This week, I sat across from a stylist at the Vaquera show in a pair of Balenciaga’s platform sneakers. Seeing them was like bumping into an old pal.
Eight years ago or so, these monstrosities were the shoe to own if you were a fashion hound, but shoes have since swung from enormous to ethereal. Those old Balenciagas could gobble up the lithe ballet flats that now dangle in the front rows.
Every micro-moment in fashion has its definitive item. In the early aughts, double-monk strap shoes were a totem for a strain of guy fixated on Italian tailoring. Loro Piana’s cashmere ball caps became a symbol of the quiet luxury era we’ve just come out of.
The item of now? A belt.
The current front-runner is Celine’s $730 option, with a buckle like a salad plate. A number of women have shown up to shows brandishing that trophy.
But other contenders are emerging. Gucci’s were fat, like a weightlifter’s restraint with the three twinkly horse bits stacked across. The belts at Courrèges came chunky, too, wrapped around coats for an hourglass cinch.
The Dries Van Noten designer Julian Klausner used them for giddy clashes: a scaly yellow belt over a tan trench, a leopard belt situated at the crest of a lavender skirt. At Acne, nearly every ensemble was sewed up with an overfed leather belt, its buckle as bulky as a picture frame.
There are two of-the-moment needs being satisfied here. First, the entrees of luxury brands — sweaters, pants, dresses and suits — have swelled in cost. Brand reps and boutique owners are anxious that a whole swath of clothing-curious shoppers are being priced out. Accessories like belts are an open hand to this kind of shopper. They offer oomph for a lot less than a whole look would cost you.
But there’s something else at play: All this cinching draws attention to thinning bodies. There was once a gulf between the sizes of the models and those of the showgoers. It’s narrowing. Sitting at shows, I notice conspicuously tucked-in shirts and pant legs that have slimmed down.
It’s bigger than fashion. Fifteen percent of Americans say they have used a weight-loss drug. We’re watching, perhaps, a significant shift in the human form. From that frame, these belts are a wearable directional arrow, wresting our eyes to what has changed.
A postscript on provocation
My last newsletter, about fashion’s fumbles with provocation, hit your inboxes just as I was sitting down at the Tom Ford show. I probably should’ve waited to hit send.
The mood in the room was somewhere between a Paul Schrader film and highbrow porn. Espresso martinis were served, and the show’s breathy soundtrack seemed to be of someone orgasming. The crowd was rapt. Or maybe abashed.
Suits were the tint of martini olives. Jeans came shredded at the rear, giving the crowd a shot of the striped boxers underneath. Field shirts were unbuttoned near to the belt line. I was somewhat into a pair of pants with an opaque panel at the top, like a fogged-up shower curtain, but I was more taken with Ackermann’s (relatively) buttoned-up ideas.
These were sultry more than flatly sexed-up. They included a women’s trench in blush blue and a periwinkle men’s suit. They brought me back to the Ford designer Haider Ackermann’s work at Berluti, where he proved that he had a supreme sense of color.
As a whole, the show was lusty, but also mature. (As my colleague Vanessa Friedman put it in her review: “Ah, adult desire, that layered, nuanced thing: Nice to see you. You’ve been missing from fashion for a while.”)
Part of that was the casting. Ackermann savors gray hair and age lines. They flatter his pinstriped suits and a pair of truly beautiful wine-red gowns — clothes for people who have seen enough of the world to know themselves.
Ackermann also reminded us that sexiness is gestural, dictated by how we carry ourselves. As they passed, models twirled a pen, spun a scarf, held a piece of paper. They brushed the walls, clutched their throats. They looked seductive, ready, waiting for the next move.
Other things worth knowing about:
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The Row broke new ground, showing more comeliness and craft than usual. You could sense the handiwork in a halter, pieced and twisted together from antique-looking scraps, and a sleeveless tank, hanging threadbare off one shoulder, like a hankie pulled from a shipwreck.
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To close their show, the Vaquera designers Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee belted out “I’ve Got You Babe” — a campy gimmick that could’ve gone very wrong if the duo had not committed to the bit so well.
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Here’s a small styling detail to consider: T-shirts with scrunched sleeves. They were there at Balenciaga, Eckhaus Latta and Dries Van Noten. Makes the prosaic appear less so.
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It’s so great when Rick Owens does pretty. For all the spectacle, all the Six-Flags-from-hell runway sets, Owens can still cut a stupendous Oscars-ready gown.
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One of the best rooms in New York, Café Sabarsky, has reopened at last after months of no Sacher torte.
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While on vacation a couple months back, I went to the Schiaparelli exhibit at the V&A Museum in London. My favorite relic was an Elsa Schiaparelli jacket with a garden motif and vegetal buttons plinked up the front. Cut to this week, when the designer Daniel Roseberry put a near clone of this jacket on his runway. Guess it left an impression on him, too.
What we’re reading and watching:
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The designer Glenn Martens on the couch of Bella Freud’s “Fashion Neurosis.”
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Anna Kodé’s walking tour of Canal Street, where you can tell which brands are up or down based on what street vendors are hawking.
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Deana Lawson constructs her intimate portraiture “with the precision of a painting by Diego Velázquez,” Susan Dominus writes in T magazine.
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“October’s the pleasantest month of the year, in New York. Cool days succeed one anothercrescendo, like states of mind in convalescence after fever.”
Ask Vanessa
Why can’t manufacturers of women’s clothing put the shirt buttons on the right side? Our jeans have the buttons on the right, but our tops migrate to the left. — Janet, Delray Beach, Fla.
This is one of those questions that seem minor at first, and then become more and more resonant the more you think about them. … Read more.
Style Outside
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