My favourite kind of fashion isn’t the kind that gets itself on the front page. Not the omelette dresses, or the maternity negligees. Praise be to Queen RiRi for both of those, but the fashion moments that get me really hot under the collar are in the small print. The blink-and-you’d-miss-it changes in the fashion weather, when the style winds shift direction, and something suddenly looks chic.
I’m talking about, for instance, the first time I saw someone knot the belt of their trenchcoat instead of threading it through the buckle and realised that this was the key to making a trench look more Paris Vogue and less French policeman. Or when I clocked that by shoulder-robing your coat, rather than putting your arms into the sleeves, you could instantly elevate your entrance to any social situation to quite extraordinarily dramatic effect – a bit like the free-styling-trick version of arriving in a private jet. Or when Phoebe Philo at Celine did the hair-tucked-inside-the-polo neck thing. Or when the penny finally dropped that all the cool people had stopped wearing invisible trainer socks with their trainers and started wearing thick white sport socks instead (I think this happened about two years ago actually, but I have only just noticed).
