Posted on 09/14/2004 8:32:06 PM PDT by Cacique
"Slutwear" is so last year
By Ellen Wulfhorst
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Now you see it. Soon you won't. In a trend sure to be a relief to some and a disappointment to others, women will cover up instead of baring it all next season as the "slutwear" look comes to an end.
Demure designs have replaced scanty navel-baring looks on the catwalks of this week's semi-annual run of fashion shows, a reliable sign of what shoppers can expect to find in stores next spring.
"The slut is out now. She's dead," said Godfrey Deeny, senior fashion critic at Fashion Wire Daily.
In recent seasons, fashion has been filled with skimpy tops exposing midriffs, cleavage-revealing necklines and jeans slung so low that precious little was left to the imagination -- looks impossible to avoid on such pop icons as Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.
This season, blousy linen took the place of sheer chiffon, while shades of white chased away an edgier black. Necklines were up, while hemlines were hovering down at the knee.
"It's very ladylike. It's not jump-into-bed fashion," Deeny said of the new look on runways as established powerhouses to new designers trotted out more fabric and less skin than in seasons past.
Marc Jacobs showed 1950s' style sweater sets and dresses of florals and gingham; Carolina Herrera showed knee-length Bermuda shorts; Kenneth Cole had pleated skirts and wide-legged trousers and Oscar de la Renta showed boucle suits.
Alice Roi, Rebecca Taylor and Cynthia Steffe brought out loose, Bohemian style peasant skirts and dresses.
HIP TO BE MODEST
Women who actually buy fashion may have sent a message to designers who have been preoccupied dressing rock stars, said Paco Underhill, chief executive of Envirosell, a market research company, and author of "Why We Buy."
"There was too much slutwear," he said. "Slutwear doesn't play in the boardroom and it doesn't play in the office.
"Designers also recognised that women are desperately looking for solutions Monday through Friday. The money is in Monday through Friday," he said.
Trend forecaster Merrill Greene called the new look "prim and improper."
"It's the new modesty," she said. "It's what's under the clothes, something seething underneath. We won't be showing it so much on the surface."
She said the less-bare look may be a response to the world around us. "It's a way of protecting oneself. We might feel insecure about showing off, of looking too out there and too American," she said.
Underhill suggested the new modesty may be backlash to the "slutwear" look creeping into the children's market and young girls trying to copy the revealing, belly-baring looks of pop stars such as Spears.
Harsh media attention surrounding cases such as the murder of Lacey Peterson and the sexual assault accusations, now dropped, against basketball's Kobe Bryant "highlighted the dark side of lots of our sexuality," he added.
Retailer Robert Burke, vice president and senior fashion director at Bergdorf Goodman, took a more benign view of the latest trend.
"Fashion goes in cycles, and I think that cycle kind of played out," he said. "It's the end of overtly sexy clothes.
"As a retailer, it's especially good because it's very wearable. That's a positive for us," he said.
I was sure there would be pictures....
I for one won't miss it. The lower girls' pants are, the more I see them tugging at them to get them higher when they sit down. I can't tell you how many buttcracks I've spotted. It's gotten so bad I'd have to look at the ceiling to avoid them.
Thank goodness it's over.
Admit it...only after you saw the plummer's crack was the ceiling a target.... :)
Which has been a Pandora's Box, considering the women who wear such garments.
Great..now I am back in fashion.
As the father of a daughter who just entered 1st grade I can say, "It's about time!"
I believe the thong is among the greatest inventions of the twentieth century.
Up there with the car and the toaster.
I'm nominating you for "quote of the day."
This is about the third time this month I've heard/read this. I hope this means it's true.
Of course, for some of us slutwear was never in. I get a lot more positive attention when I wear dresses that basically cover almost everything up but are formfitting and show my shape without showing much skin. I have this white cotton number with short sleeves, a high neckline, and a hem that stops just north of the ankles, and it seems to make men crazy even though the only skin they can see is on my arms. Amazing. Men are odd critters: strangely enough they seem to be strongly attracted to ladies rather than harlots.
Pictures please.
I am glad to see how fashions and trends that have their roots in the degenerate 90's are disappearing. Perhaps in the near future we will be seeing more sensible trends. The scary part is that people have their children emulating adults dressing like this. My wife claims she has trouble finding fashionable clothes for herself and our daughter to wear without shouting, "Over my dead body!"
Here it looks like it's the women who guzzled the most beer are the ones that went for the low-pants look --- or those who just gave birth to twins and managed to barely squeeze their legs into tight low-cut pants but everything else spills over the top.
Hear, hear. Ladies are infintely more interesting and have more to offer. I am very eager to see more women wearing sun dresses on campus. Heck, I am just willing to see more females wear dresses, period. another scary thing about harlots is that they are akin to strange animals - you are leery of touching them because you don't know where they have been.
Thank God! Conservative clothing with less skin is so much more self-respecting. Why didn't women realize that?
...Bermuda shorts? The jealous, old hogs are at it again, trying to move fashion for chicks to manly looking fat girl stuff, eh?
LOL!
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