005 I would never joke about fashion
005 I would never joke about fashion
Fashion people shows, Sylvie Grateau, green is the most expensive colour.
I would never joke about fashion
Donald Glover and Maya Erskine in Mrs & Mrs Smith. Image credit: Amazon Prime
What makes a TV show a fashion people show? There’s been a bunch of actual fashion shows this year - The New Look, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Becoming Karl - and I’ve gobbled them all up. But maybe that’s all too obvious! Emily in Paris is finally, finally back too. But is it a fashion show or rather a huge, glossy pop cultural like, orb? Am still obsessed with Sylvie’s ineffable chicness though. When I interviewed Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu a few years ago (I know! She is much warmer than Sylvie’s hard chic parisienne-ness) she had such a great take on personal style.
"I like to try things, not to be ‘in fashion.’ I don't really care about that. It's more about what looks beautiful with a twist, with a sense of humour. That's really important. When you wear something that's supposed to be super elegant, to have that little twist, that I'm not taking it seriously. Because otherwise, you know, you're a princess. I'm not a princess.”
Emily in Paris is definitely a fashion show - with all the product placement and industry easter eggs and Sylive Grateau’s outfits to match - but I think fashion people shows are different. I think they need a few elements to count- a certain cult-ishness, it can’t be to everyone’s tastes so needs some tension and ick, the clothes must be a bat signal to other fashion people with perfect insider-y references and in some essential way it entwines with or even shapes culture.
Sylvie forever. Image credit: Netflix
One such show is Industry, which also just returned - and fittingly! - was mentioned on Puck’s Fashion People podcast (recommend!). Lauren Sherman believes it’s a fashion people show too, in part because practically the entire fashion industry was invited to the screening of the new season and the guys behind the show are fashion guys too. Set in the fictional investment bank Pierpoint in London it follows the kind of terrifyingly ambitious finance people you’d avoid at all cost if you weren’t so utterly compelled by them. Fashion here is a signifier of many things, which is why I think being a costume designer must be one of the best jobs of all time. The clothes in this world are an immediate reflection of class, status and consuming, bare and burning ambition and desires. I interviewed the show’s costume designer a few years ago and we had such an interesting conversation about how, in the UK especially, class and status is so tricky - it’s not just ‘quiet luxury,’ and not being ‘flashy’ with your new money but it’s also the tricky ‘tells’ about who belongs and who doesn’t. I can’t wait to see Yasmin Kara-Hanani’s (played by Marisa Abela) style evolve as she becomes more confident in herself, what she wants and how she will get it.
One more fashion people show that I’m late to but knew I’d love is the reboot of spy film Mr & Mrs Smith starring Donald Glover (a bonefide fashion person with the Bode wardrobe to match!) and Maya Erskine. The costumes are by Madeline Weeks, who was fashion director at GQ for 20 years and you can tell the touch of a fashion person!
I want to dress exactly like Jane, who Weeks described to GQ as such:
“Jane, she's wearing that same watch [a Cartier Tank] the whole time. She doesn't need a new watch. She wants to be cozy and wear soft, comfortable, elegant things like The Row or a Saint Laurent silk shirt or a Celine tweed blazer,” Weeks said.
But I’m also John Smith, who I can hard relate to when for an assignment at a ski resort he gets fully decked out in all the best ski gear before confessing to Jane that he can’t ski but he thought the clothes were fly! Also when he says he would never joke about fashion.
So really, I also think a fashion people show is any show starring Donald Glover.
Books
Compulsively tore through Real Americans, by Rachel Khong (reading under my doona with a torch mode). The multi-generational family saga, my established favourite genre, explored that very American idea and ideals of making your own fortune. And what that really means and what it might take from you and what even is fortune, if you examine it closely.
Buy it here.
& Nice Things
The Miu Miu girl
Turns out a lot of people want to be the spiky, hard to pin down, Miu Miu girl (who wouldn’t?!). I love this description of her in this New York Times article, by Brandon Veloria, a vintage dealer, “she’s in on the joke. She’s politically interested. She reads.”
But I also love this from Mrs Prada. The Miu Miu girl (she’s always a girl - girlhood is available to us all at any age!) is “rich-on-the-inside.”
She has, Mrs Prada wrote “a strength, and a tenderness. For instance, you can want to be beautiful and gentle but also intelligent, political.” Or as Mrs Prada said backstage at her RTW show back in March - one full of lady-like pencil skirts and fuzzy cardigans, little black dresses and leggings - “I think they are classics. Everyone can choose from them to be a child, or a lady. Every single morning, I decide if I’m going to be 15-years-old, or a lady near death.”
God, same.
Ennui au soleil (perfect headline, Airmail)
Jean Seberg and David Niven in Bonjour Tristesse. Image credit: Colombia Pictures
Am excited for a reboot of Bonjour Tristesse, of course (with Chloë Sevigny, ultimate Miu Miu girl!). This slim and scandalous novel is one my all-time favourites. But the original film, starring Jean Seberg is, alongside Gwyneth Paltrow in The Talented Mr Ripley, the eternal reference for perfect summer holiday dressing. Nobody has ever worn a chambray button-down shirt better.
Also, my eternally delightful colleague Jonah sent me this on Instagram (nobody is a better fashion encyclopaedia than J!) and we both commented on how Lagerfeld’s slim-down to wear Hedi Slimane suits captures the irrational commitment and desires fashion can spark.
Green is the most expensive colour
No colour enamours me more right now than deep green. Not jewel-like, not grass but a compelling forest green. Sylvie Grateau was wearing a perfect shade of it in the new season of Emily in Paris, a shade she’s worn before, and I think with the right fabric and cut absolutely nothing could look more expensive. Esp when worn with a dash of fashion froide, non? But where can I find this perfect shade?
Annie xx