014 A leaf in the wind of a trend

On style and life lessons from DVF, Zadie Smith and Martin Amis, sequins as a public service and why we need real trends.

Diane von Fürstenberg, still the sexiest woman alive. Picture: Disney+

I skipped my newsletter last week. I could say it was because I was in China for work. Or because my to-do list makes me want to cry (this includes finding an outfit for my daughter’s glam ‘n’ glow disco!). But really, I have the same amount of hours in my day as Beyonce! It’s not that. 

The real reason is, like it is every time, is that when the world gets unbearable my genre of journalism (luxury! watches and jewellery! fashion!) always feels a bit piffly. This is me taking on the bias of all the men with their shirt sleeves rolled up in a news room, I know! I am the first person to defend fashion. It’s not only a big business that employs hundreds of millions of people, but it is an essential lens to understand politics, the world, economies, people and what motivates them. I believe in fashion. Still, I wanted to write about hats and the only one I could think of was bright red and unbearably ugly.

I interviewed a fashion designer recently who spoke about creating his beautiful world, and you’re allowed to come in, but don’t bring your shit with you! This is how I feel with my newsletter and the things I post on Instagram. But I have resolved one tiny thing. I don’t think it is a good thing to be quite so stomach droppingly surprised anymore. I don’t want to lose faith in people. But I need to expand my world. So when it turns out that someone I follow on Instagram, just some random, turned out to be a rabid Trump supporter - the worst, gleeful kind, I didn’t immediately unfollow her. I hovered over the button! What we give our attention to in this strange world is telling (and money making) after-all, and I don’t want her to have mine. But I’ll keep her there as a reminder that outside my beautiful, lucky world are people who have hardened and narrowed. I need to understand why so I don’t keep being surprised. 

Of the many articles and pieces of analysis I’ve read post election I found odd comfort in is this one, shared by Cheryl Strayed (balm to everyone’s soul). It’s easy to say things, it’s much harder to do them.

Martha with her car phone in the ‘80s.

Back to nice things and there are several things I am obsessed with this week, chiefly the Martha Stewart and Diane von Fürstenberg documentaries. Ballsy, tough, glamorous women who have sensual oil paintings of themselves in their homes and had a car phone in the ‘80s are my favourite kind. Martha’s quotes have been memed to death, but what I took from the documentary is that it is a powerful thing to reinvent yourself.

This goes for DVF, who must be the world’s most sensual woman. Her success, as Fran Lebowitz (did I tell you her I interviewed once!) says in the documentary is that extraordinary thing where she makes it seem like with one nifty little wrap dress you too could be a little bit like her. It’s not going to happen of course, but there’s still that tantalising little bit of, well, it might.

Some other notes from DVF:

• If you pack lightly you live lightly - my goal is to be a better packer in 2025, but tell my husband I’m not going to use his packing system! I want to roll like two slinky little wrap dresses and a pair of heels and one multi-purpose oil into my suitcase

• Fear is not an option! What if I stopped worrying about everything? How much more time I’d have to sit for an oil painting of myself?!

• You want to remember the woman, not the dress - the only way to do this is to wear clothes that you feel like yourself in.

Bella Freud’s Fashion Neurosis podcast is a masterclass in finding clothes you feel like yourself in, and why this matters. Zadie Smith was on it this week (!) and it was a joy. In part because it was a reminder that, of course, you can be the smartest woman on earth, and also care deeply about clothes. Appreciation of fashion is a kind of intelligence I think, especially when it’s so easy to dismiss.

It’s something that Zadie Smith talks about on the podcast, about how she dressed like a serious man, or in shapeless sexless blazer-y things in her early years so that she would be taken seriously as a writer. And how age has freed her to truly not care what people think.

I loved so much about this conversation. Like how when she attended an event with a dress code ‘business casual’ Stella McCartney told her that her bizarre outfit made her look like a secretary at Nat West in the ‘70s and she felt wrong and out of sorts all night (“I couldn’t think, I sweated!”). Firstly, business casual is an impossible dress code, and second, a bad outfit affects your ability to think straight. It’s true! I loved that Joan Crawford is one of her style icons, that she is a style advisor to her friends and that she thinks handkerchief hems are an abomination.

Knowing what you hate is as important as knowing what you love - in fashion and in life, I think. Zadie mentions Martin Amis (of course, because she doesn’t have a smart phone like the rest of us with our decaying brains) in this too, about how he said something about not being a leaf in the wind of a trend.

The quote actually came from an interview he gave to the Los Angeles Review of Books and it was about how he and his father disagreed about Catch-22.

“My father and I used to disagree about Catch-22. He thought it was crap. He used to say of me that I was a leaf in the wind of trend and fashion.”

Same, Martin.

As Bella Freud says in this episode, with the right outfit you can think better. And it’s not even about it looking great. It’s more that you’ve cleared the decks in a way to concentrate on other things.

It’s something I spoke to Amy Smilovic from Tibi about earlier this month too. With her styling sessions online and her philosophies around ‘creative pragmatism’ and ‘without fail’ wardrobe pieces, she’s given women a way to dress in a way that gives them space to just be. 

Amy Smilovic from Tibi.

As she told me for the article:

“I hear this often, and I know it might just sound so bizarre, but [customers] will tell me that even on the day of their husband’s death or their son’s death, going to a funeral, on a day that you’re not looking to be the best dressed at the funeral. And it is the last thing you ever want to think about ever having to do or get dressed for. But to somehow just sit there and at least feel like yourself in whatever you’ve just grabbed is so oddly comforting,” she says.

“So whether it’s you’ve got a big meeting with board members or the worst day of your life or the best day of your life, just to be able to show up and enjoy that day or experience what you should be experiencing that day rather than anything else is so liberating for people.”

We also spoke about trends, and how most of the micro-trends you see online are not real things! Step outside and you will not see people wearing clown-core or whatever. But we also spoke about how trends are actually essential in understanding fashion history, the roles of women, how we live.

As Amy says, “There's trends and then there's trends. If you think about the way trends were historically looked at, there were trends for corsetry, which meant that at that time, women were really confined to being at home or being looked at. And then you have the twenties where the corsetry was removed and there was a lot more freedom and experimentation. You have the fifties where things got very cleaned up and proper. You have the sixties, which started to bring in a movement of youth culture. And the seventies were about rebellion and the eighties were about strength. And the nineties were about kind of grounding and settling and experimentation. Those are trends that are driven by the waves of what's happening in the world and where our head is. I fully subscribe to those trends.”

So do I!

Grounded fancy!

Finally, I am dressing with more joy right now. You’ve got to find it when you can! And I’ve found it in a new, mid-life, obsession with sequins. Specifically sequined skirts which I have now realised are the perfect thing for adding a kind of glimmering, swishing texture and vitality to a look! The key thing to not feeling like a prom queen or a six-year-old at her glam ‘ glow disco (my own six-year-old loves this look for me) is to balance it out with something more utilitarian. My favourite outfit formula right now is a sequin skirt with a navy crewneck sweater and sandals or flat slingbacks. A plain T-shirt would be perfect too. I also wore my Harris Tapper one to the ballet with a white button-down I stole from my husband. All of these formulas offer a grounded kind of fancy. Anyway, as my friend Hannah says, sequins give joy to everyone - people always comment on them because it lifts their spirits too. Basically they’re an act of public service.

This is my favourite ever skirt from Jac & Jack

And this is my other favourite ever skirt, from Harris Tapper 

One more really nice thing: I loved this speech from Schiaparelli creative director Daniel Roseberry, who won the CFDA international designer of the year. 

schiaparelli

A post shared by @schiaparelli

When I interviewed him in 2022 he also told me the line he said in the speech, about how someone important to him had told me that dreams are expensive. So is it worth it? I asked him, and he looked at me in his very thoughtful way and I SWEAR he said, wow, these are really good questions. 

And he said:

“God, I think so. I don’t know if I’ll know for sure until like in 20 years. It comes at a huge cost. I just feel you have to walk through the doors that are open to you in life and this door is just open, so here we are. I think that it is worth it. I think it is.”

Books

I finally finished Alan Hollinghurst’s Our Evenings, and it was beautiful. It was both a coming out, and coming into being story. I took from it the gift of ageing and who softens and who hardens into themselves and the possibilities when you let someone in. Also, Alan Hollinghurst is so funny.

I’ve decided to go on an Edith Wharton jag - nobody chronicled the peculiarities of the upper classes, and those aspiring to be, better. I’m currently reading The Custom of the Country.

Annie xx