Fashion fails of 2014

Published Dec 29, 2014

Share

We’re at the final countdown of 2014 and there’ll be things some of us will be happy to see the back of – things like load shedding, Parliament as reality TV and fashion trends that are ridiculous.

Fashion favours the brave and it’s pretty sneaky, too, playing mind games when it’s actually all about your body. With marketing, a flourish of pretty pleats, some bling and model Gisele Bundchen, fashion hooks you and reels you in, convincing you that you too can rock the Milan catwalk look on a pavement near you.

Of course, fashion takes more than a pout, an attitude and striking a pose. In real life, you have to iron those damn pleats, walk further than 15-odd paces on a dead straight, flat ramp on most days and you’ve got to sit down and cross your legs at some point.

To some fashion trends from this year we’ll bid a happy goodbye and good riddance, too, when the last minutes of 2014 pass. Others should come with a consumer warning label or at least a kind of fashion Ts & Cs (and Ts don’t just stand for toned thighs, tums and triceps – though those will help too).

PATTERNED HAREM PANTS

Patterned harem pants may look all summertime carefree on a mannequin in a store display, but are baggy, drop-crotch trousers that taper at the ankles. Really anyone’s best look and in the season’s floral and geometric prints, nogal?

Remember these are the same trousers that are a revival of “Hammer pants”, rapper MC Hammer’s pants in his 1990s music video. When he sang U Can’t Touch This, he was probably referring to the trousers. Clearly some things are best left buried in fashion history.

JUMPSUITS

No less bizarre than harem pants are pants that get pulled up over your boobs in a one-piece – jumpsuits in fashionista speak (or rompers for the shorts version). It’s no coincidence that a jumpsuit is the same name for the bright orange one-piece overall you put on with a crash helmet when you’re about to take your life into your hands and toss your body out of an aircraft. Another telling omen maybe? Just saying.

The other night, I was in the loo queue with a girlfriend at a lounge bar.

The wait was, thankfully, not too long. Her need was greater than mine and when a stall became open, I let her go first. She rushed in, then about 30 seconds later emerged again, barely able to stand still.

She sighed with a half-smile and said: “It’s complicated.” Then she gathered up her hair in a bun and turned her back to me swiftly, revealing three buttons that joined together the halter-neck jumpsuit that she couldn’t do battle with when she most needed to. My point exactly: just like diving out of a plane at over 10 000 feet, a jumpsuit can be sartorial suicide.

LEGGINGS AS PANTS

Still on the subject of bottoms, leggings as pants just have to go when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve. Even if you’ve got Bambi legs and you’re tall enough that no one’s ever likened you to a garden gnome, tight is too tight if you’re pairing your skin-tight bottoms with an equally tight top.

Skin-tight should be reserved for the likes of X-Men villain Mystique. Even then, when Hollywood hottie Jennifer Lawrence struts upon the silver screen in a blue reptilian bodysuit, we don’t quite know where it’s polite to look. Too tight is not a sexy look; just a little awkward for everyone really.

VERTIGINOUS HEELS

Speaking of awkward, high heels that you can’t stride and glide in just make you look like you’re walking on eggshells or like you’re always waiting for your torso to catch up with your legs.

Ditching the killer heels for wedges or shaving off a few centimetres may be a smarter move. The higher you go, the further you fall is true of heels too.

CAPES

The opposite of skin-tight is tricky to pull off, too. “Capes” sounds like “drapes” for a reason: they make you look like a head sticking out of a curtain or the incarnation of a 6-year-old’s art class Christmas tree angel – an upside down cone of felt with a ping-pong ball head popping out at the top. They don’t keep you very warm either because a draft also finds its way up those shapeless folds.

PLATFORM SNEAKERS

Another fashion fail that keeps doing the rounds are platform sneakers or trainers.

Just because heels are impossible to wear for most mere mortals, doesn’t make platform trainers an option either.

They look like something Neil Armstrong would have worn for his moon walk, or something North Korea’s Kim Jong-un would probably wear to make him feel a little closer (in height) to his 2m tall basketball chum Dennis Rodman.

METALLICS

Like dear ol’ Kim though, we are all sacrificial lambs at the altar of fashion. It’s why we think we can do metallics just because a fashion magazine punts it as “the bronzed autumnal look” or a “party season glitz”.

And, we’re not just talking about a set of sparkly gel tips on your toenails or a black sequinned top under a tailored jacket, but full-on mirror ball stuff. If you get metallic wrong, it looks less rock chick and glam and more disco queen and tinselled Christmas tree – a little dated and a little desperate.

VOCABULARY JEWELLERY

On the subject of bling, chunky jewellery with massive hearts, Hello Kitties and words like “love”, “hope”, or “peace” in English or Chinese characters, belong on someone who can name all the band members of One Direction or someone who doesn’t know there was life before wi-fi and bubble tea.

CROP TOPS

Generation Z can also keep this year’s crop tops for that matter.

Even if you’re doing 300 stomach crunches at the gym every day and living off wheatgrass and deep breaths, crop tops were made for people young enough not to worry about bond repayments and sunspots from too many uMhlanga summers.

When all is said and done, you’ve got to love fashion.

There’s beautiful alchemy when fabric meets inspired design and sharp tailoring. Fashion is always about the promise of what next season will bring and the mercy that all things will pass, even rompers and mullets.

There should be a caveat sewn into a seam somewhere: one size doesn’t fit all.

And, even truer is that when “fashion trends to try” become “fashion trends that will try you”, then Ts & Cs should definitely apply.

Related Topics: