jak and jil
My name is Hannah-Rose and I am a philophile. You know, a lover of all thing phoebe philo. I used to impulse shop, grab at anything shiny and throw it all together with reckless abandon. But that was 2009. Now it's 2010 and it suddenly all seems so silly. Girlish, almost. I want to be a grown up, with a serious job, serious concerns, and a wardrobe of Celine to deal with it all in. I'm not alone. Across the world there are hundreds (probably thousands, if you include the blogosphere) of philophiles who dream of dressing like the girl - no, woman - who really has it all.
Sally Singer says that there is a fervent and urgent element to Phoebe Philo's designs. It seems pressing that you adopt her fashion philosophy. This is not something to mull over, this is something to obsess over, to dream about, to spend all day hoping and wishing that someone will drop a perfect celine bag on your doorstep. The urgency comes, I think, from the real seriousness and resonance that a pared back approach to dressing has for our modern context. As many have noted before me, the flashy extravagance of a pre-GFC era seems so alien, so incongruous with today. Now is the time where the lawyer, the doctor, the teacher may be just as well suited as the fashion editor, the model, the actress. Now is the time for clothes that are the perfect theatre for you and your real life. Phoebe Philo said in the Gentlewoman that she wanted to design for everyday living for everyday woman. Clothes that could be worn to work and to play. Clothes that you can sit in an office in, clothes that you can play with your children in, clothes you can wear to a lazy sunday brunch and a formal evening 'do. And, for me, who does not have all the life experience of the vast majority of the philophiles (and of philo herself), that resonate across a variety of age groups, shapes and creeds.
Minimalism is often misconstrued and miscast as boring. Phoebe Philo's work at Celine - akin to Francisco Costa's at Calvin Klein and Raf Simons at Jil Sander - is anything but boring. There is a difference between boring and simple. The devil, such as he is, is in the details. In metal heels that anchor a shoe to the ground as you walk, a steely (pardon the pun) antithesis to the bare leather that crosses the foot only twice. In a bag that seems aero-dynamically engineered, such is the sleekness, the soundness, the sexiness, of that bottom curve. There is nothing 'boring' about sleeveless trenches, a-line skirts, khaki parkas and kick flares. They are simple clothes, effortless clothes and classic clothes. But they are not boring. For many, many years historiography theorists ignored the importance of social history, that is, the history of daily lives, of everyday people and not philosophers and princes. Let's think of this as social history of the wardrobe, shall we? Sure, museums might be filled with the grand couture creations of Rose Bertin and Christian Lacroix but real people's wardrobes are stuffed to bursting with just the sort of clothes that philo makes. (And who knows, maybe in 20 years the museums will have a little Celine crisp white shirt in their collections?)
And do you want to know the best thing about the philophiles? In a twist of fashion fate that is, in my opinion, lovely in the extreme, most of them are the girls - no, women, i must keep reminding myself - who were philophiles the first time round. The ones who kitted out in smock dresses, unwieldy wedges and alpaca knit ponchos. Now, just like Philo herself, they're a little older, a little wiser, and walking in a whole new set of shoes.
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