Effortless style6/3/2023 ![]() ![]() Normally, I try to follow those old Seventeen magazine edicts and “test a trend” at the low end, saving my money for classic big-budget purchases like coats and boots. Sometimes in such cases, it’s a matter of bad tailoring-only the expensive, genuine article will do. They give no quarter to an untoned thigh or a flabby upper arm. ![]() Lean, artless silhouettes are unforgiving. Because the open secret is this: Effortless is the hardest look to do. I love these periods in our collective history. These are looks that scream effort, even require a measure of visible expertise: a perfectly applied red lip, a visibly curled Kate Bush bang, a corseted Helmut Newton waist. Some years we em-brace volume and underpinning, recherché silhouettes and bold lashes, ’70s languor or ’80s decadence. We are in that most horrible of times: an Effortless Moment. For a moment, I envisioned myself as one of those stylish, confident women I’ve seen sweeping out of galleries and down the streets of SoHo, and rejoiced at the increasing, near-instant proliferation of the clean lines in fast-fashion stores like Zara. At first glance, I hailed the no-frills clogs, the square blouses, the wide-legged pants. I thrilled to the high necks and bared shoulders of the Bottega Veneta runways, the easy drape of a Chloé tunic, the spare almost-classicism of cool girls in their Common Projects sneakers. You’d be forgiven for mistaking these trends as a move toward a sort of enlightened aestheticism, perhaps even a bit of puritanical austerity. ![]() Once the closet is well-stocked with such sophisticated basics, dressing will be effortless. The work of such clothes, one initially feels, is in the buying. Tops are ’90s-boxy skirts are structured but casual mules are somehow both sleek and substantial. And so I have always felt wistfully about aesthetics that demand less work.Īt first glance, clothes right now are easy to wear: clean, unfussy, modern. Certainly, from a sartorial perspective, this is true: My clothes and hair are disheveled, my eyebrows wild, my getups seem to require a good deal of thought even to appear plausible. Writer Sadie Stein takes issue with the conventional wisdom that equates minimalism with ease. ![]()
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