In Your Arms
Source: Slate (Original Article)
Observers of fashion have watched hemlines rise and fall for decades. And when hemlines aren’t news, attention often shifts to an eye-catching bust. But as fall fashions begin arriving in stores this month, be on the lookout for remarkable sleeves. Designers have not focused on sleeves with such intensity since Helmut Lang cut them extra-skinny in the early ’90s and Consuela Castiglioni reacted a decade later with an extra-loose fit for Marni. But the most important designers showing in Paris in February shifted attention from breasts and legs to wings. Women’s arms—yes, arms—are the new body part of choice.
Nicolas Ghesquiere, designing for Balenciaga, cut barely-there sleeves that revealed the shoulder. At Lanvin, Albert Elbaz made ballooning sleeves from yards and yards of silk ribbon. Alexander McQueen made gargantuan, romantic sleeves. Marc Jacobs’ collection for Louis Vuitton took the overbuilt shoulder of the early ’80s and deflated it. Stephano Pilati at Yves Saint Laurent offered leotard-tight sleeves under Robin Hood-style tabards. Jun Takahashi made free-flying sleeves slashed to the wrist, and Junya Watanabe did away with sleeves altogether: His cocoon dresses bound the arms to the body.
Why the sudden obsession? Some observers hold that all changes in fashion are ultimately about sex. Historian James Laver once famously argued that designers respond primarily to the shifting erogenous zones in the Freudian recesses of men’s minds, raising skirts to keep up with their fantasies. It’s a plausible explanation for changing hemlines, but it’s hard to see how the theory applies to the cloth women cover their arms with.
Others contend that fashion trends correspond to the economy: In the 1920s, when hemlines rose to the midcalf, analysts pegged the show of legs to exuberance about the booming economy and have seen shorts skirts as a positive indicator ever since. Unfortunately for economic Bank Credit Cards forecasters, the advent of extravagant sleeves …continue reading