After months of suspense and waiting for this monumental global event, the London 2012 Olympics are finally here. I remember turning on the Games every night four years ago, watching Michael Phelps win gold medal after gold medal and secretly wishing our age difference wasn’t so large. I think it’s quite hilarious that these are only the thirtieth Olympic Games, when they really began in Ancient Greece in 776 BC. Sorry guys, but that was a bit more than one hundred twenty years ago. Besides the fact that this event is supposed to unify the world while engaging each country’s best athletes in competition, it draws a great deal of attention to the city where it takes place. London is already a renowned city, especially in the fashion world for its creativity. Out of the four major cities of fashion like Paris, it’s one of them. During the Olympiad, everyone is focused on sports and rivalry. However, I tend to hyperventilate while watching the contests and matches on television in the intensity of the games. To lighten things up a touch, I thought it would be fun to honor London in a slightly different way by admiring the natives’ fashion.
Ask anyone—London is known for its quirky but trendy style. It’s sort of like the IFC Channel in that way: “Always on. Slightly off.” The city’s fashion week is always debuting the industry’s emerging designers as well as sustaining some of the most celebrated names in the trade. Alexander McQueen, Mary Katrantzou, Christopher Kane, Erdem, Ashish, and Stella McCartney are only a few of the labels that show in London, but all of them accurately represent the metropolis’s idiosyncratic flair.
Alexa Chung is one of the people heading the personal style frontier; she oozes originality. Yet at the same time, she always seems to be on top of trends before anyone else. Take this photo of her from Glastonbury music festival in 2011. She’s wearing a nice white blouse, a spiky purse, a plaid-lined windbreaker, and muddy Wellies all at once. I can’t think of another person that could manage to do that gracefully like Ms. Chung.
You may have heard of her and you may have not, but either way, Rosalind Jana is an English girl with awesome style. Although not from London, she often attends shows at London Fashion Week because she’s a blogger and writer. I think what makes Rosalind’s ensembles so interesting is that she loves to dress up in costumes (and does so quite often on her blog), and that whimsical influence shows through in her everyday outfits. For example, her pairing of pumpkin-colored trousers and mustard-colored socks could very well be a conceptual choice. Perhaps she was making a commentary on the potential harmony between the two foods. Food for thought, am I right?
Even though Nadia Sarwar recently moved from England to New York, she still dresses like a Londoner. Oftentimes her outfits are color coordinated and menswear-inspired. The borrowed from the boys look is nothing new, but she always manages to incorporate some cool vintage pieces into her outfits that make them feminine but also kind of bizarre. I’ve seen her wear a cape backwards before. And lots of hats. I think her and I have the whole old-man-trapped-in-a-young-female’s-body issue in common.
This London Fashion Week Showgoer was unnamed by Mr. Newton but has a clear sense of style nonetheless. I’m a huge fan of overall shorts (shortalls, as I prefer to call them), especially when they’re matched with classy items like a blouse and a blazer. It’s like an oxymoron mixed with a confusing pun: you have to think about the logic of it until you realize there is none, but you appreciate the genius of it anyway. The one issue I have with this pictures is that no matter how many times I look at it, I always think of cows and subsequently an ice cream store in Massachusetts; it kind of detracts from the experience a little.
For the purposes of consistency, we’ll call this last girl LFW Showgoer #2. Even though this was taken over a year ago, she was already on top of the upcoming pre-fall and fall oriental-inspiration and cinched waist trends. Snaps for showgoer #2, everyone. She also had pastel-colored hair before it was cool. I think that based on this information it’s safe to assume that she has a time machine.
How do you feel about London street fashion? Is there another city you prefer? Do you wish there were more capybaras involved? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter (@everybodyisugly).
By Odelia Kaly
Photos via harpersbazaar.com and fashionistable.com
