Working On A New Trend

November 10, 2023

In the latter half of the 20th Century, styles changed from one to another about every ten years or so.  That stopped in 1992 when Marc Jacobs (the heir apparent) to Perry Ellis's House showed his first Grunge show.  At the time it was hailed as a huge hit, but Jacobs lost his job after the show.  But no worries for him cause he went on to become a huge designer in his own right.  So Perry Ellis was right;  Jacobs had the talent and the foresight to be a great designer.  

That show ushered in a whole new way of fashion, but also a whole new way of marketing fashion, making fashion, designing fashion, and manufacturing fashion.  And not all of it was great.  Most of this century has seen the morphing of different forms of that fashion trend, but mostly designers and makers working to extricate ourselves from that not-so-great way of manufacturing clothing.  Today the marketer and consumer deal with a sub-standard product, produced in a sub-standard manner, with sub-standard materials.  Working out of that is hard.  

Why?  Because this sub-standard way of doing business is irrationally, immeasurably profitable.  Why?  For the simple reason that when you don't pay the makers hardly anything, you can make a ton of money.  That's very attractive for any financial backer, banker or marketer.  Maybe the one good thing that the pandemic did was to put a huge cramp in that cycle of manufacturing, and it's caused a pause where we can look at what we're wearing and what we're buying.  

So we're still in that pause period where we're still figuring our way out of things.  In the meantime, the consumer is sick and tired of the same ole thing for THIRTY YEARS - from 1992 to 2023.  

But alas, there is something else on the market.  How do we know?  What should we look for?  How can we move into that phase?  Believe it or not it's not all that hard.  It's a simple matter of knowing what to look for.  

OK - this is a great example and there's more about this in my blog below (or click the photo above).  Starting at the beginning of the 20th Century (and no, I'm not that old that I remember it, but I did get to play dress up in some of these dresses cause my grandmother and aunts love Elsa Schiaparelli), Elsa had a classic style that lent itself beautifully as a palette for her more outrageous artistic designs.  The palette was so classic, that when the war hit in the 1930s, this style became a mainstay until 1945 - again a very long time for a style to last.  There was World War II going on and rationing and a certain pride and bragging rights if you could make something last for a long time with a minimum amount of resources.  

Remember that last description, because in 1947, styles changed and the idea of rationing and using a minimum amount of resources went out the window with Dior.  The dress 2nd to the left above, used 30 yards of fabric, which was enough to make about 35 dresses.  It wasn't revolutionary, it was shockingly revolutionary, and that's the point and that's how trends get started.  

So what happened after the 30-yards-per-dress shocking design?  What could be more revolutionary?  Well, leave it to our favorite Mme. Chanel who commented:  "Dior, doesn't design clothes he upholsters women!"  The idea is that women had to be so cinched into their garments that women couldn't move if they had to.  Chanel came up with a classic love suit that you could move and work in but the suit even contained all the jewelry - the buttons were to be like jewels on the jacket.  
 

The jacket is so timeless and classic that even today it's in style.  After Karl Lagerfeld took over in 1985, Maison Chanel had a complete revitalization as Karl put his own mark on the jacket and made it pertinent, beautiful and glamorous again.  

But the jacket became rather boxy and old looking so we had to have a newer look, a modern sort of look, and Twiggy, Mary Quant and the British Invasion gave us that push toward a more modern look.  Can you see how we're going - from cinched waist to relaxed look to mod look?  This is NOT you're mother's Chanel jacket look.  This is young, new, fresh and completely different, and the first look for the Boomers.  It was this look that brought the Boomers into the fashion market.  

But that mod look grew too ritzy especially with the haute design of Europe all over it.  This is the height of Haute Couture in  Europe and in the US.  So what's the antithesis of that - hippies - and here's that Bohemian style taking off again.  

About here you would want to ask a question:  Why did fashion not stay with this Bohemian (basically a cheap style like Grunge) as long as Grunge has been with us?  Because of several reasons.  

1. Grunge changed the manufacturing business.  With the trade with China and Asia opening up, those markets jumped on the trend and created a manufacturing system that was plainly addictive for the Western consumer.  There was nothing like that in the 70s, where clothing was made exceedingly well, mostly because the consumer demanded it.  Why?  Because most of the consumers, including the very wealthy knew how a well-made garment looked, felt and hung, and if the garment didn't match that quality, it was deemed, cheap and of no value.  
2. Bohemian style occurred right before a big long-time boom in the world economy.  The 80s became a huge period of boom that lasted well into the 90s.  Bohemian looks just don't work well for a huge boom period, and thus......

Time to reflect the times....and YSL did this in spades.  Every season he came out with something more opulent than the last.  

By this time in my life, I'm seeing a trend - we go from androgyny of Schiaparelli to the va-va-va-voom of Dior, to the comfort of Chanel, to the mod of Mary Quant, to the Bohemian of the hippies, to the opulence of YSL.  See how the pendulum is swinging back and forth from androgyny to Marilyn Monroe to comfortable day dresses to modern style to Bohemian to opulence....can you guess what's next - yes, the exact opposite of opulence - grunge!

So what would be the opposite of grunge - Quiet Quality - quiet luxury.  No brash designer names, something very quiet and very, very well made.

These are some screen grabs off Instagram, and there are several things you notice:

1. Clothes fit, but aren't tight.  They shape around a certain part of a body as an accent, but not all the body
2. They drape like a dream
3. Some of them are very obvious luxury styles (Chanel striped jacket, camel jacket, cashmere sweater), but most of them are simply well made, well-fitted pants.  And I didn't even notice this till now, but not many dresses in that group - probably because I'm so totally enthralled with the pants and the drape of the pants and how totally cool they are from the way-too-tight-pants that we've all been seeing way too often.
4. The colors - they are muted, and usually either monotone (in camels, greys, whites or other background type color), or black and white, camel and white, but mostly they are very classic colors and classic colors that aren't there to create a fuss or a lot of noise.  No RED!  (I'm not sure that's me, but that's the trend!)
5. The waist - notice how the waist is accentuated, and yes, you Apples and Rectangles can accentuate your waist by nipping in under the bust to give the illusion of a waist.  You don't have to have a figure like Marilyn Monroe!

And this made my point - I got too enthralled with the pants, and still there are some pants in here that are beautiful.  But lots of skirts, it's just that we have to be careful about proportion and line and cut, which is exactly what you get into with classic trends.  And BTW, anything the twins do at their design house, The Row, is classic quality.  They may show a little of it out of proportion, but it's extremely well-made and beautifully proportioned when you buy the right size.  

This is why I love this StyleArc pattern so much that it's starting me to think about making a more quiet quality stealth luxury.
 

I have another pair on the cutting table already cut out and I also have a wonderful ponte houndstooth, that would go beautifully with that.  

The thing I think we have to be careful of here, is that this is quiet quality, and sometimes folks can get carried away and start getting noisy about it.  The whole thing about quiet quality is that the really rich go by the motto that you should only have your name in the paper 3 times in your life:  your birth, wedding and death.  That's how quiety they like to be.  

And these are a dead giveaway that you're not mostly quiet about anything from upper left clockwise:

• Jeans are not quiet quality and particularly frayed jeans and a oversized shirt (over-sized it out too),  I don't care how many rings you wear, it's not quality and not quiet quality.
• TMI - too much showing isn't quiet - the morphed version to the right is quiet - nice accent on the breast and leave the rest to the imagination, but still a little low-cut, but passable.
• More TMI - leaving nothing to the imagination means you're begging for gawking.  Gawking isn't quiet.
  
  Bottom Row:
• If you're twelve, this is great, not for a lady.
• See above, dress and act age appropriate - that's quiet quality.
• Big boots are not proportionally correct and therefore they aren't even close to quiet.

You can tell the difference here.  There's a waist or a neckline or a feature that's shown, while the rest is fitted. Fitted is a new word in the fashion vocabulary.  That means it's shaped to your body in a flattering way with ease - at least that was the old definition before stretch became a huge thing in clothing.  And I'm not disparaging stretch - believe me, I love it!  It's that like with anything used wrong it can mean a mess.  

I notice that folks look happy wearing quiet quality because most likely it's comfy and makes them feel good in their clothes.  I nice string of pearls or an elegant small pendant on a chain is a perfect accessory.  

Actually, I'm looking forward to dressing up a little more and can't wait to dig into more ideas in this quiet quality vein to see what new things I can come up with.  Doesn't mean I'm throwing out all my clothes, but some of my new ones will definitely be in this style.  

I can tell it's time to start hitting the Pinterest Boards!

The SewingArtistry Resource Library is designed to contain information to not only make your sewing better, but to aid in you fitting and flattering your shape, size and style.  Check it out. 

Look for future classes coming in 2024
The Core Pattern Shirt, (one of my favorites for woven core pattern that you can make into a myriad of different garments), 
Basic Knit Top (core pattern class for knit basic tops, shells, tees, dresses, and tunics)
 

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