The death of the show-off: how London fashion week embraced the new normal

http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2014/sep/16/death-showoff-london-fashion-week-normal-catwalk

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The moment you know that showing off is over? When it’s over even at London fashion week. After all, to catwalk (verb) means to show off. A fashion show is attitude as art, peacocking as commerce. But this LFW was different. There was no bombast, no pomp. The clothes on the catwalk were understatement, rather than statement dressing. Instead of strutting in six-inch heels, all high steps and flared nostrils and arched eyebrows, the models were in flat shoes, and they just – well, they walked. Like, you know, normal people.

The look on the catwalk was modest, in every sense. Skirts were knee-length, or thereabouts. Quite often, as at Richard Nicoll and J. JS Lee, the hem was dipped, longer at the back or front. (It seemed to say, “There’s no hemline-diktat this season, folks, anywhere around the knee is fine, really.”) They were worn with T-shirts, white shirts, sweatshirts. There were lots of dresses, too, but these seemed to take as their starting point the dress as simple, one-piece dressing rather than as a symbol of hourglass femininity. At Christopher Raeburn and at Preen, for instance, there were dresses in the form of long, zipped-up bomber jackets to above the knee. The denim jacket – icon of Normcore, the hipster trend for appropriation of the most boring clothing possible – showed up everywhere in London, just as it did last week in New York. And not just at traditionally streetstyle influenced-shows, but also, strikingly, at the mass-commercially focused Burberry. There were practical, slouchy rucksacks as It-bags at Preen. A fashion roster packed with designers who are strong minded to the point of perversity seemed to have made a pact to dial down, to take a break from making women jump through hoops. JW Anderson’s subversive, haute-androgyny became something easier, with contrast collars and flared sleeves accenting simple two-piece outfits. Roksanda – she has dropped the Ilincic as “a reflection on the designer’s signature simplicity”, which is rather this season – kept her gorgeous colours but toned down the pomp of the silhouette.

What really defines the new, no-fuss look on the catwalk – even more than the easycare sports fabrics, the no-nonsense primary colours, the practicality of flat shoes and rucksacks – is the shape. Silhouette defines fashion at its most primal level. You can use clothing to convey status in three different ways. One: tailoring, which hides the softness of the body behind a silhouette that appears square, manmade, almost robotic, and therefore suggests power in the sense of work, money or business. Two: drapery, which gives an air of spiritual or moral status, of strength or power beyond that visible to the naked eye (think of the lavish folds worn by religious leaders, by judges, by royalty, by brides). And three: tight, body-conscious clothing, which accentuates sexual or athletic power. Most of the time fashion rings the changes simply by switching between these three, all of which are power dressing in their own way. What is striking about next season’s clothes is that they do not fit into any of these three categories. No square shoulders; few lavish folds of fabric; hardly a poured-in party dress to be seen. There are T-shirts and sweatshirts, skirts that are neither skintight nor voluminous but somewhere in between. So, where’s the agenda?

At the Richard Nicoll show, there was an A4 piece of silver paper on each seat (or rather, at 35cm intervals along a section of white wooden bench, since that’s what a seat looks like at a show these days) that read, in white capital letters: “I had this dream, I had this feeling.” If there was an aspiration embodied in this week’s shows, Nicoll expressed it best, saying that the collection was about “the notion of slowing down and embracing calm, travel, fitness and work-life balance in the modern world”. The buzzwords of the week, which I heard almost every time I went backstage to talk to designers about their collections, were “easy” and “effortless”. Christopher Bailey at Burberry: “I like the ease of a flat shoe. Everything feels a bit more effortless and thrown on.” Alice Temperley, after a radically more laid-back collection that featured trainers with everything, called it “fresh and effortless”.

An era in which it became normal to live as if permanently trying to hustle one’s way into some imaginary VIP room of life – showing off with your clothes, showing off on social media, backcombing your hair and wearing sunglasses in the evening in an attempt to convey some kind of keeping-up-with-the-Mossy-Posse party lifestyle – is over. (The “humblebrag” hashtag has proved an effective way to police online bragging. Show off on social media and you will be instantly show-off-shamed – however subtle you thought you were being.) Wholesomeness is hot, in all senses. Fitness and healthy eating are no longer square or po-faced, but alpha. (Longterm Guardian readers: hey, remember when “muesli-eating” was an insult?) The ironic posturing of hipsterdom feels tired – and the only way to go after postmodern, it seems, is straight down the line.

Streetstyle blogging, which hothoused a thousand peacocks, effectively ate itself. What began as delightful, happenstance chronicling of the interestingly dressed has by now morphed into a vast and charmless industry of self-promotion, and the public interest is fading. Anna Dello Russo, editor-at-large of Vogue Japan and the ultimate fashion peacock, is now a fashion industry “national treasure” rather than a new-wave icon. (The new Gap campaign – Dress Normal – captures something about our waning appetite for peacockery.) Being visible online is losing its appeal, as the novelty wears off: Phoebe Philo, designer at Céline, describes true elegance as being invisible on Google. Instagram retains the most currency among the social media platforms – but for how long? It is, after all, increasingly populated by 12-year-olds. Give it two years, and it will be about as hip as Facebook.

This is about much more than fashion – but still, shoe height is key. For me – and I think lots of women feel the same – high heels have long been a kind of social crutch. A prop in intimidating company, like a cigarette at a party used to be; something to make you feel as if you at least look like you belong. But this season I wore flat shoes throughout London fashion week. On Monday, with a schedule of 10 hours of shows ending up at Tom Ford, and then direct to a reception at Downing Street – I had flats on, but I had put heels in my bag thinking I could wear them for the last bit. And then just as I was leaving the house, I put the heels back on the shelf. For the first time ever, I didn’t feel the need. And I didn’t miss them, not one bit. Without heels, I’m a very bog-standard height – but right now, that’s just fine, because no one else is wearing heels on the front row either. No one is going to be looking down their nose – they can’t, because they’re in Nikes, too.

The new normal is no one-season wonder. Fashion designers have been zero-ing on it in their own ways over the last year or two. Think of Victoria Beckham, gradually toning down her clothes and her heel height and her party profile, from glamazon to working woman. See Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel, ditching the fancy catwalk last season in favour of a supermarket, that icon of life’s tea-bath-bed days. The previous London fashion week, six months ago, threw up the Cara Delevingne-esque, sweatshirt-wearing tomboy as a style icon: looking back, that feels like an apt prequel to a season where sportswear runs through the fashion lexicon not in the ironic, 90s-revival way but simply because it’s what you wear on a Saturday if you’re going for a run later.

Here’s a funny thing about the peacocks, though. I miss them, just a little bit. There was lots to love about London fashion week this week: simple clothes that you or I could wear without looking like idiots, for instance. At Topshop there were three Victoria’s Secret models on the catwalk – Cara Delevingne, Jourdan Dunn, Lily Donaldson – and they were wearing flat sandals and clothes that were a tiny bit baggy, the stuff you wear on days you just want to be comfy, and they looked almost normal, which was sort of lovely. But at other moments, the lack of posturing felt like just that – a lack. One American fashion critic bemoaned the absence of “spine” at the London shows. Strange, but true: when you see it on a catwalk, “normal” looks quite out there.