Candy Girl, You Are My World

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Jan 7

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A recent candy-colored bubblegum pink shopping spree (a pair of cotton candy shoes, a saccharine sweet pair of jeans, and even some rose tinted lenses, and god-forbid we forget that blush feather situation), sent me spinning back to a particularly colorful collection presented for Fall 1994.
If you haven't seen Unzipped with Isaac Mizrahi, which is undoubtedly one of the best fashion films to have ever been made, well, you should get on that ASAP, (psst, it's on Netflix Instant). It's one of my favorites (ever). Our generation has a habit of waxing poetic about the 1990's, romanticizing the knee highs socks and unabashed love for plaid and maribou-topped pens and tie-dye and hackey-sacks and TLC, but rewinding back to 1994 is a bit of a different experience. The supermodels (Linda Evangelista! Naomi Cambell! Kate Moss! Cindy Crawford!)smiled, and interacted with fashion show attendees, and danced. Photographers sat stageside with A-listers and editors behind them. Spectators were smiling and excited. It makes the all too serious attitudes (piousness, almost) of fashion show attendees today seem a bit ridiculous.
Of course, my nostalgia is a little misplaced. Let's be real, I was all of eight years old at the time, and while fashion certainly had a subliminal impact on my identity, even then, the runway collections of 1994 were not a conscious part of my awareness. After all, at the time, I was still trying to make a case to my mom about the necessity of having real Doc Marten lace-ups as opposed to the (rainbow-in-place-of-yellow-stitching, and therefore a dead giveaway) knock-off version I had. Oh, the things that seem important to a 2nd grader... Doc Martens and Sanrio pencils.
In any case, my bubblegum pink fixation and a bout of insomnia made this all seem all the more relevant, important, influential - everything that I need (er, want) during the cold and slightly stir-crazy inducing month of January.