From Paris to Market Street: Translating Fashion Week to St Andrews
How does high fashion fare when it has to withstand a student budget, Scottish weather and long walks across town? Paris Fashion Week, the most prestigious of them all, took place the week commencing September 28 and ran until October 6. It left students wondering how they might wear dramatic, gravity-defying gowns to a 9 am lecture. At first, the answer seems obvious: they can’t. But the thing about fashion is that it travels fast, not necessarily as garments, but as an identity. The runway may be in Paris, but the trends it started can absolutely find their way down to Market Street. What spin can you, as a student, put on them to fit into a bustling schedule of lectures, black-tie events and coffee dates?
If there’s one thing all St Andrews students are probably well-acquainted with, it is the art of dressing up. This, in its narrowest sense, refers to the garment itself; its construction, and usually, if couture, its extravagance. None of us really need a complete wardrobe makeover because Paris changed its mind again. What might make every look memorable is the wow-factor it brings to the runway, but it is the silhouette, proportion and styling that can be applicable to our student lives and wardrobes, and SS27 came prepared with notes on each of them.
Take Jonathan Anderson’s intersection of nature and movement for the Dior collection. The Being of Lightness collection played around with classic florals, sheer fabric and romantic chiffon draping. These were disrupted, in most looks, by either tailored coats, frilled hair embellishments in a contrasting colour or another singular element of structure. Rosalía, sitting front row, offered a more wearable interpretation of the mechanics behind the runway: a black maxi dress with a large white floral appliqué. The look did a good job, in my opinion, of retaining the drama of the collection. This concept of adding a ‘statement’ accessory could be particularly useful in elevating your night-out uniform in the bubble from just jeans and a tiny top.
The idea remains to make streetwear chic look as if it came straight out of a Jane Austen novel; a contrast that may seem a little outrageous but is all the rage for an outing to the library. A long skirt with an oversized jacket, or a lace blouse beneath something more utilitarian, creates the same tension between romantic and relaxed. One standalone, contrasting add-on would also really sway your look in that direction. These pairings work oddly well with the heavy winds here, for Jonathan Anderson himself has given us permission to top off our sheer blouses with a big jacket. Plus, with this play on romanticism, we may just be witnessing a revival of ribbons and a continuation of the ballet flat frenzy!
The beauty side of Dior worked well in harmony with the outfits. Models wore fresh skin and salty, tousled hair, occasionally featuring flashes of silver around the eyes. The deliberately messy hair and imperfect metallic eye are certainly not the absence of styling. This is the paradox of the “undone”, and Kourtney Kardashian perfectly summed it up for us when she said, “Just like that effortless look, you know? But it's really a lot of effort.” And perhaps St Andrews has been rehearsing this look all along: windswept hair after a walk along West Sands, smudged makeup the morning after a night out, and the convenient fiction that neither required any effort.
Saint Laurent, meanwhile, leaned into sheer, exposed skin and metallics, with gold being predominant throughout the collection. The essence of the show was almost flawlessly showcased by Zoë Kravitz in the front row, who wore a sheer floral-lace cardigan and a pencil skirt, complete with a black ribbon and patent slingbacks. Around town, something as simple as a lace camisole teamed with your staple puffer, perhaps representing the committee you proudly belong to, could be an interesting take on Vaccarello’s vision and a fun way to bring a little bit of the runways of Paris to the three streets of St Andrews.
Outside the shows, trends are interpreted in real time. This week specifically saw sheer fabric, exaggerated proportions, formal pieces paired with casual ones, and hair accessories taking centre stage. St Andrews has its own rules, of course, for incorporating trends. Any silhouette has to survive horizontal rain and long walks up and down Market Street. Fashion, therefore, does not arrive ready-to-wear. It gets edited, weatherproofed, budgeted and, eventually, made your own.
Comments