We might not have all quite agreed on a suitable name for it, but I think we can all agree that while the sixties were known for its miniskirts and the eighties for its shoulder pads, this decade will be remembered for a little bit of both.
If we had to decide on a consistent style for the noughties, it would be inconsistency. Expensive shoes, cheap jewellery, vintage dresses, designer bags. The noughties mixed and matched better than any of the decades. This clash of styles can be put down to a few influences, but it has to be said that one of the biggest would be Patricia Field, stylist of Sex and the City.
Although the show began in 1999, it reached full fashion momentum in 2005, later in 2008 for the movie, and is set to keep its fashionable swing well into the next decade. The pioneering and daring looks of Carrie Bradshaw gave girls all over the world permission to team converse sneakers with ball gowns, Manolos with jeans, pearls with cargo pants and Haute Couture with thrift store finds. Super stylist Rachel Zoe and the Olsen twins also furthered the experimentation, inventing the bohemian look of feminine dresses, big sunglasses and vintage jewels.
Following on from this fashion madness is this fashion decade’s maddest man, Marc Jacobs. Realising that the logo mania that previously inhabited the nineties was a dying breed, Marc set out each season to breathe fresh life into the Louis Vuitton label and design the latest ‘It’ bag. Bags, toted round by little celebrities became the order of the day. From the Marc Jacobs ‘Stam’ bag, to the Chloe ‘Paddington’ bag, and the Mulberry 'Bayswater', the supersized, the luxurious and embellished, handbags became big, big money for labels, with many designers putting a lot of their focus and funds towards accessories.
Towards the later half of the decade, fashion’s focus fell towards our feet, with shoes becoming higher, bolder and brighter. As each season tried to out do the next, designer shoes developed into unwearable pieces of art (unless you're Daphne Guiness.) Platform, fetish and sculptural styles quickly worked their way into mainstream mass production, and drunken girls all around the world were left with some massive heel headaches on their walk home.
As if to counteract the ludicrous height of heels, the iconic Doc Martens returned. Thanks to Carrie’s pioneering efforts of embracing vintage clashes, the twenties, forties, sixties, seventies, eighties and even nineties all played their role in fashion this decade. We saw the return of high waists, body con dressing, shoulder pads, maxi dresses, flapper styles, acid denim, peasant skirts, tweed box coats and hem lines were at their all time highest (and for the first part of the year, jeans were at their all time lowest, but let’s just forget that ever even happened.)
The term metrosexual hit the mainstream media and men were given permission to experiment with hairstyles, bow ties, vests, three piece suits, flannel shirts and pork pie hats and documented their smart little fashion choices on their blogs, or were papped in the street by style bloggers.
Amongst all of this blogging and social networking, new youth cultures developed, significantly ‘Nu Rave’ which developed from a love of electro music and was translated into a taste for fluoro fashion, bright sneaker kicks, clashing prints and leggings. On the other side of the colour spectrum, black clad Indie kids, or hipsters as they have been termed, also came out of the woodwork donning a uniform of leather jackets, skinny jeans, Doc Martens and Wayfarer sunglasses.
Yes we’ve certainly come along way baby. But there’s no time for looking back. This entire decade has spent far too long looking back. It’s time for fashion to take us into the future, or at the very least something that doesn’t include the eighties. Please?
See you on the other side of 2010 and happy new year!