Write a savvy, dynamic feature for The Decade Edition, 27th December 2009. This edition will celebrate a decade in the millennium, combining thought provoking journalism with futuristic fashion features and 2010 hype. Your feature title is ‘Noughties Fashion: The Renaissance of the Individual or Copycat Culture?’ You will be required to write a maximum of 800 words for our fashion-forward readers, exploring the last ten years of fashion and what has influenced it. Ultimately, you must explore why the Noughties has struggled to develop its own distinct fashion culture, questioning the quality of life in the first 10 years of the 21st century.
DEMOGRAPHICS The Sunday Times Style Magazine:
§ The first supplement in the UK - launched for pure fashion and style.
§ Readership of 2.2 million.
§ Aspirational, high-end, and leading edge – it's accessibly premium.
§ Reaches more ABC1 women than Vogue, Elle, Vanity Fair, Bazaar and Tatler combined.
§ Read by over 3 times as many ABC1 women as Grazia.
§ 27% more ABC1 women than You magazine. #
Noughties Fashion: The Renaissance of the Individual or Copycat Culture?
The kids of the i-Pod generation are rebelling. They are rebelling and they are wearing our 70s cast-offs for comfort. Why? Chavs, Crocs and Ugg boots. That’s why.
As we head towards the prolific date of 2010, I ask myself, what has this decade done for fashion? In this supposedly modern era, where a post-modern-neo-nu-rave-punk can saunter through the crowds in Dr. Martins and a trip down a British high-street bombards the casual shopper with copies of designer fashion, where does the distinction lie? The scenester’s are turning to vintage clothes and charity shops in a bid to escape the mundane of the high-street. They are bleaching their hair bright blue, piercing their septum’s and streaking tattoos up their arms. It’s a kind of desperation. Why, in a country that embraces individualism and a plethora of cultures, do we seem to be buying into the same trends? And why do those who actively seek eccentricity somehow manage to blend in?
You only have to Wikipedia ‘2000-2009’ to appreciate the last ten troubled years of economic collapse, political misery and natural disaster. So where has fashion fitted in? It has been unarguably confused. Fashion journalists have searched for a distinctive trend, a centre point or a definition as often associated with decades gone by. The Noughties, far from restricting fashion-followers, has offered creative freedom and choice to the open-minded, yet high-street honeys continue to clone themselves.
Let’s lay the blame on the Copycat’s, who claw over the latest Chanel spring/summer collection like a pack of wolves to a lump of flesh. The transition of fashion from couture to designer to high-street has seen a rapid development in the last ten years as production becomes more efficient and the demand from the high-street becomes intense. And here, ladies and gents, comes our national obsession with the Celebrity. ‘If Pixie Lott is wearing it, I want to be, but I want it affordable and I want it now.’ Never before has a decade been so obsessed with the fashion of the rich and famous or demanded cheap transfers of their lifestyle. As soon as Chloé displays their latest trend, hot off the catwalk, you can bet your bottom dollar that Topshop will produce an uncannily-yet-not-sue-worthingly similar design at a quarter of the price, and then who gets their grubby hands on a surprising look-a-like? Primark. The hoards pounce and devour with an animalistic greed.
And so sees the out-wearing of jeggings, of Ugg boots, of skinny jeans- they’ve been overdone, they are no longer fashion forward- if Katie Price is wearing them, no one else can. Primark’s ingenious invention of ‘throw-away-fashion,’ sees even the most timeless of styles being destroyed- the femme fatal delights of the trench coat, for example. Associated with wrapping up our feminine secrets like a scene out of Double Indemnity, we find that double-crossing Primark drains it of our fantasy and makes it commonplace and casual. And all because of sickeningly cheap rip-offs that we ashamedly adore. Spending £20 on a poorly made trench coat that’ll last you one season seems far more appealing than cashing out £95 on a Topshop copy that’ll last you three. And with money at a scarce minimum, who can blame theses savvy shoppers? After all, it’s supply and demand.
So where do the ‘look-at-me-I’m-different’ desperados go? The high-street may be the Holy Grail for Pixie Lott fans, but underground prog-rock-anti-folk lovers want much, much more. In walks the Renaissance of the Individual, where the fashion-lover-Topshop-hater seeks liberty from the cage of Copycat, but how? They are Magpieing.
Magpieing is the careful selection of fashion trends from the twentieth century in a bid to create a new, mish-mashed style of modern glory. Of course, the high-street is always toying with styles from days-gone-by but no one achieves it better than the scenester. They truly work for it. Searching the back of antique shops for a one-of-a-kind broach, turning over charity shops under the watchful eye of a disapproving volunteer, cashing out £40 on a vintage (more likely hand-me-down) knitted jumper with faux fur trimming… it’s madness, surely? Because, the sickening fact is that the transition from underground to mainstream has never been so swift. A cultural movement is taking place where styles that would be deemed eccentric and untouchable by many are cropping up all over fashion magazines with an unstoppable velocity. We are all revolutionaries. Shoulder-pads, thigh high boots, studs, Agyness Deyn hair cuts… the mainstream is sneaking these trends under their wing and acting like they made them, pioneered by Queen of quirk, Lady Gaga.
This modern Renaissance, where every fashionista seeks individualism, is consuming fashion fast. The underground is struggling to maintain its integrity more than ever before. And do not forget, readers, that with the World Wide Web, nothing is sacred. This decade has seen the creation of Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Blogging. The ease of access to information leads to unavoidable exposure, so how is the scenester supposed to keep style for themselves? Eventually, the mainstream wave will engulf all; leaving the original Renaissance radicals inevitable victims of Copycat Culture.
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