OPINION: Serious civil disobedience is starting to endanger the global dictatorship known as fashion editors – to the point where sending in a United Nations special rapporteur would not be an overreaction.
People buying clothes have started refusing to do what they’re told by fashion editors – wearing whatever they damn well like, heedless of the consequences for orderly, homogeneous society.
The most visible sign of insurrection, and indeed conspiracy, is the blatant endurance of the billowy floral midi frock. The floral frock was outlawed late last year with extreme prejudice by the pitiless editorial cabal.
People were given fair notice to cease and desist, save for emergencies like flower shows, opera festivals and Royal Ascot. The influencer autocracy and the Vogue industrial complex spoke as one. The cancellation of florals, and the denunciation of all comfortable dresses even without a pattern, was unambiguous. Such frocks were too retro, too roomy, too Little House on the Prairie, too Nana’s curtains, too … wearable. All the reasons fashion editors gave for making such clothes compulsory a few years ago were now unbearably tragic.
Yet somehow – and this is the sinister bit – not only are people still wearing floaty florals and roomy midis, but the manufacturers who supply the high street and high-volume online outlets are trucking in new ones. Ones with flowers, spots and even – may god strike us down, the fashion editors gasped – gingham! Heaven help us, the three Fs – floaty floral frocks – may still be with us next year.
After a few months’ Putinesque seething, the oligarchy regrouped and issued corrective instructions. If one must wear a comfy, cool, floaty or floral frock, smock or shift, it must henceforth be made only of denim – so therefore not actually floaty, not floral, not comfortable and definitely not airy in the heat.
To be fair, there was an answering surge in nicely cut denim dresses. But the three Fs still refused to you-know-what off. They proliferated far beyond Ascot, Glyndebourne and wafty perfume ads.
A further papal encyclical ensued. If one must wear any iteration of a midi, it ordained, one must, on no account, wear comfortable trainers (once fashion-editor-compulsory) underneath. Even to team a midi with a pair of heeled court shoes would be unthinkably ageing.
Only three types of footwear were permissible, stated canon law: ballet flats – preferably see-through mesh ones – stompy, quasi-military boots or orthopaedic-looking sandals.
A further regulatory notice: wearing highly visible socks – ie, past the ankle or to the knee – would soon be compulsory, too. Yes, of course with the sandals as well – do please stop trying our patience.
This, too, has met with defiance. Ballet flats seldom have much arch support and even the daintiest of feet look like x-rayed haggis in see-through mesh ones. The editors’ cunning plan to cripple people out of frocks, knowing that few accessories are more ageing than shin splints and niggling Achilles tendons, has bombed.
And while sturdy boots and chunky sandals might mean less time with the podiatrist, they make a person in a frock look like someone lumbered with the wrong bottom bit in one of those animal mix-up games. The fashion eds’ hope that fear of ridicule would spell the end of frocks was in vain. The frockers are simply ignoring them and continuing with “ageing” footwear.
Quite what the dresspots will do next to try to re-annexe dissidents remains unclear. At press time, they had regrouped on a whole new front: mandating little knotted neckerchiefs and the wearing of two bikinis at once.
Yes, one bikini on top of the other, with the underneath one sticking out at the edges. And socks. Yes, with bikinis. Do at least pretend to keep up, would you?
