Dec 29, 2008
The bandage dress is back in style thanks to the shapely Kate Winslet. The immensely popular and talented actress showed up on the red carpet in a charcoal grey bandage dress and now this type of dress is flying off the racks of fashion boutiques in both North America and Europe. For those of you not familiar with this type of dress it is made out of a series of crises crosses of fabric. Usually the top bodice is quite high cut and the design may feature a criss crossing bandeau of fabric across the rest. Sometimes the bodice is more halter like. The fabric is very shaping and elasticized and the criss crossing design does suit quite a few different figure types. The signature of the bandage dress is usually a series of criss crosses that extend across the ribs, throughout the waist, across the hips and down through the thighs. Sometimes the dress is shorter but the coolest version, (the charcoal version worn by Winslet) goes to just below the knee. This beautiful dress is not for the faint of heart as it will highlight every curve of your body. She was not the only celebrity spotted around the holiday season wearing this dress. There was also Cheryl Cole, Kelly Brook and Rachel Weisz sporting the sexy tight fitting dresses which are not for a self conscious individual. The version that Kate Winslet was wearing actually cost thirteen hundred U.K. pounds which is roughly 2600 U.S. dollars. The good news is that brands such as Topshop and French Connection are making knock offs of this particular style so everyone can now afford it. You will soon be able to find knock offs from Asia and India as well as it is such a popular design. The most slimming color is probably the black version of this dress followed by browns. If you are going to wear a louder color like candy apple red in this style be careful! This is one of the most figure hugging designs that there is… This is not a new style. We first saw celebrities like Madonna and the model Gia wearing it in the early eighties. Bandage style dresses whether tightly wound or looser in style were very popular, especially among French and Japanese Designers. It was definitely a clothing design movement that had its roots in the punk and New Wave scenes at the time. The appeal of the style today is that it has been redone for 2008 and 2009. It is happier and trimmer in flair. The tight layers of elasticised fabric are not only body clinging but they also can be body trimming. The way the dresses are designed today they pinch in the waist, lift up the bosom and straighten out the back to give you a statuesque looking figure.
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Dec 26, 2008
2008 was a glamorous year in fashion but it definitely had its low points especially if you look at what some celebrities were wearing on some of the most important days of their lives. The year was also not that successful economically which will hurt fashion designers in the long run.
A good example of a fashion low point was Michelle Obama’s red and black dress that she wore on election night. This was a sock like dress in an unfortunate hue that was a bit too reminiscent of the clothes of Nancy Reagan. That fiery tomato red just did not seem to suit the atmosphere of that night.
Another weird fashion debacle were the weird prim powder blue and navy blue suits worn by Sarah Palin. In the end the $150,000 worth of clothes that was bought for her was donated to charity. The fact that women have to be dressed at all to be suitable for a political belief is kind of tragic in itself, especially when the clothes are so unattractive
The Worst Fashion Movie of this past year has to be that Sex and the City movie where nothing lived up to the understated elegance and originality of the clothes worn in the original series.
One of the saddest losses of 2008 was the death of the elegant Yves St. Laurent who put safari jackets on the map and brought a real street sensibility to fashion in the seventies.
However one of the saddest things about fashion in the U.S. is that it was the worst year for the fashion business since the Great Depression. Ann Taylor, a mainstay of New York socialites for many years ended up closing 117 stores. Eddie Bauer closed 37 stores and the companies Fashion Bug, Catherine’s and Lane Byrant are each losing 150 stores.
Even really successful brands seem to be affected by the recession. Gap closed 85 stores across the United States and Foot Locker shut down140 stores. Zales also closed 100 stores. Yet another casualty was Pacific Outlet which closed 154 outlets.
Another interesting development was announcement in the United States that the sales tax on clothes was going up despite the recent rash of disasters. This means that Americans will now maybe have to pay tax on clothes that are under $110.
The other plan coming from David Paterson’s office in the United States is to jack up the taxes on luxury good like furs and jewellery that cost over twenty grand. Not that this is the biggest disaster in the world but it could discourage some big spenders on fashion from spending as much as they normally would. It seems that this is not the best possible scenario at all when it comes to keeping fashion fierce as trendy and original as it has been the last decade. That is because the more expensive the fashions the more original they tend to be in design and the more influential in other ways. So the lowpoint of a recession when it comes to fashion will be that the artists in the industry suffer as their work is devalued or made even more inaccessible.
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