Wish You Were Here

With all the feels of a Mediterranean holiday, the S/S 2019 collections had sunshine stitched into their very seams, writes Jamie Huckbody

- Jamie Huckbody

PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES and get ready for an extended beachside vacay, because designers at the latest round of international collections declared it the season of the holiday.

“We all wondered what Karl would come up with next and a Chanel beach was exactly what we all needed,” says fashion academic Dr Natalie McCreesh, who is currently researching a new book on female fashion designers and the feminist cause (she temporarily downed tools for this most fashionable of mini breaks in Paris). “Even the waves were real. And that golden sand … just the thing for barefoot models to saunter along, Perspex heeled sandals in hand.” But, as McCreesh points out, Lagerfeld’s double-C-side offering of oversized lightweight tweed jackets worn with athleisure leggings, culottes or double-side-split skirts was more than just a luxe take on our collective desire to get away; it created a portal to the feistily independent Coco Chanel herself. “Don’t forget, it was Chanel who invented the concept of holiday clothes, when she opened her first fashion boutique in [the French seaside resort of] Deauville in 1913,” McCreesh continues. “Her designs were a radical response to the call for female liberation both politically and practically — she freed women from corsets and bum bustles so they could get on and live their best lives.”