Fritinancy

Fashion word watch: Cold shoulder

Today is the final day of New York Fashion Week (NYFW), the seven-day period during which designers present their new collections — Spring/Summer 2017, this time around — to the press and well-heeled clients. (The event has been called Fashion Week since 1993; for half a century before then, it was known as Press Week.) With apparel on our minds, it seems like a good time to look at a curious fashion term that’s been all over fashion reporting this season – but, like much of fashion itself, turns out to be recycled.

The term is cold shoulder, and in its typical mid-price-point manifestation it looks like this:

Bailey 44 “Deneuve” Cold Shoulder Body-Con Dress, $138 at Nordstrom.

Fashion writers talk about it like this:

If you're obsessed with off-the-shoulder everything, but can't imagine wearing the trend post-summer, we've got some good news: On Saturday, It label Self-Portrait confirmed that the cold-shoulder aesthetic is here to stay, just with some epic new variations. – Refinery 29, September 11, 2016

(That short passage contains a grand slam of style jargon: obsessed, It label, cold shoulder, and epic.)

To be classified as a true cold-shoulder dress or top, the arms must be at least partially covered and the shoulders exposed. (No halter tops, in other words, and no off-the-shoulder peasant blouses.) Unlike a lot of fashionspeak, that makes a certain amount of sense.

But wait: Isn’t cold shoulder also an established idiom in the English language with an unattractive meaning – a show of disrespect or contempt, a snub? It is indeed. So how did this negative term become attached to objects of desire?

When the Saints Go Marching In

Fritinancy Fashion Week wraps up on a reverent note, honoring a quartet of brands with “Saint” in their names.

Fashion Week: Short Takes

The Seattle boutique Totokaelo – which since 2003 has championed avant-garde Japanese and European fashion in a city better known for flannel and anoraks – recently opened a five-story, 8,400-square-foot outpost in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. “Totokaelo” may appear to be borrowed from the Chinook language, but in fact it’s a corruption of Latin words that translate to “the sky’s the limit,” a motto that applies to many of the prices. The New York Times says the name is pronounced TOH-toh-KYE-yo,

Issey Miyake dress from Totokaelo.

 

Fashion Name in the News: Bombfell

Fritinancy Fashion Week marches into the trenches today with a name that aims for edgy, teeters precariously, and ends up lurching over the cliff.

Edgy names are nothing new in fashion branding. Here in San Francisco, there’s an upscale boutique for men and women called Acrimony. I’ve seen an online store called Dolls Kill, a fashion brand called Skingraft, and, of course, a sneaker called Tampon. And with “street style,” pretty much anything goes.

Which brings us to the nom du jour: Bombfell, a clothing-by-subscription service for men.

 

Yes, that’s a lit fuse on the mascot’s head. But Bombfell wants us to think metaphorically and word-blend-ly. Care to guess?

"Plus Is Equal"

Fritinancy Fashion Week continues with the story of a venerable retailer, a mysterious ad, and a clever tagline/hashtag.

The September 2015 issue of American Vogue contains 832 pages, and on only two of those pages do we see women who aren’t whippet-thin. The women on those two pages are photographed in silhouette against a gray background, and although the spread appears to be an ad, no brand is identified – there’s only a date (9.14.15), an enigmatic hashtag (#PlusIsEqual) and web URL (plusisequal.com), and “It’s time for change. Be part of it.” 

It’s about time. (And what a perfect day for this.) #WomensEqualityDay#PlusIsEqualpic.twitter.com/EpLIYTc1VS

— Lane Bryant (@lanebryant) August 26, 2015

 

Word of the Week: Waist Trainer

Waist trainer: A compression garment that squeezes the wearer’s midsection to create an hourglass shape.

“Celebrity double wide waist trainer corset” via Groupon; 87 percent latex, 10 percent polyamide, 3 percent elastene. That “double wide” in the name is perhaps unfortunate.