Communist Stylewatch

Hasta la Victoria, Siempre

WWP was on her travels this summer.  In September I took a very grown-up, relaxing trip to a port town in Majorca with First Serious Boyfriend, and in June I packed up my backpack and flew to Havana with Friend From University, where we traversed the top half of the island by coach.  Cuba was many things to me.  Communist (obviously), sexual (unashamedly), joyful (largely). Yet the description which has been stuck on the end of my tongue every time friends ask, is time-warped.  Cars run on black smoke and gaffa-taped exhausts, computers run on Windows '98 and the people run on rum, salsa and cigarettes.  No, really.  The radio plays Greenday and Kelly Clarkson circa 2001.  And the women dress from a time WWP is struggling to pinpoint.

A typical Cuban chica's daywear wardrobe would consist of: cotton shorts - strictly half an inch too long or five inches too short; an emporium of jersey halterneck tops embellished with diamante (delete as appropriate) Playboy bunny/'Sexy Biatch'/marijuana leaf; a selection of brightly coloured bras with thick straps (to be worn with the halternecks); an assortment of footwear, ranging from plastic white gladiator sandals to plastic white stilettos; and a jewellery box filled with even more diamante for good measure. A night spent at the Casa de la Musica? Never before have hemlines tested the boundaries modesty like they have been in Havana. 

After spending only two weeks travelling through the country, it is impossible to grasp how exactly a communist system dictates lives.  I know that people queue for their bread in the morning and I know that the tax rate is incredibly high. I know that there is a prominent commodity-based black market, and I know that Cubans, who are generally the most gregarious and welcoming of people, will do almost anything to scam a few Pesos from an unsuspecting couple of English tourists.  However how this trailer trash look started, I do not know.  'Time-warped' doesn't cover it - the '90s in the Western world may have been a decade of fashion sloth and purgatory, but at least we matched our underwear accordingly to our crop tops and distressed flares.  Cuba, I love you, but surely Communism is no excuse for looking like a ho.  And if it is, let's hope an Iron Curtain is never dropped over us again.  

Style icon

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner

Can you say hot?  Argentina seems to have a knack of producing captivating politicians, a knack that Britain devastatingly fails at...Teresa May with a good blowdry and substantial amount of make-up?  I think not.

Cristina and her beautiful (I assume Chanel) tweed generally appear to stay out of trouble in the political spectrum.  Mirroring that foxy Peron lady she followed her husband into politics, gaining just the amount of the presidential vote needed to slyly slip herself into the top job in 2007.  She is an advocate of equality, consumption and fairness and her political style is ballsy and ultimately feminist.  Feminist in the sense that everything she believes is clearly right and she'll aggressively ignore you until you apologise - sorry Brazil, that's just the woman Argentina is.  

However sick this President must get of being compared to Miss Evita, the comparisons are so obviously there to clutch at that it would almost be rude to ignore them.  As Fernandez beautifully put it herself, she is the Eva Peron with  "the hair in a bun and the clenched fist before a microphone."  Add to this a wardrobe so exquisitely large that she is often late to diplomatic meetings because she is getting dressed and you have the archetype of what a female Head of State should, and successfully can, be.  Oh, and since her husband's death she has only worn black:  Queen Victoria, you have been put to shame. 

WAG Watch

Sam Cam Can

As painful as it is for a student of politics to write about the wives of politicians (there are few real 'girlfriends' in the political sphere due to the fact that everyone's Christian, old, or awkwardly closeted), it would be slightly anachronistic for a blog like this not to mention them.  And at the end of the day, as much as I'd love to see Tom Ford style Ed Balls on a day-to-day basis, I'd much prefer to write about Carla Bruni's penchant for Dior.  Or slag off Yvette Cooper's hair.  Whatever.  So to start at the top of the pile as it were, enter Spouse of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Samantha Cameron.

The question of whether Mrs. Cameron actually likes being called 'Sam' must be asked.  After all, she is descended from King Henry VIII, and comes from the same gene pool as Princess Diana.  Yet she has done a pretty outstanding job at keeping this from the Great BP.  Yes, her family own two, 300-acre estates but she studied art at Bristol Polytech; yes, she named her second child Arthur Elwin but she's got a cute Deschanel-esque fringe in place of a horrendous Cherie Blair blow dry.  Her style is somewhere between poster-girl for the Whistles' Basics range and Carole Middleton on crack.  She knows what suits her, accessorizes near-perfectly and in another life I'm sure she could have made it as a model.  For the Boden catalogue maybe, but a model nonetheless.

The thing WWP likes the most about Sam is her face.  It has this permanent demeanor of 'I'm slightly too cool for this politics business...where's my intern? I need a macchiato pronto.'  Coupled with her mildly hilarious aversion to hats (opting for a clip-in fascinator at the Royal Wedding, going sans headwear at the opening of parliament), SamCam has turned out to be one of the more successful first ladies to grace our lands, Zara blazers and all.  

Tales of the Recession

Super-Hang-Me-Out-To-Dry

Image @ http://wallasworld.blogspot.com/

Superdry - the go-to brand of any 17 year old Essex boy with a part-time job - today announced a 17% fall in share prices.  Owned by the ever-so modestly named 'SuperGroup', Superdry is a clothing company born and bred in the town of Cheltenham, which although close to WWP's hometown and therefore, close to her heart, is not the Tokyo-style city the brand would like us to believe.  Cheltenham is, by all accounts, a posh town in Middle England; Superdry's clothes scream 'Konichiwa Bitches!', advertising gas stations with Japanese symbols ...or as Wikipedia likes to call it 'Engrish' (well they don't call it an encyclopedia for nothing!)


Superdry's fall in profits is an event both startling and depressingly unsurprising.  Whilst the brand was never going to turn the British Highstreet around sartorially (and let's all be glad they didn't) they have quietly enjoyed the successes of becoming the cult destination for surfers/skaters, and with phrases such as 'good quality' and 'it's expensive but it will last you!' banded around a lot, their growth became exponential.  CEO and poster boy for young retail entreprenuership, Julian Dunkerton, claims this dip is nothing but a delayed hangover from Christmas.  He may be right.  Savvy fashion retailers may seem to endure Britain's New Year thriftiness by discounting to their heart's content, but it should be noted that Superdry's highly branded, one directional style makes it a male brand through and through.  And when was the last time you saw men queuing at 5.30am for the Boxing Day Sales?


As you can probably tell, WWP is no fan of Superdry.  But that's not to say it's a bad brand.  The quality of the cotton is good and it's recent joining of the ETI is a promising step towards developing some form of Ethical Trading Policy.  That being said (and writing from a fashion-lover's point of view), seeing a brand which makes the entire male population of Bristol look the same start to stumble is a little bit enjoyable.  But of course, until the boys start wearing their bowler hats and shining their shoes again, men's fashion will never be as it really should.

A Reluctantly Serious Post

The Politics of Anorexia

As much as WWP enjoys writing about the sartorial mistakes of politicians, recent discussions with friends have compelled me to write a post on the darker side of fashion.  No idea how much politics will really come into it.

I never used to take anorexia or any eating disorder that seriously.  Probably because when I was thirteen years old and obsessed with Marisa Cooper in the OC I went through a stage when I didn't eat that much (although it was probably more than I eat now) because I wanted to be skinny like her.  The fact of the matter was I was tiny and probably still fitting into children's clothes.  In any case, I was 'suffering from anorexia' in my head and in my diaries, but as this nonexistent eating disorder lasted all of a couple of months, I always assumed it was an easy thing to get over.

When everyone grew up a little bit I had a friend at school who came very near to hospitalising herself over anorexia.  She then proceeded to find God/an older boyfriend and recovered.  But when I moved to university, it was a different story.  I've realised that those of my friends (and there are substantial amount of them) that have suffered from an eating disorder all went to all-girls, usually private schools.  

An urban, female-intensive situation in my mind, spawns anorexia.  When trying to explain eating disorders to a male friend a couple of nights ago, he genuinely couldn't comprehend how skinny is attractive.  And 'attractive' is the key word, even discourse.  In a rural small town and co-educational comprehensive school, attractive means appealing to the opposite sex, which in turn equals breasts.  In a heterosexual, girls-only boarding school in the middle of nowhere, attractive means fashionable.  And in fashion, fashionable tends to equal skinny.  Until this is turned around I cannot see a way the anorexia problem can be solved, in white middle-class England at least.

Urban Controversies

Nava-no!

Urban Outfitters is the hipsters' brand of choice: strange dress forms, see-through material and interesting prints.  Said interesting prints however have landed UO in a political storm, moreover one that is debatably racial.  A couple of months ago the store brought in the Navajo print, one that takes its name from a real, proper Native American tribe and to add insult to injury, directly copies their traditional prints.

After a young Native American woman wrote an open letter to the CEO of UO (on a website called 'Racialicious' I kid you not), the culture and fashion blogosphere apparently imploded with anti-racial good intentions.  Petitions circulated demanding the line, which includes amongst other harmless products knickers and a hipflask, be discontinued.  In one blogger's words: "The arrogance of this company should make other groups wary of their products, lest their culture is the next to be satirized for a quick hipster buck."  Oh dear UO.


Maybe it's because WWP is of British refinement, maybe it's because WWP is an ignorant bigot, but the point that could crucially be missing here is that these outcries are coming from America, and Urban Outfitters is a global brand.  It is entirely possible that the designs were dreamt up by a Danish design genius who hadn't even watched Pocohontas, let alone known who the Navajo were.  And in a wider context, where would this debate put George Michael's cross earring, Marlene Dietrich's turban or every Islamic rug that decorates the parquet flooring of middle-class Surrey?  Every fashion design will have been influenced by religion somewhere along the line, as that was the first thing in history to give humanity self-identity.  Except in the case of Jack Wills.  Which I suppose could be classed as Satanic.  

Historic Style Secrets

Aristotle and Plato

As WWP is an unashamed Greekophile, Mythology nerd and now student of ancient philosophy, it seemed like a good time to discuss the merits of ancient Greek menswear.  Never in history has there been clothing so androgynous yet so flattering, and also so practical.  Athenians of today do not dress for their climate; women totter round in skin tight jeans, kitten heels and black Missoni t-shirts and men, ancestors of democracy, favour the low-slung chino and overly open-buttoned shirt.  Comparison to the fresco above is futile.

Plato and Aristotle were two very similar men with different ideas.  Born into a time when sexual urges could be overcome by the pleasure of the mind, philosophers lived together in schools in order to understand nearly everything.  Plato quite fancied the idea of a society segregated by talent; a Republic as Utopian as it gets which falls short at the killing babies part.  Aristotle took a slightly more reasonable approach that was big on natural virtue ethics and one that assumes man needs politics to live a fulfilled life.  Quite the way to keep yourself in business boy. 

In this painting, Plato (the one pointing at the sky or flicking the middle finger at the guy on left) has pioneered colour blocking, the three-quarter length sleeve and the neckerchief.  Aristotle has gone for an ethereal embroidery and khaki to highlight his olive skin tones.  So something clearly went wrong in the middle ages when it came to fashion.  And hygiene.  And overall well-being when it comes down to it.  The Greeks seemed to have it all, only for the world to flush it away with the pig slop.  Not so surprisingly Grecian inspired style is still one of the most flattering that there is - skimming and clinching where it needs to - and one that no doubt will stick around for a while at least. As far as I know, Stella McCartney doesn't have Joan of Arc-inspired collection in the pipeline.