On a cold, bright January morning in early 2023, a chauffeured car pulled up to the marble steps of the Petit Palais in Paris and out emerged lip gloss king and scion of the Kardashian dynasty, Kylie Jenner. For that morning’s Schiaparelli runway show, Jenner wore a strapless, black velvet, floor-length gown that featured a life-size lion head made of foam, silk and faux fur on one shoulder. She was so realistic that many observers considered it taxidermy. Many animal rights advocates thought this view was insensitive. The waiting photographers were treated to a moment of pure street theatre. Some of us wondered if he had covered himself in glue and ran to the London zoo gift shop. Everyone agreed it was in poor taste; Everyone also agreed that it was great in their own way.
Good taste is old hat. Coco Chanel’s famous elegance formula – look in the mirror and take one thing off before leaving the house – has no place in 21st-century media strategy. You can’t break the internet without breaking eggs. On the red carpet, at fancy parties, in the front rows – platforms where the best-dressed once dueled in little black dresses, vying to be the last word in understated perfection – dressing up took its place alongside the fancy dress. Singer Sam Smith wore inflatable black latex to this year’s Brit Awards, looking half Leigh Bowery, half Marvel superhero. Actor Jared Leto performed at the Met Gala as Karl Lagerfeld’s cat Choupette.
Don’t blame the clothes, blame the zeitgeist. Anger is trendy not only in fashion but on all platforms. In the age of culture wars, debate is the campfire that draws audiences to gather for shouting matches rather than singing. Whether you’re running for president or best dressed, being controversial is more likely to win votes than being competent. The softened boundaries of good taste seem out of step with a world that lurches from crisis to crisis.
The thing is, when the clothes in the news get uglier, it affects how the rest of us dress. Fashion as entertainment has eclipsed the subtle appeal of style. The joy of a personal uniform that works for you, a wardrobe that quietly harmonizes with you and your lifestyle, is eclipsed by the magpie appeal of clickbait trends from angelcore to indie sleaze.
But a year after Jenner’s lion roared through Paris fashion week, there are signs that old-school taste is returning. Fashion has two new main characters this season: the late Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, fashion publicist wife of John F Kennedy Jr, and fashion designer Phoebe Philo, who has started making clothes again after a six-year sabbatical. One is American, one is British; One is long dead, the other is very much alive. What they share is good taste as a kind of superpower.
Twenty-four years after the plane crash that killed her along with her husband and sister, CBK, like Diana, Princess of Wales before her, is becoming a “ghost muse” for designers, stylists and influencers. The fanfare surrounding CBK is notable because there was nothing even remotely ostentatious about his wardrobe of perfect white shirts and simple tailoring. Her wedding dress, made of ivory silk with a lithe ribbon, was a masterpiece, more or less ostentatious. Sunita Kumar Nair, author of the new book Carolyn Bessette Kennedy: A Life in Fashion, told the New York Times that her appeal lies in old-school determination, with a consistency that feels like “part of the soul” of her clothes. “rather than a ploy to get attention.
The clue to what makes Phoebe Philo’s new label different lies in its name. She is called Phoebe Philo for short. Self-named brands have gone out of fashion recently, replaced by playful fashion – Vetements, the zeitgeist brand of the past decade, was named by its Georgian founders from the French word for clothes – but Philo, who bears his own name on his clothes, insists that his point of view is what he sells. underlines. Yes, women love the soft yet flawless architecture of their coats, trousers and bags, but there’s more to it than that. They love it when Philo implicitly trusts his own taste, and in doing so, they give them permission to trust their own taste.
The concept of good taste has always been problematic. Pleasure gets mixed up with class, status, knowing the unwritten rules, and even reproduction. It doesn’t have to be. Having a good eye and a discerning sense of taste has nothing to do with snobbery, but the two are often lazily conflated. Lately, fashion has been usurped by the art of vanity. But really, fashion is about wearing the same things other people are wearing, and it’s a way of connecting yourself to the present moment, connecting yourself to the conversations going on in the world around you. Taste is a thoroughly clear expression of your own position; fashion can be about showing that you are watching and listening to other people around you. The taste alone may be a bit bland; Fashion without taste is a junk food diet. There’s a sweet spot where the magic happens. And we may find our way back there in 2024.
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Jess Cartner-Morley assistant editor (fashion) at the Guardian
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