Trendlet: Dusters
Chilly mornings, bitter nights. Sigh. Welcome to fall. This year, however, we can count on fashion for a dose of cozy hope. After all, frosty weather is a bit more bearable when you're in style.
Chilly mornings, bitter nights. Sigh. Welcome to fall. This year, however, we can count on fashion for a dose of cozy hope. After all, frosty weather is a bit more bearable when you're in style.
The trendlet
Long cardigans - fondly called dusters - are retro must-haves this year when paired with boyfriend jeans, A-line skirts, coat dresses, and, yes, people, yoga pants.
Where's it come from?
Cowboys wore dusters - ankle-length canvas or cotton coats - in the mid-1800s to protect their chaps from the dusty trails. Cardigans became fashionable in the 1920s, when Coco Chanel introduced knit skirt suits to women's wear.
Dusters became cardiganlike in the 1970s, when designers like Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Cardin, Halston, and even Betsey Johnson showed them on runways as dresses - paired with knee-length boots - or outerwear over jeans and T-shirts. In the early 1980s, Donna Karan included a longish, silk jersey cardigan in one of her collections of seven easy pieces, and the free-spirited look took on a more businesslike personality.
Now, thanks to early adapters like Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen - whose the Row has some sweet dusters this fall - fashion is fully ensconced in all things casual. And dusters, whether fashioned from chunky wool blends, cashmere, or silk jersey, are scattered throughout many a retailer's rack, from Tory Burch to H&M.
Who's wearing them?
Kendall Jenner (check), Rihanna (check), Beyoncé (check), Kim Kardashian (check). And any other busy woman who wants to be warm and stylish.
Would Elizabeth wear one?
I wish, wish, wish I could have one in every neutral shade - black, nude, gray, blush - and colors, too: marsala, navy, plum. In other words . . . yaaass.
Should you wear one?
Only if you want to feel toasty warm and look amazingly cool.
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Navaho print duster, Mara Hoffman, $309, at Jade's Closet, 209 W. Lancaster Ave, 215-483-5675, http://shopjadescloset.com/.
Black duster by Amanda Stearns, designer-in-residence at Philadelphia Fashion Incubator at Macy's, $225.