SPRING FASHION
A leggings wearer gets the word on the new look from a Saks Fifth Avenue window. More Photos »
By RUTH LA FERLA
Published: April 6, 2011
FASHION happens by degrees. No banner headlines announce its arrival. (Make way for the mini! Salute the trapeze!) It appears by stealth, like the wisp of cloud that heralds summer showers.
Multimedia
See slide shows of the spring 2011 collections.
Related
A Long, Lean Backlash to the Mini (May 27, 2010)
So it was with longer hemlines. You scarcely saw them coming, then all at once they were descending on spring runways, breezing into cool boutiques and alighting on Manhattan streets well in advance of the season. First embraced a couple of years ago by fashion’s early adopters — young urbanites who flaunted maxidresses and flip-flops as an airy alternative to leggings and jeans — long skirts are now gaining traction as the most plainly discernible trend of spring.
A year ago, a movement toward sweeping skirts was in its “incubation phase,” said Holli Rogers, the buying director of Net-a-Porter, the online fashion retailer. “But by the time we were planning what to carry for spring, long was definitely a full-on trend.” And one the retailer was quick to exploit, its Web site displaying willowy skirts and dresses by the likes of Etro, M Missoni and T by Alexander Wang.
Stephanie Solomon, the fashion director of Bloomingdale’s, chimed in: “Below the knee, midcalf, anywhere hovering around the ankles — all of these lengths are trending at the moment. Only now have they started to register with consumers in a big way.”
Such fluid looks seem to have trickled upward from vintage shops and downtown streets. Over several seasons, the hems mutated from slinky calf-length and ankle-length tanks and tubular skirts to voluminous, unabashedly romantic pavement sweepers, looks that Nevena Borissova, a partner in Curve, a vanguard boutique in SoHo, describes as “floaty, let’s-go-get-high-at-Coachella stuff.”
Those early styles soon spawned successors that conjure Cathy on the moors and a slew ofWilla Cather frontier heroines. There are Saint Laurent-inspired rich gypsy and peasant shapes, interpreted for spring by Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld at Fendi and Ferragamo, to name but a few. And there are dance-inflected looks, some that were lent impetus by the flurry of calf-length ballerina skirts on the spring runways.
Today the merchants who banked on these styles are feeling pretty foxy.
“In terms of skirts, longer looks are all that’s selling,” said Ms. Borissova, whose shop has outposts in Los Angeles and Miami. Even the “Big Love” looks that were shunned a year ago have made strides, she said. “People are growing into them because the silhouette is more flow-y, the fabrics — organza and chiffon — lighter.”
Yet their surge in popularity took some retailers by surprise. “It’s not a sexy look, for sure,” said Beth Buccini, a partner in the SoHo boutique Kirna Zabête. “But I have to say, it’s kind of growing on me.” The store now carries slender floor-length dresses by Thakoonand billowing frocks by Verlaine.
Even once-skittish department stores seem determined to, well, go with the flow. “Last year on the streets we saw a lot more longer skirts than we offered in our store,” Ms. Solomon, of Bloomingdale’s, said. “We felt we might have missed an opportunity.” This year the store is upbeat enough to have paraded midcalf and ankle-length skirts in a fashion show in SoHo last month.
Just over a week ago, Saks Fifth Avenue filled its 49th Street windows with labels including Gryphon, Milly and Diane Von Furstenberg, showing skirts that dipped below the knees and others that pooled at the ankles, with suggestions for how to accessorize the looks.
Tumbling hemlines have helped drive sales of dresses and skirts, which in 2010 were ahead of the 2009 pace by 12 and 15 percent respectively, and they promise to do well throughout the spring, according to NPD Group, which tracks consumer spending. “Sales have really taken off,” said Marshal Cohen, the chief retail analyst, “and length has a lot to do with it.”
“It comes down to dramatic change, which we haven’t seen in a while,” Mr. Cohen said — a change that signals to the consumer that her wardrobe could use a radical update. He went on to predict, “We are seeing the beginning of what could be a three- or even four-year trend.”
Falling hems are giving a boost to companion looks, as well. “Silhouette changes require so many adjustments,” Ms. Solomon said. “When your hemline drops, you suddenly realize your coat is too short, so you need a new coat; your heels are too high, so you look for a flat or a wedge.” Longer hemlines,” she added emphatically, “give fashion over all a push.”
True, long skirts and dresses are an acquired taste, one that may be cultivated over time by poring over fashion magazines and scanning the Web for street shots of style-setters like the model Abbey Lee Kershaw, whose filmy ensembles are being emulated by legions of the would-be hip. After a while, as Ms. Solomon noted, your eye adjusts, and suddenly the miniskirt looks passé.
“It takes a while to see yourself in long skirts,” said Kendra Thompson, a communications student in Toronto, who was spotted in Chelsea swathed from the waist to ankles in transparent chiffon. “I never picked up on them until I started to see sheer versions,” she said, referring to diaphanous varieties that appeared on spring runways at Jil Sander,Chloé, Marc Jacobs and Lanvin, among others.
Shopping in SoHo last week, Julia McFarlane pondered adding a longer skirt to her wardrobe. Ms. McFarlane, who is over 60, is drawn to lengths that “cover the gap between the shoes and the hem,” she said, making long skirts a practical alternative to pants.
Multimedia
See slide shows of the spring 2011 collections.
Related
A Long, Lean Backlash to the Mini (May 27, 2010)
Does the growing acceptance of longer looks herald a sea change that will impel shoppers to cast off their minis, leggings and jeans? Not likely. “Fashion doesn’t work that way anymore,” Ms. Buccini said, arguing that longer skirts represent nothing more than the shift in sensibility that often accompanies fashion fatigue.
Or the vagaries of the fashion cycle.
“We’ve been showing so much skin for so long,” said Catherine Moellering, the executive vice president of the Tobe Report, a trend forecasting firm. Gauzy, long-sleeve tops and trailing hems “are starting to look really interesting again,” one indication, she added, of a “a covered-up fashion cycle.”
Covered up, but not prim. Some of the season’s most sought-after skirts are the most daring. Sheer from hip to instep, they offer a hint of raciness. “Last winter we began to see a lot of girls putting see-through floor-length skirts on top of either leather leggings or pants,” Ms. Borissova said.
Ms. Thompson made few such concessions to modesty, raising eyebrows when she turned up during New York Fashion Week in February dressed in a demi-sheer ankle-length skirt she bought at a secondhand store. Reactions varied. “There were all these people wanting to take my photograph,” she recalled. “But a man on the subway told me I looked like Morticia.”
Kristin Knox, who writes the Clothes Whisperer fashion blog, finds transparent skirts provocative in just the right degree. Wear them, she said, “and all of a sudden you’re going from mumsy to sexy.” So attached was she to her filmy skirts that, as she recalled, “it got to the point where my boyfriend was saying, ‘You can’t step out of the house in that!’ ”
Ms. Knox resolved the modesty issue by slipping gossamer bloomers under her skirts. And she has sidestepped the specter of frumpiness — calling to mind college girls in Birkenstocks and genteel matrons with lifetime subscriptions to The New Yorker — by wearing ankle boots on cool days and wedged platforms on others.
“Wedges keep the look younger and edgier,” she said.
Colleen Sherin, the fashion director of Saks Fifth Avenue, favors platform soles, as well, which look best, she said, with midcalf or ankle-length dresses. For warmer days she suggested ballet shoes or flat sandals. Still, she had a word of caution: “You’re not wearing a pump with this new longer length.”
When it comes to proportion, almost anything goes, Ms. Sherin maintained. On blustery days, a long skirt can be layered under tunics, moderately cropped or hip-length jackets or chunky cardigans. A dress, she added, may be easier to wear. “You don’t have to think of the components that go with it.” And shorter women needn’t shy away, she said. Like flared trousers, a slender skirt can be elongating.
In the city, long, flyaway hemlines can be tricky, of course. But enterprising fans are buying inexpensive versions at stores like Topshop and American Apparel and taking shears to the hems or sides to free up their stride. For them, such small sacrifices are worth the trouble.
“When you walk down the street, and your skirt billows out behind you, that adds a touch of glamour,” Ms. Knox declared. “There’s really nothing like it.”
A version of this article appeared in print on April 7, 2011, on page E1 of the New York edition.
FASHION happens by degrees. No banner headlines announce its arrival. (Make way for the mini! Salute the trapeze!) It appears by stealth, like the wisp of cloud that heralds summer showers.
Multimedia
See slide shows of the spring 2011 collections.
Related
A Long, Lean Backlash to the Mini (May 27, 2010)
So it was with longer hemlines. You scarcely saw them coming, then all at once they were descending on spring runways, breezing into cool boutiques and alighting on Manhattan streets well in advance of the season. First embraced a couple of years ago by fashion’s early adopters — young urbanites who flaunted maxidresses and flip-flops as an airy alternative to leggings and jeans — long skirts are now gaining traction as the most plainly discernible trend of spring.
A year ago, a movement toward sweeping skirts was in its “incubation phase,” said Holli Rogers, the buying director of Net-a-Porter, the online fashion retailer. “But by the time we were planning what to carry for spring, long was definitely a full-on trend.” And one the retailer was quick to exploit, its Web site displaying willowy skirts and dresses by the likes of Etro, M Missoni and T by Alexander Wang.
Stephanie Solomon, the fashion director of Bloomingdale’s, chimed in: “Below the knee, midcalf, anywhere hovering around the ankles — all of these lengths are trending at the moment. Only now have they started to register with consumers in a big way.”
Such fluid looks seem to have trickled upward from vintage shops and downtown streets. Over several seasons, the hems mutated from slinky calf-length and ankle-length tanks and tubular skirts to voluminous, unabashedly romantic pavement sweepers, looks that Nevena Borissova, a partner in Curve, a vanguard boutique in SoHo, describes as “floaty, let’s-go-get-high-at-Coachella stuff.”
Those early styles soon spawned successors that conjure Cathy on the moors and a slew ofWilla Cather frontier heroines. There are Saint Laurent-inspired rich gypsy and peasant shapes, interpreted for spring by Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld at Fendi and Ferragamo, to name but a few. And there are dance-inflected looks, some that were lent impetus by the flurry of calf-length ballerina skirts on the spring runways.
Today the merchants who banked on these styles are feeling pretty foxy.
“In terms of skirts, longer looks are all that’s selling,” said Ms. Borissova, whose shop has outposts in Los Angeles and Miami. Even the “Big Love” looks that were shunned a year ago have made strides, she said. “People are growing into them because the silhouette is more flow-y, the fabrics — organza and chiffon — lighter.”
Yet their surge in popularity took some retailers by surprise. “It’s not a sexy look, for sure,” said Beth Buccini, a partner in the SoHo boutique Kirna Zabête. “But I have to say, it’s kind of growing on me.” The store now carries slender floor-length dresses by Thakoonand billowing frocks by Verlaine.
Even once-skittish department stores seem determined to, well, go with the flow. “Last year on the streets we saw a lot more longer skirts than we offered in our store,” Ms. Solomon, of Bloomingdale’s, said. “We felt we might have missed an opportunity.” This year the store is upbeat enough to have paraded midcalf and ankle-length skirts in a fashion show in SoHo last month.
Just over a week ago, Saks Fifth Avenue filled its 49th Street windows with labels including Gryphon, Milly and Diane Von Furstenberg, showing skirts that dipped below the knees and others that pooled at the ankles, with suggestions for how to accessorize the looks.
Tumbling hemlines have helped drive sales of dresses and skirts, which in 2010 were ahead of the 2009 pace by 12 and 15 percent respectively, and they promise to do well throughout the spring, according to NPD Group, which tracks consumer spending. “Sales have really taken off,” said Marshal Cohen, the chief retail analyst, “and length has a lot to do with it.”
“It comes down to dramatic change, which we haven’t seen in a while,” Mr. Cohen said — a change that signals to the consumer that her wardrobe could use a radical update. He went on to predict, “We are seeing the beginning of what could be a three- or even four-year trend.”
Falling hems are giving a boost to companion looks, as well. “Silhouette changes require so many adjustments,” Ms. Solomon said. “When your hemline drops, you suddenly realize your coat is too short, so you need a new coat; your heels are too high, so you look for a flat or a wedge.” Longer hemlines,” she added emphatically, “give fashion over all a push.”
True, long skirts and dresses are an acquired taste, one that may be cultivated over time by poring over fashion magazines and scanning the Web for street shots of style-setters like the model Abbey Lee Kershaw, whose filmy ensembles are being emulated by legions of the would-be hip. After a while, as Ms. Solomon noted, your eye adjusts, and suddenly the miniskirt looks passé.
“It takes a while to see yourself in long skirts,” said Kendra Thompson, a communications student in Toronto, who was spotted in Chelsea swathed from the waist to ankles in transparent chiffon. “I never picked up on them until I started to see sheer versions,” she said, referring to diaphanous varieties that appeared on spring runways at Jil Sander,Chloé, Marc Jacobs and Lanvin, among others.
Shopping in SoHo last week, Julia McFarlane pondered adding a longer skirt to her wardrobe. Ms. McFarlane, who is over 60, is drawn to lengths that “cover the gap between the shoes and the hem,” she said, making long skirts a practical alternative to pants.
Multimedia
See slide shows of the spring 2011 collections.
Related
A Long, Lean Backlash to the Mini (May 27, 2010)
Does the growing acceptance of longer looks herald a sea change that will impel shoppers to cast off their minis, leggings and jeans? Not likely. “Fashion doesn’t work that way anymore,” Ms. Buccini said, arguing that longer skirts represent nothing more than the shift in sensibility that often accompanies fashion fatigue.
Or the vagaries of the fashion cycle.
“We’ve been showing so much skin for so long,” said Catherine Moellering, the executive vice president of the Tobe Report, a trend forecasting firm. Gauzy, long-sleeve tops and trailing hems “are starting to look really interesting again,” one indication, she added, of a “a covered-up fashion cycle.”
Covered up, but not prim. Some of the season’s most sought-after skirts are the most daring. Sheer from hip to instep, they offer a hint of raciness. “Last winter we began to see a lot of girls putting see-through floor-length skirts on top of either leather leggings or pants,” Ms. Borissova said.
Ms. Thompson made few such concessions to modesty, raising eyebrows when she turned up during New York Fashion Week in February dressed in a demi-sheer ankle-length skirt she bought at a secondhand store. Reactions varied. “There were all these people wanting to take my photograph,” she recalled. “But a man on the subway told me I looked like Morticia.”
Kristin Knox, who writes the Clothes Whisperer fashion blog, finds transparent skirts provocative in just the right degree. Wear them, she said, “and all of a sudden you’re going from mumsy to sexy.” So attached was she to her filmy skirts that, as she recalled, “it got to the point where my boyfriend was saying, ‘You can’t step out of the house in that!’ ”
Ms. Knox resolved the modesty issue by slipping gossamer bloomers under her skirts. And she has sidestepped the specter of frumpiness — calling to mind college girls in Birkenstocks and genteel matrons with lifetime subscriptions to The New Yorker — by wearing ankle boots on cool days and wedged platforms on others.
“Wedges keep the look younger and edgier,” she said.
Colleen Sherin, the fashion director of Saks Fifth Avenue, favors platform soles, as well, which look best, she said, with midcalf or ankle-length dresses. For warmer days she suggested ballet shoes or flat sandals. Still, she had a word of caution: “You’re not wearing a pump with this new longer length.”
When it comes to proportion, almost anything goes, Ms. Sherin maintained. On blustery days, a long skirt can be layered under tunics, moderately cropped or hip-length jackets or chunky cardigans. A dress, she added, may be easier to wear. “You don’t have to think of the components that go with it.” And shorter women needn’t shy away, she said. Like flared trousers, a slender skirt can be elongating.
In the city, long, flyaway hemlines can be tricky, of course. But enterprising fans are buying inexpensive versions at stores like Topshop and American Apparel and taking shears to the hems or sides to free up their stride. For them, such small sacrifices are worth the trouble.
“When you walk down the street, and your skirt billows out behind you, that adds a touch of glamour,” Ms. Knox declared. “There’s really nothing like it.”
A version of this article appeared in print on April 7, 2011, on page E1 of the New York edition.
