The plummeting hemline is this summer’s resounding fashion news – and it’s a fast-moving story. It was only six weeks ago that British women started taking to the streets in bra-topped, printed maxi-dresses, but it’s taken me about four to go off them with a passion.
True, long and wafty has made short and tight look out of date, and I’ll thank it for that. But the sight of the high-street hippie dress, worn actually on the high street – instead of the beach, where it belongs – has turned naff at the speed of light. So now here comes the new, elegant compromise: the midi.
That word hasn’t been written on a fashion page since circa 1970, the three-day week and the mini-midi-maxi hemline crisis that, looking back, was somehow congruent with the economic instability of the time. Before that, the historic precedent for mid-calf lengths was the Thirties – another era of brewing troubles. It would be pushing it too far to read a gloomy financial augury into the recurrence of the three-quarter-length skirt now, but somehow the midi is looking right to me again.
It was looking at pictures of Miuccia Prada’s resort show last week that did it. It’s a tiny interim collection – the season between autumn and next spring – but something about her flowered and polka-dotted silk dresses, cut to a length that lands four inches below the knee, is so compelling that
I keep going back to pore over them. What is it? Partly, it’s the way they remind me of my favourite book of photographs of stylish French society women and models at the races in the Thirties (Elegance: The Seeberger Brothers and The Birth of Fashion Photography, Chronicle Books), with their slim suits and perfectly tip-tilted hats. And partly, it’s because that air of classy restraint is so against every current trend, it feels like a radical departure. I’ll lay bets now that we’ll be seeing plenty of designers working on that graceful mid-length proportion for spring.
It put the Hollywood-event circus, where every dress is a sexed-up freebie paid for by some label or other, right back in its place. And best of all, it was the senior ladies in their fifties, sixties and upwards who outclassed everyone by far. To me, the better-known skinny fashion plates like Queen Rania of Jordan, Princess Rosario of Bulgaria and Princess Letizia of Spain looked insubstantial compared to the fabulous mother of the bride, Queen Silvia of Sweden (in dusty pink with lace sleeves) and the utterly drop-dead Infanta Elena of Spain, who appeared in an incredible embroidered matador jacket and a stately crimson duchesse satin skirt almost worthy of Cristobal Balenciaga in his heyday.
CUTE MINIATURES FOR MISS
It’s getting to the end-of-term gift-giving season when every mother has to trawl around the shops looking for small yet thoughtful presents for teachers. Well, I think I’ve cracked it this year. On the principle of killing several birds with one stone, may I suggest a swoop on mini-travel accessories? Everyone likes something cute that’s actually useful to take away for summer.
Marks & Spencer’s beauty department and Muji are two stops on the high street that will solve everything. In M&S, I found a £9.50 Haircare Styling Kit, which comes with Velcro rollers, a set of hairgrips and a teasing comb all packed into a dinky transparent pouch. In Muji were all kinds of mini-mirrors, plastic product containers and the kind of see-through zip-up bags you need to get through airport security, but never know where to find. The pièce de résistance, though, is the £6 Muji fan in this summer’s chic shade of shell-pink. Every Miss should have one.
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