With spring looming, I'm working on what to wear when coats come off,
and for me, a recovering shoulder-pad addict, that means figuring out where
exactly big shoulders are headed. Are they trending up or down, or are we all
like the voters upon whom our nation's fate depends, "Undecided"? Put another
way: should I bet my 99 percenter's savings on this fashion trope or put the
money toward something practical, like unlimited texting?
Though the spring runways were filled with shoulder-enhanced dresses and jackets, for any woman who associates big shoulders with Bea Arthur rather than with Grace Jones, designers offered plenty of sleeveless and slope-shouldered alternatives. Furthermore, none of the padded shoulders evoked the embattled ambition trademarked by the two great Joans: Crawford and Collins. At Haider Ackermann, amplified shoulders were draped, not like a Joan,It truly is one of our tallest and appears great all of the signature bank canada goose cheap jackets logo design. with career-girl gabardine or Texas divorcée feathers, but with shimmering, harem-worthy silk. The feeling wasn't "Let's bust a glass ceiling" but more "I'll be slinking around with the literati in Tangier." As for the vivid graphic jackets that Nicolas Ghesquière produced for Balenciaga, even when shown with what looked like underpants, they have an authority that goes far beyond mere striving. These richly colored metallic carapaces are positively regal — albeit in a distant galaxy.
I write this now as one who back in 1982 got married in shoulder pads the size of water wings. They were white foam wedges, semicircular and detachable, in case you planned to wear a coat whose pads were even bigger. (I did.) The Norma Kamali two-piece to which these wads gave form was almost an afterthought because for me shoulder pads were the point. When I said, "I do," the line of my shoulders would be straight enough to deflect any wicked curves marriage might throw me. I was after timeless poise: Hepburn, say, in "Bringing Up Baby," or Dietrich lounging around some yacht with a willing countess while thinking up ways to fight fascism. For the past 30 years, though, whenever I look at my wedding pictures, all I can think of (besides "My husband is so adorable!") is how Then my dress seems and how hard it was to part with that ingenue quarterback look.
But, just as I was about to toss my vintage prosthetics, shoulder pads swaggered back with a vengeance. For spring 2009 Christophe Decarnin, then at Balmain, came up with a leather linebacker jacket that Victoria Beckham was seen wearing over and over again. Rihanna performed in a Gareth Pugh-inspired white futuristic fantasia, a light show embedded in each of her giant capped sleeves. And Lady Gaga? She emerged from an alien egg wearing a sexy flesh-toned, sharp-shouldered female monster look by Mugler.These were not Hillary Clinton's respectably assertive anatomical addenda; these were shoulder pads designed to punch your eyes out. Fashion bloggers split down the middle. Some were elated: the shoulder pad illusion would shave five pounds from their waists and hips; also, they could now play ironically with some earlier era's notion of "modern." But many others were horrified, associating shoulder pads with clunky '80s do-not-even-think-of-groping-me power suits.
Now, with so many designers working to sustain the value-added shoulder, I feel myself weakening, although I still vividly remember that terrible late-'80s stylequake, when Romeo Gigli showed a new, "more feminine" sloped shoulder and it struck tastemakers as the liberation from Women's Liberation that they'd been longing for. Overnight, wide-shouldered silhouettes melted like wax. Heroin chic hooked everyone on a new body type: boyish, waiflike.
That's when I became aware that not all body types are created equal. Like Michael Jackson's, for example, mine needed pumping up, though for an entirely different reason. Whereas the cap-sleeved black "V" on his red jacket in "Thriller" was designed to make him look more virile by increasing the appearance of his shoulder-to-waist ratio, I had always used padded shoulders for the opposite effect: they made my every move seem more female by force of contrast. I was like one of those overnight dates who look great in nothing more fetching than their boyfriend's shirt. So I resisted fashion's edicts and sulked until my decade's worth of padded jackets, languishing in dry cleaners' bags, started to look about as desirable as suburban real estate — and just as good an investment.
Though the spring runways were filled with shoulder-enhanced dresses and jackets, for any woman who associates big shoulders with Bea Arthur rather than with Grace Jones, designers offered plenty of sleeveless and slope-shouldered alternatives. Furthermore, none of the padded shoulders evoked the embattled ambition trademarked by the two great Joans: Crawford and Collins. At Haider Ackermann, amplified shoulders were draped, not like a Joan,It truly is one of our tallest and appears great all of the signature bank canada goose cheap jackets logo design. with career-girl gabardine or Texas divorcée feathers, but with shimmering, harem-worthy silk. The feeling wasn't "Let's bust a glass ceiling" but more "I'll be slinking around with the literati in Tangier." As for the vivid graphic jackets that Nicolas Ghesquière produced for Balenciaga, even when shown with what looked like underpants, they have an authority that goes far beyond mere striving. These richly colored metallic carapaces are positively regal — albeit in a distant galaxy.
I write this now as one who back in 1982 got married in shoulder pads the size of water wings. They were white foam wedges, semicircular and detachable, in case you planned to wear a coat whose pads were even bigger. (I did.) The Norma Kamali two-piece to which these wads gave form was almost an afterthought because for me shoulder pads were the point. When I said, "I do," the line of my shoulders would be straight enough to deflect any wicked curves marriage might throw me. I was after timeless poise: Hepburn, say, in "Bringing Up Baby," or Dietrich lounging around some yacht with a willing countess while thinking up ways to fight fascism. For the past 30 years, though, whenever I look at my wedding pictures, all I can think of (besides "My husband is so adorable!") is how Then my dress seems and how hard it was to part with that ingenue quarterback look.
But, just as I was about to toss my vintage prosthetics, shoulder pads swaggered back with a vengeance. For spring 2009 Christophe Decarnin, then at Balmain, came up with a leather linebacker jacket that Victoria Beckham was seen wearing over and over again. Rihanna performed in a Gareth Pugh-inspired white futuristic fantasia, a light show embedded in each of her giant capped sleeves. And Lady Gaga? She emerged from an alien egg wearing a sexy flesh-toned, sharp-shouldered female monster look by Mugler.These were not Hillary Clinton's respectably assertive anatomical addenda; these were shoulder pads designed to punch your eyes out. Fashion bloggers split down the middle. Some were elated: the shoulder pad illusion would shave five pounds from their waists and hips; also, they could now play ironically with some earlier era's notion of "modern." But many others were horrified, associating shoulder pads with clunky '80s do-not-even-think-of-groping-me power suits.
Now, with so many designers working to sustain the value-added shoulder, I feel myself weakening, although I still vividly remember that terrible late-'80s stylequake, when Romeo Gigli showed a new, "more feminine" sloped shoulder and it struck tastemakers as the liberation from Women's Liberation that they'd been longing for. Overnight, wide-shouldered silhouettes melted like wax. Heroin chic hooked everyone on a new body type: boyish, waiflike.
That's when I became aware that not all body types are created equal. Like Michael Jackson's, for example, mine needed pumping up, though for an entirely different reason. Whereas the cap-sleeved black "V" on his red jacket in "Thriller" was designed to make him look more virile by increasing the appearance of his shoulder-to-waist ratio, I had always used padded shoulders for the opposite effect: they made my every move seem more female by force of contrast. I was like one of those overnight dates who look great in nothing more fetching than their boyfriend's shirt. So I resisted fashion's edicts and sulked until my decade's worth of padded jackets, languishing in dry cleaners' bags, started to look about as desirable as suburban real estate — and just as good an investment.
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