Five Shades of Pink, None of Them Pastel
Every Berlin Fashion Week ends the same way—a fresh wave of teenagers who discovered Scandinavian style blogs three weeks ago fans out across the internet, wearing everything in every color that isn’t quite a color, accessorized past the point of recovery. For every ten of those I want to quietly redirect toward a full-length mirror, there’s one worth following down the street just to tell them they got it exactly right. This week’s crop leans toward the latter more than usual.
Olivia is seventeen, from California, and puts together an outfit the way someone who actually loves clothes does—not the way someone who wants to be seen loving clothes does. There’s a difference, and it shows. Vintage dress from Spanish Moss Vintage, a necklace from GAS’D, the right sunglasses. The whole thing has a sun-bleached West Coast looseness that makes a lot of European fashion feel tight and effortful by comparison. I’m convinced.
Eszter from Vienna is visibly, emphatically pregnant and has decided to dress around it rather than disappear into shapelessness, which takes a particular confidence I’ll respect even while finding the whole situation mildly surreal. Topshop earrings, a Zara denim vest, an oversize dress doing exactly the job it was designed to do. She looks good. Carrying a whole other person and still putting together a better look than most manage without that particular complication.
There’s an Alternative Justin doing the rounds and I’ll take him over the original without negotiation. The actual Justin Bieber in 2010 is one of those cultural phenomena I can’t explain and resent having to acknowledge—omnipresent, aggressively tuneless, the musical equivalent of stepping barefoot on something in the dark. This version has a good vest and presumably doesn’t make music that sounds like a dial-up modem being apologized to. That’s enough.
Camille is twenty-two, lives in London, and I would write her a deeply embarrassing love song if the notes would cooperate. Topshop shirt, ASOS necklace, American Apparel treggings, heels. The whole thing is light and precise and more than its parts. There’s a category of person who looks effortless not because they’re not trying, but because what they’re trying is correct. She’s in that category. I’d follow her home if she let me.
Olof from Sweden looks, at first glance, like someone who started taking fashion seriously before puberty finished with him, which gives the whole silhouette an interesting tension. MTWTFSS Weekday clothes, Beyond Retro shoes, a Chanel bag at sixteen. The poses are a bit studied. The overall impression is of someone mid-process, figuring it out. That’s exactly what sixteen is for. Stop smoking, find some decent trousers, and he’ll land somewhere good.