Backstage at Prada Spring/Summer 12
If most of the classic, original couture designers were around today, they’d be absolutely horrified by what modern women wear to relax in. Can you imagine how the likes of Hubert de
Givenchy and Christian
Dior, who built empires on beauty and good taste, would react to your boyfriend’s old hoodie? Even
Yves Saint Laurent, in the Sixties considered quite the progressive young upstart, would probably vomit at the sight of a Juicy Couture tracksuit.
Perhaps then, today’s top designers have banded together to correct this injustice, to get women living and breathing fashion even behind closed doors. How else can we explain the sudden reappearance of the house coat?
Housecoats in their original form
This now little known garment has an understandably bad reputation. Most associated with old ladies rattling around their bungalows with curlers in their hair, it first became popular in the Forties, when women used them to protect their clothes from dust when doing the housework (how very PC).
But fashion loves nostalgia and perhaps the image of a woman slinking about the house in a swishing, pretty coat rather than a laundry beaten cardigan now has a certain wistful glow to it. The catwalk certainly seemed to include several examples that would look particularly fetching against the backdrop of
House and Garden.
Haider Ackermann Spring/Summer 12
Haider Ackermann and
Prada had the most traditional take on the look, all loose silhouettes and floor-swishing hems. The former juxtaposed his house coat with the pyjama as outerwear trend, with glossy, pearlised versions thrown haphazardly over camisoles and loose-fitting trousers.
Prada and Marni Spring/Summer 12
Whilst in Milan Miuccia Prada really went wild for indoor coats, with pastel broderie anglais pieces that looked chic over the top of skirts and bandeau tops, like an improbable but stylish housewife in a Fifties film.
Consuelo Castiglioni also went for the vintage effect, her vibrant floral coat had slightly more tailoring and razzle dazzle than a classic house-coat might, but the
Marni piece could very easily have been a costume for Julianne Moore in
Far From Heaven – looking gorgeous whilst feeling trapped in her perfect suburban prison.
Dries Van Noten and Erdem Spring/Summer 12
For anyone not so enamoured with the mid-twentieth century there were versions with a distinctly modern edge. The likes of
Dries Van Noten and Erdem mainly achieved this by slashing the hemline and keeping the loose but adding a more contemporary print. In the Belgian designer’s case this meant a bleached out palm tree pattern that was eerily beautiful but uneven in appearance, and for Canadian-born Erdem it was a pretty, but almost cartoonish blue floral print that was the centre of attention.
It’s true that slobbing out in sweatpants can be fun, but there is something totally appealing about bringing a touch of glamour to leisure-wear. Especially when it’s as easy as throwing on a light-weight and gorgeous coat and you’re instantly transformed into one of those effortlessly elegant women from old French films, and even something like doing the dishes seems a little more glamorous. Besides, you can always keep the velour hoody on underneath!
Will you be donning a housecoat, catwalk style?
Giambattista Valli Spring/Summer 12