Dernier cri of autumn/winter season 2017: The right shoe on the left foot
Learning from New York Fashion Week: Make Wrong Right Again.
Martin Margiela guess it's suitable to wear his handbag as a hat at Paris Fashion Week Foto: dpa
For an entire year of my life, every morning I had to convince my daughter of the merits of wearing the right shoe on the right foot. “Why that when it also works like this?“
Suddenly, her battleground tactical response is not only right but also totally fashionable. Wearing things the wrong way is so right:
Gloves are worn under your coat sleeves, right? Wrong.
The gloves that were once worn with your evening gown are now worn either over your see-through blouse for the warm-cold look or over your trench which is actually not a trench but more like a dress under which you are, of course, wearing nothing! Gloves are also really hot when worn over your coat worn backwards. Or how about gloves over your sweater sleeves? It’s a dirty world out there anyway. Why take your gloves off… ever?
Tights are worn under your pants or skirt, right? Wrong.
Tights are still worn under your pants, ok, but now they are also worn over your shirt. This makes any, and I really stress any, shirt look interesting.
Button-up shirts are buttoned in front, right? Wrong.
Button-up shirts are worn backwards, of course. Get with the program. (I’ve been touting this look for years: catch-up, people!)
Sweaters are worn like shirts, right? Wrong.
Sweaters are worn wrapped around your neck: weren’t the arms of a sweater made for this anyway? No more endless, fussy wrapping of your scarf. (It’s twist-tie vs a ziplock bag kinda thing. You’re either one or the other.)
Norwegian sweaters are worn with … (it’s not a trick question) snow boots, right? Wrong.
Norwegian sweaters are worn with satin high-heel sandals, of course, because you just never know when the sun is going to come out and you gotta start somewhere on that tan – ankles and toes are the last places you’d notice your winter-doughnut consumption.
Blazers are worn over shirts or (better yet) nothing at all, right? Wrong.
A blazer is, of course, worn over another blazer. Preferably a different fabric altogether and unbuttoned just enough to show off your beer belly, muffin top, whatever you want to call that thing, because hey, it’s not really cold enough for two blazers anyway.
It’s wonderfully freeing, isn’t it? Next time you go to your closet and you start trying to put things together, you just have to have one idea in mind: how do I wear this the wrong way, et voila, you’ve got it right.
Well, almost: Never under any circumstances should you try looking like Woodie Allen dressed up as a sperm: wrong, wrong, wrong. (Ok, ok, if you have a highly refined sense of humor, then by all means.)
