You don’t need fashion designers when you’re young
How you wear it > the "right" piece. Plus fall drops from small makers, unisex jewelry & more
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It’s Erin, back with you again for another Concorde. Today:
Stylists — not designers — might be the main reason I look at runway shows these days. I’ve got ways to style the clothes you already own, as inspired by the recent runway work of some high-level stylists.
New unisex jewelry from some of my favorite small lines, including inspired takes on the bolo tie, wearable pens, and pins for sweaters.
Skirts over pants — how do we really feel?
An under-the-radar California line just dropped a great fall collection
Let’s get to it —
I’m an on-the-record proponent of a little bad taste, and no one does it better (worse?) than John Waters. Over the past few days I’ve been listening to him read his 2010 book, Role Models, a collection of essays about his heroes, thanks to a recommendation from Stella Bugbee. I love having his smoker’s timbre in my ear. He purrs, he growls, he says the word “Maybelline” (they make the only pencil he trusts to draw on his signature mustache) in such a beautiful way I want to legally change my name.
During one essay, about his favorite designer, Rei Kawakubo, Waters drops a lot of style wisdom. In particular, this unassailable nugget:
“You don’t need fashion designers when you’re young. Have faith in your own bad taste. Buy the cheapest thing in your local thrift shop, the clothes that are freshly out of style with even the hippest people a few years older than you. Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents, that is the key to fashion leadership.”
Unnerve your peers! The question of youth aside, this is a compelling argument for the counterintuitive virtues of “scaring the hoes,” and maybe even scaring yourself, at any age. At least a little bit, every now and then.
It only takes a little bit of effort: Show up to dinner with friends wearing something that feels definitionally not-you — perhaps even a type of garment you’ve talked sh-t on before. The next time you’re in a thrift shop, make yourself look at every single thing hanging on one of the racks. I guarantee you’ll learn something about what you do and do not like after flicking through a legion of hangers. I’m always surprised by what I’m drawn to after an exhaustive search of a non-merchandised Goodwill or Savers. Sometimes you need to wade through a sea of losers in order to find greatness.
You can kick your aesthetic tires online, too. I like to put random prompts into eBay and see where they lead: after looking through 22 or more pages of “y2k pants,” “wool skirts” or “70s shirts,” your radar for Ugly Genius will start pinging.
At bottom, though, what Waters is talking about is the power of collisions in creating a sense of style. And those collisions can be more or less violent. A layer, for instance — that fundamental style building block — is, at bottom, an opportunity to add tension to your fit.
Back in February, I saluted layering techniques inspired by the casual swag of dancers’ warm-up outfits. Over the past few weeks, a bunch more great examples along similar lines have caught my eyes in the spring runway shows.
Most of what comes down runways isn’t that interesting to me, but I still keep an eye on the shows, thanks less to the clothes being sold and more, these days, to a figure I regard as just as important as the designer, if not more so, in achieving sauce: The stylist.
Here are some maneuvers I’ve extracted from a few exquisitely styled SS26 shows. Ignore the fact that these are all technically spring looks — fall is the best time to play around with layers, so you can put them into action right now: