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Celebs go mad for feathers

Auckland – Fashion moves on every season. The dedicated follower of frocks needs to know the jargon and be able to talk about what the hijabistas are wearing, whether meggings are a good thing and what about that crowd sourcing, eh?

Confused? Don’t be. We have compiled a bluffer’s guide to the best new fashion phrases of 2011 (so far).

Just stir a few of these into your café conversation and it won’t even matter what you’re wearing – you’ll be so far ahead of the game other opinion-leaders will be left choking on your coffee grounds.

Meggings and jeggings

May the lord of most ridiculous neologisms bless this pair of portmanteaus. A portmanteau – French for a kind of suitcase – is the description of two words that have been put together to create a new one. So it follows that meggings are men’s leggings and jeggings are leggings that look like jeans. You can blame the tight pants trend for this linguistic tomfoolery and trends.

As for actually roaming the streets clad in meggings and jeggings, well, you really only have yourself to blame for that.

Scenesters

The scenester is defined by one simple ability: to be on the scene. And to look as though they belong there. Preferably that scene is a fashionable one – indeed, it may very well involve many of the accoutrements of hipsterdom, including alternative music, parties that make it on to street style websites, contemporary literature, independent film-making, lashings of retro-irony and vintage clothing. The main thing is that the scenester is there, upon the scene. Astride the scene, even. After which they will, of course, post pictures of the scene on Facebook to prove their scenester status.

De-gendering

Models like the very beautiful Australian Andrej Pejic, who wore a gold dress and heels for Jean Paul Gaultier, and the striking Lea T, the transgender model who made headlines when he appeared in Givenchy’s ad campaign, are part of the movement towards a more asexual, androgynous style in fashion.

De-gendering is exactly what it sounds like – doing away with the idea that men must wear the pants and that women should wear dresses. De-gendering replaces all that with good-looking guys in heels and beautiful ladies in tuxedos.

Up-cycling

Recycling is so 2009, people. Whether they’re buying it from an up-cycler or up-cycling it themselves, the most stylish are taking second-hand goods and renovating them.

It’s all about adapting that vintage dress (take the hem up, re-size, add a new collar?) or your granny’s cabinet (sand it down, paint it up, add new handles?) and making it into something new and exciting.

Bargainista

A bargainista is a follower of fashion who is keen on new clothes but wants a bargain.

Hijabista

Hot on the heels of the burkini, comes a new fashion tribe – the hijabistas. These are modern Muslim women who design fashion with the sensibilities of their religion in mind. While the burqa, which provides complete cover, leaving only a mesh screen at the eyes, is the most conservative of all Islamic veils, the hijab is one of the most revealing. It’s basically a scarf around the head to cover the hair.

And as British newspaper The Independent reported recently, a new generation of Muslim women, frustrated with the lack of nice-looking contemporary wardrobe options that also respect their belief system, are designing their own collections.

“Hijab is about how a woman can be beautiful without placing overt emphasis on her sexuality,” one of the designers told the newspaper.

Doubtless a particular favourite with the hijabistas is the trend for maxi-length dresses and skirts.

Designer fatigue syndrome

Aw, those poor designers. Are they getting a widdy-tiddy-bit tired from all those fashion week functions and all that champagne? Well, actually we should not be so mean to the poor wee darlings. Because designer fatigue syndrome actually refers to a more general malaise that affects the whole fashion industry.

Fashion writer Colin McDowell believes the clothing business no longer has any soul.

“In over 30 years in fashion I have seen a minor but exceedingly disciplined and beautiful art form degenerate into the bread and circuses of the creative world, frequently no more subtle than the world of football – and quite as manipulative of its followers who demand not goals but endless new ‘ideas’.”

That “endless” demand for novelty means that designers are forced into freakish non-stop, year-round levels of creativity, something many of them do not believe is possible. And that’s why the poor dears are getting fatigued. It’s also tiring for the rest of us. We are bored more easily with fashion’s offerings and pay more attention to classic looks now, as well as prizing a slower, more considered, more artistic evolution in the wardrobe rather than a regular seasonal revolution.

Crowd sourcing

If you’ve ever looked at a runway show in horror and thought “I could do so much better”, then this is the jargon for you. Crowd sourcing involves companies sending their designs out into the world via social media and online networking and letting the “crowd” decide what to do with them.

This has included getting fans of a label to vote on their favourite outfits and their favourite models, thereby deciding what goes into production or on to the posters, as well as getting label fans to send in their ideas and suggestions for garment design.

Shoelaborations

It’s the latest from the field of high-low and low-high collaborations. In case you’re wondering what the heck the latter are, high-low is what happens when someone like Alber Elbaz of French label Lancome designs a collection for a global fashion chain like HM.

And low-high is when celebrities make clothes for big names, such as Lindsay Lohan did for French fashion house Ungaro.

Just kidding. To be fair, one’s definition of a low-high collaboration comes down to personal opinion. In fact, some might say crowd sourcing is low-high. But back to the point: shoelaborations see high-end fashion designers collaborating with mass-market shoe manufacturers. And it’s pretty clever. Because there’s no doubt it’s an excellent way to broaden a fancy label’s appeal in the mass market without diluting what they do to make their living.

Edvertorial

You may have heard of advertorial, a particularly cunning way for advertisers to sell their products that involves the media in which the advertiser is paying for space, publishing a story that looks like all their other stories – but that is in fact, solely funded by the advertiser. For example, a magazine story on perfumes in which only one brand’s perfumes are ever mentioned.

This year, edvertorial takes a step deeper into the quagmire that is modern editorial integrity. Edvertorial looks like real, balanced editorial but this time it is the actual advertisers that are writing it. In-house publishing is a successful phenomenon in publishing, both in the real world and online. Examples include magazine-style websites like the Art of Trench, run by British fashion label Burberry, in which they publish assorted pictures of trenchcoat wearers in a magazine-style format.

GILFs

Okay, so by now any regular observers of pop culture will know what a MILF is. If you still don’t, then, to put it in less offensive terms, it is a good-looking female parent that you’d like to have your way with. This decade we’re moving on – yes, a few decades further on, to the GILF. To put it in less offensive terms, this is a good-looking female grandparent that you’d like to have your way with.

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