If fashion is a social barometer, taking the temperature of where we find ourselves in the world right now, then I am reeling. Am I hot or am I very, very cold? I am experiencing sartorial vertigo. Is my fashion spirit animal more Barbiecore or do I tend to Coastal Grandmother? I ask this seriously. If the trend oracles are to be believed then these two extreme poles of female representativeness are having a moment.
Barbiecore is a rose-tinted place with a strong '90s Legally Blonde aesthetic, inspired in part by the Barbie movie soon to hit our screens, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. This may be the chance to answer all my childhood questions.
Well, only one overwhelming one that has been plaguing me for, like, ever. How do Barbie and Ken get it on? Plastic perfection and immaculate procreation aside, the Barbie thing is real, despite years of attempts to broaden her aesthetic and make her more “inclusive” — giving her hips, giving her freckles, giving her an afro.
Barbie in the Greta Gerwig-directed film is back to embodying the classic trope. The plot goes something like this: the practically perfect Barbie (she of the big blonde locks, offset by a substantial décolletage and an anatomically impossible physique) has to enter the real world because in the parallel universe populating households everywhere — Barbie world — she has been found less than perfect. At least one thing is now proven beyond doubt. Barbie can actually stand on her own two feet and walk. I have only two words for you if this is the aesthetic you are resonating with. Think Pink.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Coastal Grandmother trend, a term coined to reflect a US-based Atlantic seaboard woman of a certain age living large on the profits extracted by the past two centuries of US world economic dominance.
These ladies are basically cut from the same cloth — the one that produced Diane Keaton when she finally gave in to the roguish charms of Jack Nicholson who was misguidedly dating her daughter in Something's Gotta Give. It’s a Nancy Meyers movie and that seems to be the place where everyone who is not residing in the Barbie universe wants to live.
In this place everyone is rich but not ostentatious. They wear their wealth gently knotted around their shoulders like a cashmere sweater in shades of greige and live in #cottagecore heaven. This is “growing old” as art.
These women just boldly say and do whatever the hell they want – because they can – now they have aged out of embarrassment
Jeff Bezos and his anti-death ministry should take notes on how to package the product when it comes to market. In Nantucket there is no disease, dementia or death. Just lots of wine, song, dance and witty conversation — and maybe a lusty visitation from your elderly male lover in yet another perfectly curated beach cottage like the one Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin occupy in Grace and Frankie.
These women just boldly say and do whatever the hell they want — because they can — now they have aged out of embarrassment. Also they have inherited the earth. Quite literally, they are the American baby boomers and everyone wants to be them. Even the young 'uns. And to be fair, why wouldn’t you given the shambles their generation has made of the world the young will inherit? I, too, would like to move into my cottage on the Atlantic seaboard sooner rather than later, please. Definitely before global warming sends a tsunami and washes my linen dreams of perfect white buttoned-up shirts and silvery locks away.
Still, perhaps there is hope for a trend integration yet. Barbie got a hearing aid this week. A little googling indicates she was not suddenly acting her actual age but had rather become hearing-impaired. If Barbie were ever to actually grow old, that final frontier for Mattel's inclusivity officer, then by golly she would be prepared.
