Sitting down is a complicated maneuver when you’re wearing low-rise jeans.
“They slide off my butt,” says Tiffany Lambert, 14, of Altamonte Springs, Fla. She is hanging out at the mall with friends, who all wear low-slung jeans and tiny tops.
“You kinda have to pull them up, then hold them up when you sit,” explains Rachel Richards, 15, of Longwood, Fla.
“And not lean forward,” Tiffany adds.
“Or your underwear sticks out,” offers Rachel, giggling.
Such is life with skin-baring fashion. But relief is on the way. Skin is no longer in, say the trendspotters–not even for teens and twentysomethings.
Miniskirts, skimpy tops and those embarrassing, thong-baring jeans are on the way out. They are being replaced by high-waist pants, long-sleeve tunics and knee-grazing skirts.
The latest fashion watchword is modesty. A word long missing from the style lexicon, it’s suddenly on the tongue of every trend watcher, on the runways of London, Paris and New York, and in the latest issues of magazines as different as Seventeen, InStyle and Vogue.
“Naughty vs. nice,” trumpets Vogue’s cover. And inside: “The end of the reign of the teen pop temptress. … Britney, Paris and Christina are overexposed in every way.”
InStyle suggests readers steal the preppy ’50s look of Faith Hill in “The Stepford Wives” and praises the “bookish refinement” of Hilary Swank’s buttoned-up white blouse and knee-length gray skirt.
Hilary Duff, looking squeaky-clean in a demure, dove-gray jacket over a white top, is Seventeen’s cover girl.
In a single season, fashion has flipped from cheesy to cutesy.
Fashion experts suggest a number of reasons for the about-face. Some welcome it; others view it with suspicion. But all agree it is happening–from coast to coast and for everyone from tweens on up.
“The first reason that comes to mind is the most obvious: the fashion pendulum,” says Rachel Weingarten, president of GTK Marketing Group in New York. “Fashion is always swinging from one extreme to the other: mini to maxi, tight leggings to baggy pants, bare to covered-up.”
There’s also the current backlash against showing too much skin, she says–against Abercrombie & Fitch’s naked catalog models; against Janet Jackson’s nipple flash during the Super Bowl halftime show.
Catherine Stellin, a vice president at Youth Intelligence, a trend-tracking company in Los Angeles, agrees the “slutty look” is passe.
“It’s oversaturated,” she says. “The way to stand out is to go against the grain. Right now, that means having a more covered-up, sophisticated look.”
Teens who a few months ago emulated the provocative style of pop idols such as Jennifer Lopez now are spurning those looks as “trashy,” Stellin says.
Their new role models are fresh-faced stars such as Mischa Barton of “The O.C.” and Amber Tamblyn of “Joan of Arcadia.” Fashion has reached the point of “sleaze fatigue,” says Jamie Ross, another consultant with the Doneger Group. “Bare just doesn’t look new anymore–and fashion needs to look new all the time.”
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale (cdipasquale@tribune.com) and Kris Karnopp (kkarnopp@tribune.com)
