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A little piece I wrote for Plaza Too’s mailer.
A few weeks ago I was visiting my parents’ home in New Jersey. Neither of them are remarkably fashionable people—in fact my mother might be what you call “fashion averse,” so I had a pretty ironic revelation while rifling through our attic on a bored Friday evening.
As I was looking formy grandmother’s old fur coats that are rumored to be stashed away somewhere, I came upon a heap of 80’s parties dresses that my mother no doubt wore to various weddings and social functions during the days that Reagan was president and I was just a twinkle in her eye.
While I normally might have continued my ransacking unfettered by the dresses in front of me, they instead caught my attention: was that fabric indeed velvet? And weren’t those gigantic puffy shoulders the same that I saw on Rihanna’s Dolce and Gabbana getup for the Met’s Annual Costume Institute Gala? Then it dawned on me: these dresses packed away and forgotten about—that would have elicited raised eyebrows only a few years ago—had made their way back to the height of fashion!
Flash forward to right to 2009 when white-hot labels like Proenza Schouler are creating velvet dresses and Balmain is exploding the dimensions on shoulder pads. It’s a bigger 80’s revival than when KISS decided to go back on tour.
The moral of this story? You can find the ultimate fashion-forward evening dress by looking backwards to the forgotten past, otherwise known as your parents’ attic. Make vintage items feel new by pairing them with costume jewelry or this season’s fabulous clutch. Turn your parents’ fashion faux-pas into this winter’s chicest style.
—Adrien Field
