JUST IN CASE you don’t read Heat, or Closer, or OK! or any of those other technicolour stalker magazines that sell so hotly, on June 27 at Glastonbury last year Sienna Miller spawned a fashion movement entirely on her own.
Not everyone is created equal when it comes to fashion sense — instinct is invaluable and inherited, but a heap of nous can be very useful. At some point after Glastonbury, at which she appeared looking like the perfect reflection of Kate Moss in her T-shirt dress, heavy leather belt around her hips, Ugg boots and wittily big sunglasses, Miller demonstrated exactly how useful it can be.
She was last year’s fashion icon for 16-year-old girls . . . and 26-year-olds, and 36-year-olds too, judging from the trail of Sienna-a-likes that have sprung up in her wake.
They are the Stepford Wives of fashion. Rachel Stevens, Kelly Brook, Meg Matthews, Jenny Frost, Geri Halliwell, Cat Deeley, the females in Hollyoaks — all spend their days now looking louche in a Primrose Hill kind of way, combining the high (a £700 bag) with the low (cotton hippy tops), slogan T-shirts, the odd vintage find (a rabbit-fur jacket) and denim, denim, denim.
Until Miller adopted it, nothing about the Sixties-rock-chick-meets-Bardot-via-Glastonbury was as catching when Kate Moss wore it. Moss, a style icon for the single reason that she possesses the elusive asset of instinct, is appealing but apparently not as accessible as Miller. According to The Sun: “Kate says that Sienna never used to dress like that, but it seems as though she’s going through her back catalogue. Kate has moved away from that boho look because of it.”
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The look’s appeal is obvious — it’s not expensive (it doesn’t require much of a skill to manufacture), you don’t to have to be stick thin or a clothes horse to wear it, and it’s easily dissected. The supposedly killer combination goes like this: cowboy, Ugg, Frye or mukluk boots or plain sandals, a denim mini or a floaty dress, a heavy woven Moroccan leather-disc belt, maybe a floppy hat, or hooped earrings, and a tasselled bag, mostly Balenciaga’ s Lariat or Chloé’s Silverano. Miller should also be considered responsible for that heinous thing, the poncho, which came from neither the catwalk nor the street but proliferated with indecency last year and has not yet vanished. Only the Lariat bag, whose chicness predates Miller (and Moss too), is immune from being forever tainted; whether the Silverano will survive is still undecided.
Miller has become an icon to high-street buyers, too, who in turn provided the fuel for the fantasy passed down and down and down. Marks & Spencer announced that its spring/summer collections were inspired by her. Matthew Williamson, whose muses always have an influence on his collections, recently proclaimed that she was “amazing”.
After Miller bought her tawny fake fur gilet from the Kings Road boutique Vanilla, the high-street stores followed drippily; in the week after her gilet debut, Warehouse, Monsoon and Topshop all sold out of similar pieces. ASOS.com, the website founded on the aping of celebrity style, says Miller was responsible for a 70 per cent rise in sales at the end of last year.
Last month Drapers Record placed her eighth in a list of Most Influential 100 People in High-Street Fashion 2004; as Drapers put it, the catwalks may have pushed a revival of ladyish chic for summer and winter but in reality far more women favoured the haute-bohemian look — it works in the sun, and it works in the snow. Even the models in Chloé’s campaign have Miller’s tousled hair and fresh-faced prettiness, and at that level it is still charming. Even on Miller, obviously pretty and insouciant, it used to look cute. On anyone else, it’s boring and predictable. Enough!
The look of the better style icons of our time — Sofia Coppola, Selma Blair, instinctive dressers both — are not as easily understood as that of Miller. Coppola, as Marc Jacobs excitedly reported last week in New York, wears flats and a simple dress to go dancing in Paris, and Blair wears Fifties-like dresses as lightly as she would a T-shirt. The trend for gypsy skirts that looms ominously on the horizon for this summer is unfortunately very Miss Miller, but remember this — the best inspiration is never somebody else.
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MILLER ANTIDOTES
Miu Miu’s patent hairband, Jimmy Choo’s Tahula bag, Jimmy Choo’s peep-toes, Alaïa’s Perspex and snakeskin wedges, Louis Vuitton’s cherry bag and anything tailored
Selma Blair and Sofia Coppola