The Ab Fab duo’s appearance at Stella McCartney’s Christmas party was a sign that fashion has finally found its funny bone
Fashion is in the middle of a tyre-squeakingly radical change of direction, and we’re not talking about hemlines. With the release of Zoolander 2 just two months away and an Absolutely Fabulous movie in the pipeline, 2016 is all set to be the year fashion gets funny. An industry that has always taken itself, I think it’s fair to say, just a teeny weeny bit too seriously, is finally in on the joke.
Stella McCartney was way ahead of the curve on this one. She made a cameo appearance in Ab Fab back in 2012, and has made the comic turns at her Bruton Street store’s Christmas lighting-up do a festive tradition for almost a decade. Peter Kay, Catherine Tate and Barry Humphries have all done the honours in the past. For 2015, she enlisted Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, the very on-trend best friends with whom she shared the British Fashion Awards stage earlier in the week, to flick the switch that lights up the shopfront with neon Santas. Cue a fashwan-style backhanded compliment about how McCartney’s win at the British Fashion Awards on Monday, for brand of the year, “came out of nowhere”.