DECEMBER 2017 207NIGHT
SHIFT
The sun has set on overly stuffy eveningwear,
but where does that leave us? The new breed
of attire takes selectively from the past to
say something new. By Alice Birrell. Styled by
Kate Darvill. Photographed by Hugh Stewart.W
hen Miss McGill of the
Mannequin agency in New
York coached the girls on
her books on how they
should dress in 1972, she
told them this: “You are
not real people. Real
women look at you and
expect you to project what fashion is all about,” she said,
before eulogising over the benefits of a dress in whatever
situation, be it “grabbing a hot dog on Seventh Avenue” or
“in a department store elevator”. The girls, young women
deployed by the formidable former model to work at the
houses of the best fashion designers in the most exquisite
creations, tucked their trouser-clad legs self-consciously
below them as she continued.
And in truth, the unreality of the way we see the model,
the actress, the socialite, has made it through to 2017 alive.
From red carpets at Cannes to the Oscars, from Instagram
(which is every bit as shaped by Facetune and VSCO as
a celebrity is her stylist) in the bathrooms at the Met Ball, to
stuck-in-time TV images of the Megan Drapers and the
Wallis Simpsons, we see a glittering procession parading
before us. These women are not real, in the sense that Miss
McGill meant, and in that they are inhabiting arenas that
the majority of people do not flex their after-five (or
sometimes -eight, or sometimes -10) muscle in, and yet they
fill our consciousnesses and our feeds, and colour our ideas
about just what exactly ‘occasionwear’ might be. →From left: Jessica
Anderson wears a Rachel
Gilbert dress, $3,999.
Bulgari bag, $2,760. Anya
wears an Oscar de la
Renta dress, from the
Darnell Collection.
Chanel hair ribbon, $480,
from the Chanel
boutiques. Prada bag,
$3,260. Emeliina Porvari
wears a Chanel dress,
$26,730, from the Chanel
boutiques. Tiffany & Co.
bracelet, $2,800.