OPENING FASHION’S TIME CAPSULE

Words: Daniël Geldenhuys | Images: Supplied

It’s been exactly a decade since I bought the January 2010 issue of South African ELLE and fell in love with fashion. I bought every single issue after that until the title closed a year ago and kept them neatly filed in numbered plastic boxes – as any obsessive-compulsive fashion media hoarder would. Now was the perfect time, I decided, to crack open the archive and see how far fashion’s come in a decade.

Smiling coyly on the cover is a very Ashley Tisdale-looking Katie Holmes in a peach Fendi jersey dress. The first thing that comes to mind: even though print magazines are struggling today, I’m elated that the age of cover girls etched onto studio-white backgrounds and wedged in between two dense columns of cover lines are behind us.

Jackie Burger’s letter from the editor, celebrating the return of 1980s-style dressing, could have been written today. Almost. What’s absent is the call to action (for the climate, politics or otherwise) that characterises today’s editorials. Referencing emergence from the recent recession, the letter has a spirited tone fuelled by confidence and reinvention through style.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that clothing prices have stayed relatively consistent. The really cheap brands were a little cheaper, but overall you’re paying pretty much the same for a dress and a pair of heels today as you were then. (Amusing side note: sneakers are largely absent from the fashion pages. Almost unimaginable now.)

Props to ELLE’s The Hot List for correctly predicting the impending importance of social media. (If you wanted to comment on the magazine’s content, you would have done so via email or SMS… how times have changed.) Other spot-on call outs include the rise of Internet celebrities (hello, influencers!), street style, luxury in the form of experience, the replacement of physical media with streaming and subscription services and “a new sexual identity” that “blurs the lines between gender like never before”.

“The recession has made an impact on how we spend our cash,” wrote fashion director Chris Viljoen in his Insider column. Since today’s rationale would focus on sustainability, his tips for mindful shopping are even more relevant today. Evergreen advice includes only buying things that will slot seamlessly into your wardrobe, considering cost per wear and supporting local design (which the magazine did a fantastic job of throughout).

Things get decidedly dated in the celeb style gazette, where the most exciting personalities in terms of diverse representation are Rihanna, Eva Longoria and Zoë Kravitz. Everyone else, at a glance, looks the same: think white woman in oversized sunnies. Where the magazine did a good job of representing a racial range in its editorial and fashion pages, Hollywood still had a long way to go this time last decade. Since then, local media has embraced local celebrities in a far more profound way. In addition to a sense of pride, I’m sure this has something to do with the way their influence can now be quantified through social media. Either way, you can bet a 2020 gazette would feature as many women from SA as the US.

I was most looking forward to revisiting the main editorials: the fashion photo essays that form the heart and soul of the magazine. Of course they seem dated, no surprises there. It’s the why that’s most intriguing. Almost every look featured an item I would consider unflattering today – a lot of it feels like a body-con hangover from the 00s. (The streetwear boom of the 2010s has really eased up women’s fashion.) What’s truly missing, for me, is a sense of maturity. Today’s women of style are far more aware of how clothing works in relation to their bodies and lifestyles. 2010 fashion (pre #MeToo, for starters) comes off as an unflattering innocence when seen in the present day where women in South Africa and across the world are fighting for their rights and safety.

Fashion today is more dynamic, has a stronger point of view and is used to enhance a woman’s personality rather than the other way around. The Devil Wears Prada narrative of living on blocks of cheese so that you can fit into a dress is less relevant. Today, fashion says women wear clothes, not the other way around. It’s also increasingly gaining relevance in the conversation around preserving the planet we live on. In short, although there will always be room for growth, it’s exciting to see how the last 10 years have allowed fashion to grow up.