Sometimes one has to let the dust settle for a while in order to see what’s what when it comes to fashion, which is one of the reasons why we’ve been so quiet this month.

The fact of the matter is,  December and January tend to be kind of an off-season time for trend-watchers, because the Spring 2008 collections are just beginning to arrive in the stores and onto the style pages.  And while we know what the designers have to offer from viewing the Spring ‘08 shows last fall, it’s still anyone’s guess which looks will actually take hold at the mass-market retail level (which is, let’s face it, where most of us are sitting right now).

A lot will depend on what we see at the Fall 2008 Fashion Week shows in Bryant park next week in terms of what’s going to carry over into next year.  Most of us consider these shows to be the official spring shopping Season Opener, since only after glimpsing what’s in the hopper for next fall can we be sure that, for instance, shift dresses and high-vamped shoes are still a hot buy, or whether we’d be better off starting to think about pants and skirts again instead. 


But there’s also something to be said for taking stock of what’s cropping up right now—before the fall designs come in and complicate the picture—to get a foothold on what’s truly current.
Which is why we’ve been busy sifting through the current fashion intel to see what the early vibe is for 2008. 

Here are the three biggest trends we’re seeing so far:  (the images are from the Feb. 2008 issue of Harper’s Bazaar—one of their better issues, in our opinion, despite the fact that Jennifer Lopez is on the cover…  )

Color, Color, Color

   
Even though we noticed a preponderance of non-color in the designer Spring ‘08 collections that were shown last fall (lots of gray, navy, black, khaki, along with lots of yellow and a few paler-than-pale pastels), the retail collections in the stores look more like an explosion in a Skittles factory.  No matter where we look—whether it’s  Shopbop , Neiman’s,  J.Crew ,  Banana ,  or even Pottery Barn’s home accessories—we’re seeing clear, saturated hues, especially orange and coral-toned reds.  (In fact, a heather persimmon J.Crew sweater jacket we were wearing the other day prompted a store clerk to comment on on how much orange she’d been seeing on people lately.  “I guess I need to go buy something orange!” she said.  Yes, we told her.  You do.)   Also hot is royal blue, kelly green, hot pink, lime green, and every shade of yellow.  (Gator fans and Lilly Pulitzer loyalists, this is your year!) 
And it should go without saying that mixing and mis-matching only improves the chic factor—wear pink with your orange, lime with kelly, royal and yellow, or whatever strikes your fancy.  Remember, these days it’s a far bigger sin to overmatch—whether it’s clothing pieces or accessories—than to clash.



Still Yes On The Dress

The shift may be starting to fade, (at least the more shapeless ones), but the dress is still the It Piece for 2008, at least until we see what’s in store for next fall.  We’re seeing more belted waists and fitted torsos, plus some longer lengths (thank God), but structured little a-line dresses are still the foolproof look for day to night this spring. 


Instep Emphasis

We warned you almost a year ago that this was coming, and sure enough, the “high-neck shoe” is all the rage this year.  We saw them being shown in the Fall 2007 collections last February and we wondered if these more difficult-to-wear styles (in that they have a tendency to shorten the legs and thicken the ankles) would ever be truly embraced by the shoe-buying public.  
Well, we should have known better than to underestimate the shoe-buying-public’s thirst for something new, because now, even to our critical eyes, they look just fine, if not downright swanky.
And while booties might not have been so ubiquitous here in Tampa, no afashionado north of the Mason-Dixon is without at least one pair this winter, while we southern girls have gone crazy for the gladiators and cross-strap sandals.

 
Of course, by this time by next year, any or all of three of these trends could be having a near-death experience, especially if we see some radically new looks from designers next week, but from what we see so far, we’re not betting on it. 

   


* (For those of you who are unfamiliar with Curly’s “One Thing” Law, it’s from this bit of dialog from the 1991 movie comedy City Slickers, in which the late Jack Palance plays grizzled cowboy Curly Washburn and Billy Crystal plays Mitch, a midlife-crisis riddled urbanite:

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?

Curly: This.  [holds up one finger]

Mitch: Your finger?

Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean #####.

Mitch: But what is the “one thing?”

Curly: [smiles] That’s what you have to find out.)