerable to a similar swing – even without any drop in Tory popularity more generally.
Richmond one of a small group of Tory seats vulnerable to Remain tactical voting. Graphic below indicates up to c.20-25 could be vulnerable pic.twitter.com/VeSWeylAaI
You’ve been sharing more vews in response to the question of sleep in the comments.
I definitely keep myself awake far too long in the evenings, mainly because I feel robbed of time after a day at work. When I come home I'm desperate just to spend time enjoying not being at work, relaxing, feeling equilibrium return. I arrive home exhausted and annoyed. I get a second wave of energy at about 9pm and that's bed by 11 gone out of the window.
Are we telling our bodies to do something totally unnatural?
For millennia, people went to sleep, then woke up for a few hours, then went back to sleep again. First sleep, second sleep. This is how we sleep. It's the natural way to do it. The idea of sleeping all night so we can go to work all day is entirely artificial, has only been around since the industrial revolution and not surprisingly, many people can't do it. What's surprising is that we can expect them to, or even ask them to do something so unnatural.
In one of my first jobs about thirty years ago, one of the manager's I worked for used to have a short nap in his office after lunch. But those were definitely different, less pressured times.
We look forward to getting started. This is a space for our readers to discuss the week’s news and comment articles, with input from writers above the line. It’s been an eventful week, and we will talk about everything from the sleeplessness epidemic to the Richmond byelection. Join us now – and if you have any questions or comments about this feature get in touch (sarah.marsh@theguardian.com)
French culture minister joins music producer Pharrell Williams for show at newly reopened hotel marking fashion house’s French heritage
To glean the strategy behind Chanel’s no-expense-spared catwalk spectacular at the newly reopened Paris Ritz on Tuesday, look no further than the seating plan.
The brand’s president of fashion, Bruno Pavlovsky, placed at his right hand the French culture minister Audrey Azoulay, who wore an elegant red and black jacket in Chanel’s distinctive boucle tweed. At the next table was music producer Pharrell Williams, winner of ten Grammy awards, and French-Cuban musical duo Ibeyi, made up of 19-year-old twins Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Díaz.
A tight, sequinned dress suggests you’ve had the office do circled on your calendar since July. Instead, the best way to make a style statement this year is with separates
I always find myself in the centre of a tug of love at this time of year because I love fashion, but I also really, really love Christmas. And fashion and the festive season have never really seen eye to eye. Fashion is navy cashmere, sleek tailoring and expensively distressed denim; Christmas is novelty snowflake knits and glittery antler deeley boppers, Will Ferrell in yellow elf leggings and Mariah Carey in an itsy bitsy Santa suit. Christmas is dirty carbs rather than clean eating, rosy cheeks instead of Kardashian contouring.
The conflict comes to a head when you have to figure out what to wear for a Christmas party. Do you look Christmassy – sparkly, jolly, fun, appropriate – or do you look nice and true to yourself? The conventional Christmas party dress (tight, dark, sparkly) feels a bit dull, for all its shine. As if it has sequins where its personality should be.
No one criticises male politicians for their clothes, so why do the likes of Melania Trump and Theresa May come in for such flak over their fashion choices?
Should the hypothesised invitation to Buckingham Palace arrive, Melania Trump will not be able to do as Michelle Obama did and have Tom Ford run up a gown for the occasion. Neither will Marc Jacobs, Phillip Lim or Sophie Theallet – labels of choice for the current first lady – be taking her calls. All of these designers have taken a stand against the incoming administration by making it clear that, as of the inauguration in January, dressing the first lady will cease to be an honour they choose to accept.
This makes no material difference whatsoever. Melania Trump will continue to wear designer clothes of her choice, simply by paying for them. She bought both the white Roksanda “Margot” dress she wore for her Republican convention speech and the Balmain camel coat in which she cast her vote on Net-A-Porter, paying around £1,000 and £2,500 respectively. Fashion industry website Women’s Wear Daily reported that the Ralph Lauren jumpsuit she wore for her husband’s victory speech, which retails for around £3,000, was purchased at full price at Lauren’s Madison Avenue boutique.
The most influential outfit of the year featured no clothes at all. When Kim Kardashian posted a hotel-bathroom nude selfie on Instagram back in March, she kickstarted a row over how this peculiarly narcissistic form of self-expression squares with its advocate’s self-proclaimed feminism. Should you doubt the impact this image had on our fashion psyche, consider this: shopping site Lyst reported a 400% rise in searches for black bandeau bikinis that would recreate the effect of the black censorship bars. Yes, censor-bar chic is a thing. At Paris fashion week, a few weeks later, Kim’s sister Kendall wore a minimalist black bandeau top that echoed Kim’s look. With it, she wore a black ribbon choker, a trend that has been worn by every female celebrity under 25 this year, and is now all over the high street. If you are a teen girl, you are so getting a Claire’s choker in your stocking. Which is odd, because a choker is as rude as jewellery gets. The meaning of the choker is, basically, nudity: see Manet’s Olympia.