Going for a walk along the sunny Kent coast last Saturday, I dressed in a North Face windproof jacket, old sweatpants and hiking shoes — topped off with a fleece beanie, my trusty camouflage rucksack and thrift-shop sunglasses.
Practical and anonymous, but suddenly bang on-trend, according to American style-spotters.
Don’t laugh, the comfy well-worn look we wear shopping, slobbing out in front of the telly and walking the dog has been identified as an important new trend called ‘normcore’ — and fashion designers are leaping on the bandwagon.
Don’t laugh, the comfy well-worn look we wear shopping, slobbing out in front of the telly and walking the dog has been identified as an important new trend called ‘normcore’ — and fashion designers are leaping on the bandwagon.
Marc Jacobs has even designed hiking sandals (costing hundreds) for goodness sake, and designers from Top Shop to DKNY and Chanel are sending baggy denim dungarees, shapeless sweaters and shirts, comfy ‘mom’ jeans and trainers on the catwalk.
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Geeky: Mark Zuckerberg. Janet Street-Porter says: he always looks 'utterly banal, not a logo in sight'
Designers are plundering sportswear and leisure clothing for inspiration, and plastering their logos all over it.
So what is normcore? According to forecasters in the U.S., the more successful you are, the less you have to express it.
By dressing to blend in to the crowd, you’re staying ‘I’m confident in myself’. Think size medium, mass-market ranges like Gap and Converse, plain T-shirts and stonewash denim.
Trend-spotters cite Barack Obama in his comfy jeans and dreary baggy white shirts as a good example, or Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who only ever wore a black turtle neck and nondescript jeans.
Look at Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and tech genius Bill Gates — they always look utterly banal, not a logo in sight.
Zuckerberg sticks to a round-neck T-shirt and only wears cheap clothes, and Bill Gates has the ultimate geek haircut teamed with those tragic glasses and a plain white shirt. All hugely successful, are they making a point we haven’t spotted?
If you’ve got a big brain, do your clothes have to shout ‘look at me’?
For all we can sneer at the idea of normcore, it does raise an interesting issue. Fashion is supposed to be about expressing individual taste, but have you noticed that so many of us end up looking exactly the same?
We have unlimited choice in every price range, but so many successful women conform to a narrow stereotype — loosely based on Her Royal Blandness, Kate Middleton.
Clever female politicians, from Gloria de Piero to Yvette Cooper just love those form-fitting dresses with their little jackets made by High Street favourites like L. K. Bennett, Zara and Reiss. This sexy but somehow sexless demure look is a watered-down version of the fabulous bodycon dresses designed by Roland Mouret a few years ago. And isn’t it amazing that so many clever women choose clothes that invite comment?
Try hard: Amy Childs tweeted pictures of herself 'wearing four frocks from her new range in 24 hours' suggests she is 'a clothes horse enslaved by fashion' says Janet Street-Porter
Look at Theresa May and those desperately silly shoes. You’d think that the people who work in fashion would all look different, expressing their personal taste.
But look at the occupants of the front row at shows — lemmings in long skirts, ankle socks, all looking like they’ve all been hatched at the same on-trend factory.
High fashion has turned them into consumer- driven clones.
Look at Lily Allen, turning up at everything to promote her upcoming album in a different outfit every day, even tweeting a photo of herself on the Tube. And what about Amy Childs tweeting pictures of herself wearing four frocks from her new range in 24 hours?
These women pride themselves on being fearless spokeswomen, and yet they are just clotheshorses enslaved by fashion.
To swap frocks so often surely shows a lack of confidence.
We can moan that men don’t take us seriously, but perhaps we are addicted to dressing to get noticed — so maybe we can learn from the cult of normcore.
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