Pastel. It's one of those fashion terms that, like 'nude', have no basis in reality. Have a look at the pastels in your local arts supply store. They come in all shades of the rainbow, not just the pretty girly shades we associate with the term. Just as nude refers to champagne, ecru, neutral and white-skinned flesh tones, we'll settle with pastel as the catch all term for washed out pretty tones of peach, salmon, apricot, lavender and sky blue.
Thanks to Dries Van Noten's fall 2009 collection and Chloe, it is going to be tres in to wear these pretty colours come spring. Once winter has passed, you will be the queen of the chic chicks if you sport a drop of pastel from one of our Australian labels.
Karla Spetic is fiendishly producing a white-spotted pink suit for you, alongside a lovely blue one. She has tied the blue into a sweet cocktail dress, and Dhini, Ksubi and Christopher Esber have that shade in production as well. For the pretty in pinks, you have a friend in Zimmermann, Jaayson Brunsdon, Nicola Finetti. Miss Unkon's RAFW show was virtually non-stop candy shades, so close your eyes and choose at random from them.
Pastel failed massively as a trend in the nineties. There was a season were producers and major Australian stores thought they'd drop a pastel bomb on consumers and hope it sold. It flopped and every Savers op shop store from Frankston to far flung Bourke were left with masses of deadstock. The only piece that seemed to work was a particularly flattering shade of light blue, smashed out by new to our shores chain store, Kookai.
This time around, in our new millenium, patel works because we are sick of the gloom of the global financial fuck-up, we will be totes ovs winter woollies when it hits stores. And then there's the style these soft shades are applied to.
Boyfriend blazers, "career" pants and sharp tailoring in general lend themselves to the contrasting softness of pastel. It's all very Charlie's Angels in the '70s*, and that's the comfortable nostalgia designers are hooking into right now.
Now it's just a matter of picking a colour, any colour and choosing your own pastel adventure.
*there was a time before Drew, Cam and Lucy.
Orly nails at Karla Spetic
Karla Spetic desert boots