Is The Midi Making a Comeback?
Strangely, the last time serious consideration was given to the midi, Britain was enduring a period of relative financial instability. That was the 1970s and along with the three-day week, the British economy was facing high rates of inflation and a bit of a mini-midi-maxi crisis. Even more strangely, before that the historic precedent for the mid-calf hemline had been set in the 1930s, another period of invasive recession. Should we have forecast this return to favour for the midi when we were in the grip of the credit crunch? Perhaps that’s reading too much into the cyclical recurrence of the midi trend.
The midi hemline has a distinct air of sophisticated restraint that seems to rally against almost all of the over-the-top trends and revealing pieces of out there. In fact, it does feel that it’s verging on an almost radical departure, which is a strange thing to say about something which places itself so firmly in the middle-ground. The graceful mid-length is set to be a fashion feature because it fills a void between two extremes.
You have no-doubt been struck, as we were, when flicking through fashion magazines and looking at celebrity snaps, just how rare it is to see evening wear that is suitable to women of every age. Long gowns are still the reserve of the red carpet function. For a time, this did generate a sense that the only way to distance oneself from the mini-skirted, headline-grabbing celebrities was to go to take the hemline to the other extreme. This isn’t a question of age, rather one of agenda.
Taking our lead from a quite different kind of red carpet clientele, at the nuptials of Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, were covered by the Swedish ‘Hello!’ and essentially managed to put the standards, or lack thereof, of the standard celebrity event into the shade. Interestingly, it was the evening’s matriarchs who managed to comprehensively outshine their younger counterparts in the fashion stakes. European style luminaries like Queen Rania of Jordan, Princess Rosario of Bulgaria and Princess Letizia of Spain looked somewhat immature and insubstantial in comparison to the mother of the bride, Queen Silvia of Sweden.
The elegant compromise that is the midi hemline is not the reserve of any particular age-bracket but a classic piece that transcends a lot of our modern sensibilities and with that, manages to distance itself from either end of the hemline spectrum. Its return to the catwalk is being championed by designers who are renowned for their union of classic styles with modern executions. For example, Chanel has re-worked their tweed skirt suit into a new silhouette for the autumn season. The ongoing momentum that the midi skirt trend is enjoying will continue to gain traction into the winter. When putting together an outfit, think mid calf length, flared midi-skirt paired with a cropped jacket and just over mid calf length, mid heeled boots. It’s an exercise in layering and redefining proportion. A graduated silhouette is a key look for the season and the midi is right in the middle of it.
