Fashion loves a new erogenous zone. Who can forget the entire red carpet season, a few years back, that was wall-to-wall sideboob with a few statuettes thrown in. Or the Britney and Christina years, when music videos and magazines were a montage of hipbones, out and proud above low-rise waistbands, like shark fins poking out of an ocean. There were seasons of Sex and the City that were love letters to toe cleavage. Not to mention the years, too many to mention, that have been in thrall to cleavage itself.
Well, now we have a new one. Right now, the erogenous zone of the catwalk is your neck. Don’t stress about what hemline to wear. Don’t waste time worrying whether black opaque tights are in or out. Just pay close attention to what’s going on right under your nose, style-wise, and you can’t go wrong.
The part of your fit that’s nearest your face has always been where clothes send their clearest messages. The terms blue-collar and white-collar signal entire economic demographics by referencing only a couple of inches of fabric. And what about a dog collar? A universal identifier that is visually subtle – no purple robe, no ornate headgear – and yet entirely unmissable. In other words, people will look at what you wear at the collar to figure out who you are. Naturally, one of the things that you want them to spot is that you are very stylish.
There are two major strands of neck-oriented chic having a moment right now. The first is romantic and flowing, feminine and dramatic, and has risen on the tide of the boho revival. The Chloé girl, as seen on the catwalk at Paris fashion week, loves a soft drapey blouse, possibly in sheer or lace, with a flourish of extra fabric at the top. That could be a very high, tight neckline, or one – like here, on the right – with asymmetric folds. It could be wispy trails of ribbon that are wound around the throat, or left to trail on the breeze. Style is so often about a gesture, and these bohemian blouses are very much about how a soft, unstructured neckline signals a lighthearted, freewheeling mood – the opposite, in other words, to what a starched-and-stiff collar and necktie suggests.
The second approach – as seen in the companion look, on the left – is about combining contrasting elements. You want the effect to be eyecatching, but to remain coherent. Not too matchy-matchy, but not messy. Here, for example, the crisp jauntiness of a wide-striped shirt contrasts with the rustic texture of the sweater. But note how the vertical ribs of the neckline of the sweater echo the stripes on the shirt, and how the soft khaki picks up the olive. The jacket adds gloss, and its clean lines sharpen up the whole look.
I’m an earrings person, but I’m in a necklace phase just now. When I travel, I wear four simple gold hoops in my lobes and don’t take them off. I switch up the look with chunky necklaces, which are less fiddly to pack and less easy to lose, and which create a coherent centrepiece for your neck-up look. But as well as bold necklaces, I also love when you can just glimpse a necklace next to the skin (as in the Tilly Sveaas chain above). It tells a story about who you are and when it is half-hidden, like a clue or a whisper, it adds intrigue. At the Miu Miu show in Paris, models wore pearls slightly askew, partially concealed under collars, like a T-shirt half-tucked in. The contrast between the propriety of pearls and the nonchalance of the way they were worn was bewitching. Once you start looking at what’s going on at the neckline, you can’t look away. No wonder fashion is hot under the collar.
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Hair and make up: Sophie Higginson using Sam McKnight and Victoria Beckham beauty. Models: Maria Diniz at Milk (left) and Naoko from Grey Agency. Maria wears: Jacket, £59.99, Mango. Shirt, £120, With Nothing Underneath. Jumper, £85, John Lewis. Necklace, £130, Tilly Sveaas. Earrings, £70, Rachel Jackson. Naoko wears: Top, £87, Arket. Trousers, £110, & Other Stories. Earrings, £24.99, Pilgrim