boats against the current: my fashion forward crystal ball

'So much for your global warming', says my husband, Mr. Dot.

He was a good sport about driving to Surrey to swim at the outdoor heated pool, but when we got there, at 11:00 (having had a lovely chat with one of my closest friends, Natayla, editor of 'it's fashion week'), it was really cold. I mean, I could have done it like on Saturday, but then I paid the price on Sunday. We just turned around, went for a drive, found a BRILLIANT pub for lunch (The Old Bear, in Cobham), as good or better than the one on Saturday (called, coincidentally, The Bear - more like the New Bear, in Oxshott).




Then we drove home, sleepy as Dorothy in the Poppy Fields. We are determined, in principle, not to turn the heat on in August, so stayed alive instead via hot cups of P.G. Tips. And as I almost dozed in front of the TV, shivering under my first birthday present from the future Mr. Dot (a thick white terry robe from Abercrombie & Fitch), I stumbled on a fabulously naff British film from 1960, The Time Machine, based on an H.G. Wells story. When it got to the part where they were in the 'future' - 1966 - what got me, besides the hilarious 'special effects' as the world ended with a lot of paint and model cars and screaming, was how they envisioned the future, style wise.




I mean, it hit me: they had no concept, in 1960, of the Beatles with their little suits and ties. No Twiggy, or Courreges, or Mary Quant, no mini skirts, or Biba.. NOTHING. The people were dressed just like they were in 1960, men in suits and hats and women in shirtwaist dresses to their knees, running and screaming. Oh and of course, the obligatory man in a tin foil jumpsuit.

So I pose to you: how do you see the future, fashion wise, in 2020? Or for that matter, simply this fall?



I've been trying to console myself this week, letting go of summer and trying to look forward to fall. Pulling from my past, from the clothes I've already got, honing my style, composing combinations in my head in the same way I like to play around with foods I love. The magazines are no help: the Sunday Times Style section tell us it's Fifties - or is Eighties? And we've got the Boho (Seventies) to look forward to - which is actually backwards. Other experts tell us it's Sixties again! (Hooray. I've always loved the Sixties). I'm sure we'd be channeling the Nineties, if anyone could figure out what people actually wore that decade.

It almost makes me wonder if The Industry, this season, hasn't a clue, and is looking to us to tell us what the trends will be.



I mean, let's see, we've got lace, especially in unexpected combination with more masculine materials. And boots, we've got boots. We've got black: how new! And aviator leather jackets lined with shearling, as every designer AND high street have their version. Chris Bailey @ Burberry has already moved on to pea jackets (which I love, too) and of course, everything will be in camel, the Colour Formerly Known as Tan. (I must say, I love the 'rebranding' of a colour: when beige became nude, we somehow saw it in a new light. I've always worn tan, so calling it camel works for me! And while some insiders swear camel will feel 'new' with red, I keep remembering Natalie in camel and hot pink last fashion week, a combo I've always worn anyway, and will, in the future. Apart from shoes, I'm just wondering: is anything in the fashion world new these days?

Self portraits shot in Joshua Tree, California, before many of you were born. Rust suede jacket, my father's, which I still have, and love, and will continue to wear, shot on David, my ex's, ranch in New Mexico (he's still a friend to both of us). That black fine ribbed knit mini dress, I have no idea who made it, but I still have it.

So, how do you see the future? I keep thinking of that magnificent last paragraph in The Great Gatsby: about being ceaselessly borne back into the past. Or something like that. Ah! Here it is, in my dusty old vintage copy, with the rose pink cover:

'Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning ---

So we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past.'

See you at fashion week. What are you wearing?