Passion for the power suit casts Thatcher as a fashion icon
LONDON: I remember very clearly what I wore for my first day at my first job, seven years ago: a pale lavender vest top, a bias-cut knee-length skirt with an unfortunate paisley print, and a pair of lilac kitten heels. This was topped by a cotton jacket from Gap which my mother bought for me especially for the occasion, praising its "usefulness". It did not occur to either of us to purchase anything approaching a power suit. My attempt to look more grown up than I was, in those days, consisted of matching my plastic shoes to my vest top.
For nigh on 20 years, power dressing has been little more than an embarrassing memory from the 80s - a decade not poor in retrospective humiliations. Those matching skirt suits, those jackets with shoulder pads (shoulder pads!), all that red... As tends to be the way in fashion, the women's version was much worse than the men's in the 80s. For men, power dressing pretty much began and ended with buff blue or black suits; the ladies, on the other hand, had lumpy jackets and belt-like miniskirts and something called "pantyhose". Power dressing, surely, was one 80s revival that could never happen?
Oh, ye of little faith! In the collections for this coming autumn/winter, designers have resurrected power dressing with the enthusiasm of Melanie Griffith shucking on the shoulder pads in Working Girl.
In the Yves Saint Laurent collection for next season, creative director Stefano Pilati has pushed aside last season's peasant look in favor of matching trouser suits and blazers. The blazers are slightly looser than the starchy ones of yore, but blazers they definitely are, in all their shoulder-padded and double-breasted glory. At Christian Dior, models stomped angrily down the runway in head-to-toe matching skirt suits, waists nipped smartly inwards, shoulders pointing imperiously upwards. Stella McCartney has combined what some might think are the worst of both worlds: the loose and sloppy styles of the past decade with the bulking up of the 80s, resulting in oversized shoulder-padded cardigans.
Even Marc Jacobs, the man who coined grunge in the early 90s - a look which arguably dethroned power dressing the first time round - has knocked out a collection that would not look entirely out of place worn in a glass-walled office block: smart trousers (the American word "slacks" comes unstoppably to mind) are worn with matching jackets; skirts and trousers are all high-waisted - no sloppy slipping down to the hips here - and hems hit the very formal point of the mid-calf. Considering his role as creator of the template that the entire high street copies, it will be interesting to see how retailers knock out these trouser suits at a low price, or whether they will even want to, considering that trouser suits are not really the kind of thing to inspire queues of hysterical teenagers to snake round the block. And maybe, in Jacobs' case, that is partly the point: now that the high street's copies are so good that they verge on plagiarism, one way for designers to stay ahead - aside from litigation - is to make clothes that are just too darn grown up to knock out on the cheap.
Even aside from all the designer backing, it was, rather delightfully, announced last week that August's US Vogue cover star, Sienna Miller, is considering starring in Oliver Stone's biopic of the life of that ultimate icon of power dressing, Margaret Thatcher. One need only think back to Miller's power at getting women to adopt saggy suede skirts and floppy hats two years ago, as well as this season's 60s smocks, to comprehend her strange power over the wardrobes of women around the world, and foresee a return to stiff blue jacket-and-skirt combos.
According to Pilati, these 80s styles make women look "at the same time more feminine and more powerful". Ah yes, the old "powerful women" chestnut. But surely if these women really were so powerful, they would not feel the need to bulk themselves up with padding and bossy brass buttons? Psychologist Jenny Summerfield says it was a yearning to look more authoritative that was behind power dressing the first time around. "In the late 70s and early 80s, there were more women in the workplace and pushing against the glass ceiling. But they didn't have quite the confidence that women have today and fashion very cleverly picked up on that and made clothes to help women feel more equal. The shoulder pads, the aggressive color red, the big jewelry - it was all about being noticed and making a statement." So is she surprised by its resurgence? "I am, because I think women are more comfortable with themselves and at work than they have ever been, so I wouldn't have thought that they'd need to make that kind of statement again."
Roland Mouret - who, one could argue, kicked off this return to a more formal style of dressing in the past few years with his much-copied Galaxy dress - says that, on the contrary, women are reacting against politics as opposed to making a political statement themselves. "There's so much political unrest that people want to feel in control. That's why they're returning to a more grown-up style." Well, perhaps - although, personally, I have yet to meet a woman whose reaction to reading the news is to buy a belted jacket. Whenever fashion writers or designers say that a trend is a "reaction against" whatever went before, what they usually mean is that, in order to get customers to spend money, they need to promote a look that is wholly different from anything seen in recent seasons.
But what is certainly true is that ever since the early 90s, women have been dressing less and less formerly in all contexts, perhaps as an embarrassed reaction against the blowsiness of power dressing. Stores such as Jigsaw and, latterly, Zara have made lucrative hay out of this trend for what has been dubbed "smart casual" (isn't that an oxymoron?), proffering swingy cropped jackets, bias-cut knee-length skirts, dainty blouses and waisted shirt dresses. But the bar for informality seems to fall lower with every year so that one now sees jeans, scuffed-up Converse trainers and empire-line tops that make women look like they are due in two months' time wafting around in most offices. And maybe it was just time for a change before we started going to work in our bathrobes.
"I think people are simply getting sick of this dressing down at work and they've realised that spaghetti-strap peasant tops don't look good on anyone except Sienna Miller," says Gaia Geddes, executive fashion editor of Harper's Bazaar.
"I mean, you can't work hard in flip flops."
Fortunately, power dressing has slightly improved from last time round: the shoulders are not quite so bulky, the waist is slightly more defined, the materials are not quite so shiny. "In fact," says Geddes, "it's a very flattering, slimming and feminine look, much more so than the peasant dresses."
Of course, not everyone is instantly going to ditch the floppy, boho, bias-cut styles they've been wearing to work in favor of Escada's shoulder-padded finest. The rise of the high street, with mothers and daughters shopping together, has seen a decided youthification in fashion and many women's attitudes to it. But this return of the skirt suit will serve as succor to those who complain there is nothing out there for a woman over 40 who doesn't want to look like Jennifer Saunders in Absolutely Fabulous but doesn't have an Armani loyalty card. If the creeping return to power dressing suggests anything, it is a desire for a return to grown-up dressing - more grown-up, anyway, than a pair of plastic purple shoes.
The Guardian
(China Daily 09/07/2007 page18)
