And while I can deal with Sarah Burton’s incorporated and updated version of classical Victorian looks into Alexander McQueen’s spring-summer 2013 runway show at Paris Fashion Week in October, with voluminous, Scarlett O’Hara–inspired gowns and sexy, see-through corsets- I fail to see why journalists are dubbing this Steampunk. I see no appalling facial mechanics or dire gothic threads here, Times.
So really this “trend” is more about cultish Goths who meet online to brew up a love for all things tatty and tired. This all screams nerds predicting fashion to me. I mean, being dictated the next big fashion fad, a la Steampunk, by an IT junkie is hardly what the likes of McQueen and Prada had in mind when they red carpeted Victorian chic. When did you last hear ‘You know who the newest trendsetter in fashion is? That clunky beige computer from the ’90s with the flashing green cursor!” No. Just no.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that there is absolutely, positively no chance that Steampunk will be the future of fashion. Hey – I thought neon would never crop up –so it seems anything’s possible. Maybe London Fashion Week will be cancelled due to an outbreak of zombies or Prada will do a collaboration line with Primark. Sure, elements of it will crest on the runways now and again. We’ll see the corset squeeze back into the limelight and layers of lace. But fashion is too big and Steampunk too clunky to become a dominant style genre.
For me, this is what happens when Goths discover brown. That said who knows? Maybe two years from now I’ll be doing copper-plate top hat roundups for you. If that happens, IBM, I owe you a goblet of the finest port.
Tally-ho.
-ZB