Fashion week trendspotting, pt 2

Because I'm still looking at NYFW pictures so you get to hear about my accumulated wisdom.

• Let's talk about colors. I got through part 1 without mentioning any colors other than mustard and gold. I also mentioned the romanticism trend, and you can probably guess from that where the colors are going: tons of pastels, tons of white. Tons of white. I am not kidding. At one point I felt like my retinas were going to burn out from looking at so many artistically-bleached-out lookbook pictures of white outfits on white backgrounds. (That said, there is also still tons of black, presumably because NYers can't get dressed without it, and, well, everything else too. Bright colors, neutrals, prints - I'm certainly not saying there are only pastels and white.)
• women's clothes with pockets, yay! (and lots of models striding down the catwalk with their hands in said pockets, presumably partly so everybody knows the pockets are there)
• I mentioned slashed-up sleeves before, but after that I started noticing that one of the ways the sleeves were slashed up often bared the shoulders. Lots of bare shoulders one way or another, like it's the new erogenous zone. (It's been a couple of days since I first wrote this, and I am ready to say that this is not a mini-trend; it looks more like a full-blown one. Shoulders galore.)
• mini trend: things with rows of buttons - on the front, on the sides, sometimes in the back. As long as they don't get totally carried away with this, I like it.
• Is there a name for fringe that's anchored at both ends? I don't feel like it's still fringe that way, but I don't know a word for it. Well, whatever it is, swag or draped or something? I don't know - I've seen multiple examples of it. For example: go here and click on the picture of look 6 to enlarge it. The skirt there is the kind of thing I'm talking about. (I tried on Twitter to link to particular pictures in the NYFW slideshows and I found that my links were just going to the first slide*, so I gave up on linking directly.)

* I tweeted a link of a picture of an outfit in a color I really liked (one of those golden-colored things) and found later that the link was going to Look 1 of the show instead, which was this mauve pantsuit that I really hated. That annoyed me greatly.

This isn't a trend per se but I was mostly pretty unimpressed with the actual clothing in the much-hyped Givenchy New York show. It was almost all lingerie looks in black and white - with a couple of fabulous evening gowns for variety, and some men in suits. There were something like 80 looks and I was yawning my way through most of it. (I did like the masks, but there were only a few of them. This is just the opposite of last fall's Givenchy show, where I pretty much hated all that face jewelry that all the models were wearing, but I loved the clothes.)


OK, here's another thing, it has nothing to do with trends because it's nothing new, but it's an observation about something that's starting to annoy me, which is see-through outfits. (This is not referring to the Givenchy show.) I almost hesitate to mention this because I feel like somebody's going to assume prudishness on my part and that's really not it. I don't mind seeing this stuff on the runway, but this is Ready-To-Wear, right, you're supposed to be able to wear this stuff out on the street, and how are you going to wear some of these? (For an example, go back to the link above, and go to Look 11. A bra or camisole is not really going to cut it, and even if you're flat-chested it's still too sheer.) It's one thing in the couture shows, where they show outfits unlined, but then later when some actress wears it to an awards show it's inevitably going to be lined. With ready-to-wear it just seems impractical, if it's not something that can be layered. I guess I just have to think of it as lingerie - but even Givenchy's lingerie looks weren't as impractical as that.

(I do realize that you can theoretically just go outside like that and damn the torpedos, but in Texas I'm pretty sure that would get you arrested. Most other places too, I suspect. I heard during the kerfluffle back a few weeks ago about Times Square that women can legally go topless in NYC, but I don't get the impression that many do.)