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Everybody knows fashion is all about recycling, but doesn't it sometimes seem as if people in the fashion world rarely have an original idea anymore?
Skinny jeans. Bermuda shorts. Platforms. Retreads that aren't even tweaked much.
"Everything old is new again at some point," says Stacy London, the female half of TLC's What Not to Wear duo, stating a fashion fact of life.
Take leggings. Please. According to the magazine Shop Etc., all the Euro designers feature them for fall. Having long ago thrown out her own "spandex sausage casings," editor in chief Mandi Norwood was skeptical.
"I snorted loudly into my coffee," she writes in the August edition. Then she tried some on, under a black minidress. True, she didn't look as runway-thin as she had been pre-babies, "but I didn't exactly hate the look, either."
Tell that to baby boomers. They wore crinkly peasant skirts, corset belts and chunky turquoise jewelry when they were young, but even then, those styles weren't necessarily flattering. Now the latest generation of fashion consumers, who weren't even alive when most of these styles were au courant, has adopted them, unaware of history. So who needs to tweak?
Gold hoop earrings are fairly benign, even classic, as are espadrilles. But gauchos and knickers? Not even hyper-stylish Nancy Reagan, who wore black satin knee pants by James Galanos to the American Embassy in Paris in 1982, looked good in them. Ridicule rained down upon her, and she never did that again.
"As we get older, we look back and say, 'That was pretty good, and I could still wear that,' but a lot of us are not able to, and that's the problem," sighs Sherrie Mathieson, author of Forever Cool: How to Achieve Ageless, Youthful and Modern Personal Style, a guide for boomers in search of appropriate, chic clothing in stores overflowing with "gaudy styles that defy good taste."
Some silhouettes from the 1920s and 1930s are lovely enough to return, she says, as are certain aspects of humor and innocence from the 1970s. But the 1980s? "Ten years of pure horror," she says, shuddering.
But Isaac Mizrahi, the irrepressible designer of high and low couture, says there's nothing wrong with recycling. He features many old-but-new styles in his popular Target line. "It's part of the modern dialogue and vernacular to take something old and wear it in a new way," he says.
The people selling Kork-Ease shoes again aren't bothering to do it differently -- except the price. Back in the 1970s, these leather platform sandals sold for $20-$25; now they're going for $145-$185, says reviver Mickey Rosmarin.
"We thought we'd sell 5,000 to 10,000 the first season, but it's been more than quadruple that," he says.
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