It’s unsurprising that after take a look at driving skinny denims, I’ve been ruminating on the items from my teenage previous that deserve a second run. One such silhouette – the swishy multilayered boho skirt – which gained momentum on the autumn/winter 2024 catwalks due to Chemena Kamali’s debut for Chloé (and a sure Sienna Miller sat on the frow), has additionally piqued my curiosity. Again within the early Aughts, I favoured a white Lipsy iteration, tiered and edged with lace, and picked up at The Garments Present, which I wore with a diamante-studded See by Chloé strap high I nabbed in TK Maxx for £7 (and nonetheless personal right now) or tri-colour Hooch halterneck. However the actual skirt I used to be after got here courtesy of purveyors of darkish romance AllSaints. The “Hitch” was crafted from mille-feuille pleats of candyfloss-pink or petrol-blue cotton, and floated by on the waistlines of women in sixth type within the lunch corridor, as I tucked right into a sausage roll and beans, nonetheless at school uniform.
The AllSaints retailer in Birmingham was like a center England mecca of aspiration for teenage women. By far the best approach to put on the model’s signature skirt was with an identical studded belt emblazoned with the phrases “AllSaints Rocks”, “Jesus Rocks”, or “Elvis Rocks”, types which bear greater than a hanging resemblance to the belt worn by Dua Lipa within the just lately dropped Phantasm video. Whereas the excessive road manufacturers I shopped from as a teen allowed me to speak my approach into the Indie Sleaze dives I frequented – flooded with plastic pint cups and underage revellers – the AllSaints Hitch skirt was a logo of maturation, worn by women that went to actual nightclubs (Gatecrasher!), actual drinks (not a Strawpedo-ed Smirnoff Ice), went out with males of their twenties and spent their summers on boats in Ibiza. Even higher than a Diesel jean, it was a signifier of standing and class, the clothes equal of a Bobbie Brown Shimmer Brick or Tom Ford’s Black Orchid perfume, and extra realistically, a father or mother who was comfortable to spend three figures on clothes for his or her daughter’s wardrobe. Once I moved to London for college, I’d nonetheless ogle on the racks of stonewashed and deliberately distressed items in AllSaints’s Camden boutique, that felt extra It-girl than indie Cindy, earlier than shifting down the street to spend my pupil mortgage on spandex within the extra inexpensive American Attire.
