As culture has become more visual, clothes that speak of galleries, exhibitions and artist studios have found widespread appeal. These are style ideals that speak of purpose, plans – and the legacy of Pheobe Philo
- Read more from the autumn/winter 2019 edition of The Fashion, our biannual fashion supplement
The 60s had miniskirts, the 70s had flares, the 80s had shoulderpads. Every decade has a look. True, in each case this is an appalling oversimplification. Flares did not rule the whole of the 70s, for instance: by the summer of 1978, Sandy was rocking wet-look drainpipes in Grease. So to put your head above the parapet and attempt to skewer the look of the decade before that decade is even over is, clearly, madness.
But I’m going to do it anyway, so here goes. For a certain type of woman in the decade that is now drawing to a close, the unspoken style ideal was to look like you worked in the art world. This involved interesting neutrals (mostly navy for the first half of the decade, grey and beige the second) with sophisticated, painterly accent colours such as mustard or fuchsia. It meant a sihouette that was de-centred, abstracted from the shape of the body below. It called for unfussy pieces with intriguing details: a simple dress with a statement sleeve, for instance. There was little skin on show: there were a lot of funnel necks, then polos, and skirts were below the knee for most of the decade. There were elements of menswear – blazers, tailored trousers, unisex white trainers or Gucci loafers – but these were mixed with feminine silk blouses rather than styled in a performatively androgynous Annie Hall kind of way. For evening, tight black dresses languished unworn in favour of elevated, accessorised versions of the daywear look, or bold dresses with a certain flamboyance of colour or print or silhouette.
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