Food, Home and Style

The End of the Trend

Bid goodbye to waiting lists for nail polish colors (at the risk of dating myself, remember Chanel’s Vamp?), figuring out how to work mustard yellow into your wardrobe, and short-lived fashion trends in general.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal story, the past few years have seen the death of the trend. (WSJ.com has a pay wall, but you can get around it by Googling the headline.) “Everything is in style,” the creative director of Doneger Group consultants told a group of retailers.

Christina Binkley reports that we’re in an age where women can more easily wear what looks good on them. The must-have of the month is gone. And before you bring up gladiator sandals and harem pants — gladiators had a good long run given how damn distinctive-looking they are, and harem pants seem to have died in the desert. Thank God.

One source tells Binkley that the trend is dead because designers have already referenced every era. If that were the case, trends would have faded out centuries ago.

I think it’s the recession, stupid. Risk-averse retailers are pushing fewer extreme trends on consumers, fearing they’ll be stuck with unwanted inventory. For their part, shoppers don’t have money to blow on things that don’t fit their lifestyle, shape or budget. And they have bigger fish to fry than getting their hands on what’s hot for an instant.

This doesn’t mean the death of creativity in clothing or self-expression in dressing. I vividly remember an article in Allure, when the magazine first launched, called How the Pros Do the Shows. Young and a little naive about how the real world worked, I was delighted to learn that the professionals who spot and report fashion trends often don’t indulge in them–they have their well-honed individual styles.

The downside: We’ll have to live with certain “trends” for a long time. Uggs, anyone?

Tags: food, Home and Style, shopping, spending, style, Trends and Entertainment