It’s barely August and already I’m wishing away what’s left of the British Summer and looking forward to Fall. Why? Well I’d like to say it’s because we’re in for a treat with a raft of gorgeous new trends wrapped up in the FW17 and pre-Fall collections, and that definitely is one of the reasons. But mostly, I’m looking forward to saying goodbye to this fucking awful Cold Shoulder trend that’s been everywhere throughout SS17.
You know the one, it’s that trend where you wear an ordinary top of some sort, whether it be a cotton tee, a long sleeved jersey top, a lightweight knit, or something a little more fancy, minus the shoulders. It’s that trend where your top has more holes than it should, holes deliberately designed for your shoulders to poke through, because who doesn’t want to see more shoulder and less of everything else right? Me. I don’t.
An off the shoulder top works, a Bardot top I get, but just a hole where the shoulder is then a continuation of the sleeve. Stop this now, you be cray.
Head, body and arm holes, I’m totally down with those. Shoulder holes however? Weird and stupid. I get that fashion isn’t about practicality, the world would be an aesthetically boring place if clothes were regimented and built purely to cover our skin. I love fashion and I’m often one to adopt a more unusual trend, others I sit back and watch before trying; but this one feels like a microtrend that’s been pioneered by minor reality stars and felt the benefit of the snowball effect. It feels like an accidental trend, something that was never meant to happen and I can only assume that one day when trying to squeeze their frame into a gorgeous top a shade too small, someone decided to cut out the shoulders in an attempt to style it out.
The problem with this trend is that it’s been adapted from a very particular runway look that was delivered and styled in a very specific way. As we know, the trends we buy into on the high street are dictated by the most popular and striking looks on the runway during global Fashion Month. This one has been spun and respun and modified to make it a viable option for mass production, that it no longer resembles or embodies the original idea. It looks exactly like it was, a top that’s missing it’s shoulders. It’s the Ronseal of the fashion world and this is a trend for people who don’t know fashion.
The highstreet interpretation of the Cold Shoulder is a mess, you can literally walk into a store and buy any style of top with the shoulders missing, and people do. It’s a hideous mess that people are displaying proudly in 2017 whilst 2027’s TimeHop is rubbing it’s hands in glee. Recently hailed as the Number 1 trend that looks good on all ages (it doesn’t), the Cold Shoulder trend is killed by one thing: Winter. That’s the number one reason i’m praying for Fall Voyeurs, so I don’t have to fight my way through a sea of Cold Shouldered fools when I’m stocking up on the cool new trends for FW17….
Pixie xo