..Miss Brightside..

Before I arrived in Shanghai, it struck me that there would probably be a slight difference between Western fashion trends and those in China. These days it is hard to pinpoint geographical distinctions in trends… what people wear in London for example is just as varied as what people wear here in Shanghai. The main difference I have noticed is that people make so much more effort with their appearance here; from their eyebrows to their nails, no expense is spared when it comes to looking good! Here’s a rundown of some of my observations while out and about on the streets of Shanghai.

Personal Grooming

+ Manicures are mandatory here - there’s a nail salon on every corner of my area with a glittering array of choices. Glitter spangles? Snoopy? 3D ceramic flowers? They will cater for the craziest ideas here, and you it’s entirely possible to have enough scope to change your nails every day for the rest of your life! I got some acrylic nails painted a mean black shade this week, for just 80 kuai, but was tempted by the idea of those 3D ceramic flowers just because they are so different! Thankfully my nail artist got preoccupied with her friends’ wig (she left me alone for half an hour!) so i cut short our session and made a swift exit!

+ Tattooed Make-Up. I have only just started to notice how so many Chinese women I see every day have shaved their eyebrows off and have tattoos instead. Eyebrow shape plays a surprisingly large role in the harmony of your face, so once you’ve found the most flattering shape it makes sense to have it permanently!

Clothes

+ Luxury Brands. There seems to be a massive obsession with brands here in Shanghai. Whether the majority of bags hanging off young women’s shoulders here are fake or real remains to be seen though! While it is obviously a clear status symbol, the motto ‘money can’t buy you taste’ holds true from time to time… I have seen so many beautiful outfits ruined by one of those disgusting fake Lousi Vuitton multi-coloured logo bags that Vanessa Feltz used to sport circa-2000!

+ Wearing evening wear during the day. I love how a lot of Shanghainese Fashionistas wear expensive looking silky evening dresses to work, but dress them down with a plain polo-neck jumper and work a layered look with cardigans and gilets. Not only does this increase the potential of your wardrobe, it’s an idea that can save you from the boredom of the blouse and black trousers look!

+ Co-ordinating your outfit with your boyfriend’s. Another quirky phenomenon I’ve noticed as I go about my daily business involves couples wearing the same t-shirt to profess their relationship status and bond with each other. This one makes me laugh because it must be pretty funny phoning up your partner to discuss what t-shirt to wear!

Shoes

+ High-heels, high-heels and more high-heels. Get the picture? Even when I went to Suzhou’s Humble Administrator’s Garden the other weekend, the majority of Chinese women there sported sky-high heels and still undertook the task of navigating the cobbles and rocky paths. While I tend to shy away from wearing heels during the day because I am lazy, (and because it means leaving for work earlier due to my inability to walk in them!), the Chinese philosophy seems to dictate high-heels are required uniform.

While browsing some blogs recently I came across some runway photos, and although I wouldn’t say I’m an avid watcher of the high-end designers (partly due to my inability to ever purchase their items!), yet I’ve got to admit I’m slowly being sucked into the excitement and suspense of watching the runway shows. Below are some examples of the designs I liked, and that I feel even us poor graduates can interpret into our own daily wardrobe.
+ Catherine Holstein

The trend for high-waisted belts and shorts will obviously be with us for a good while yet… and why not? As well as flattering the figure, it means you can bring together a whole new element to an outfit purely with the simple addition of a good belt. I also love the incongruity of pairing a tiny vest top with an oversized cardigan!

Nautical stripes are another big trend that just doesn’t seem to go away, and I think a navy, red and beige colour scheme can never fail to draw attention. Oversized t-shirts are great staples of anyone’s wardrobe because with the simple inclusion of a good belt you can create a flattering shape. Holstein recognises this and paired the stripey top on this model with a one-off, triple-tiered skirt. While I don’t think I would ever wear something like that out of the house, you could implement the ideas from the design by teaming a nautical top with a suitably basic beige skirt… add a red belt and voila!

It seems absolutely ridiculous to place a thick belt OVER a cardigan, and yet this is precisely what Holstein does… Obviously there is a lot of room for this look to fail in a big big way, but I like how it is evidence of a certain playfulness with fashion conventions. Holstein’s collections had a big emphasis on shoes in nude shades, so as not to distract away from the clothes themselves! Living out of a suitcase for the past few months, I made sure I packed a few pairs of cream/beige/nude coloured shoes to ensure they work with as many different oufits as possible!

Alesha Dixon of Mis-Teeq fame’s documentary about the perils of retouching in the media and its influence on contemporary perceptions of beauty aired as part of BBC3’s Beauty Season this Monday. Her persistence in investigating the increasingly narrow ‘acceptable’ norms of ideal female beauty highlighted just how artificial the images we see every day the media are. Declaring it as her ‘mission’ to convince a glossy magazine to put her on the cover without a single Photoshop trick, I couldn’t help thinking that discussion of female beauty needs a ruthless debate that exceeds Alesha’s focus on the industry’s airbrushing of pimples and skimming of thighs and bingo arms. Take a look at most television shows and magazines and you will see a wave of identikit female presenters and models who are often hard to distinguish between.

How many TV shows aimed at young women can you think of that are hosted by women size12+ and that challenge conventional norms of beauty? The females in the public eye that appear to excel in their careers are mostly blonde-haired, waif-like and do very little to represent more than 5% of the female population… While documentaries such as Look But Don’t Touch should be commended in their exploration of representations of female beauty, there are several points about the show that reveal the British audience are once again crying out for a show that truly delves into this issue. Cheryl Cole, the stick-thin Girls Aloud member (who, it must be mentioned, seems to have gained an exponential amount of tabloid inches in proportion to the number of inches her waist shrinks to) was interviewed by Alesha about the unrealistic expectations that the media places on young girls. Stuart Jeffries, on the Guardian’s TV & Radio Blog, remarked that:

Yesterday, incidentally, Cole topped a poll by a slimming-aid firm to find Britain’s “ultimate fantasy body”.

Surely I’m not alone in finding the documentary rather hypocritical in choosing the very stunning Cheryl to voice her concerns over the perils of airbrushing in adverts?! Firstly, the camera quite clearly captures Cheryl as a flawless beauty whose tiny frame quite evidently fails to represent an average teenage woman’s body?

Time and time again it appears that the majority of men surveyed in various questionnaires about the ideal woman favour curvier women over the boyish frames of supermodels and the like. It is interesting then that women nevertheless feel that to be attractive and sexy they must undergo a never-ending battle to lose weight and tone themselves to perfection… I am not damning skinny women seeing as I myself am a size 8, but it’s becoming more and more apparent to me that the real reason women such as Victoria Beckham are (seemingly) adored by young females is because of the power that becoming skinny has endowed upon such public figures. When in the Spice Girls Victoria Beckham was arguably never the centre of attention, but the second she bagged a famous footballer and her body started to shrink she was worshipped by the tabloids.

Can our society’s ideals of female beauty ever shift back to some degree of normality? Liz Jones, ex-editor of a glossy fashion magazine, ended up having to leave her job because of her attempt to inject some normality into magazine covers again.

When did you last see someone bright on the cover of a magazine? When did you last see Zadie Smith on a magazine? [...] They’re all vacuous and vacant.

If the publishing companies in charge of women’s magazines are so desperate to maintain high sales figures, why are they continually attempting to sell a product which on the whole results in lowering the inner happiness and satisfaction of its impressionable young female readers? It intrigues me to think that those in charge won’t attempt to market a product that holistically promotes well-being in its readers and embraces the reality of women’s bodies. Sadly, maybe it’s because most young women truly buy into the idea that the answer to a successful life (both professionally and privately) lies in trying to fit into a very narrow set of parameters of beauty.