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subscribe to style file blog via RSSfree speech: hadley freeman on the look of love lost
July 23, 2008 12:05 pm
Here’s the thing about breakup outfits: I always thought they were dependent on context. You know, you finally get rid of that unemployed sponger who your best friend always told you looked like Gollum and you run out to get a fabulous new self-congratulatory outfit; the bastard leaves you for the aforementioned “friend” and you bury yourself in several layers of your father’s old sweaters and tracksuit bottoms left behind by your ex-ex-ex-boyfriend. But it seems that I have been mistaken. Well, at least in the modern world of celebrity—and really, what more important world is there? This has been an interesting month for watchers of recently single celebs, mainly because the most prominent ones have been, for better or worse, the biggest style influences of the decade: Kate Moss and Sienna Miller.
Sienna, as surely everyone knows by now, recently left her boyfriend Rhys Ifans (a.k.a., the funny-looking one who posed in his underwear in “Notting Hill”) and, apparently able to get over the break in about, ooh, five minutes, has been seen soaking up the sun with married father of four/former actor/current oil heir Balthazar Getty. Meanwhile, Kate, surely prompting a small sense of déjà vu for the lady, has reportedly hit an on-off patch with a dark-haired musician with a penchant for leather jackets. She was recently spotted recovering from an alleged lover’s tiff with the Kills’ Jamie Hince the only way she knows how: on her best friend’s yacht in Ibiza.
These splits have very different contexts. Yet both have prompted the same style reaction. Though one might assume that Sienna might feel a small twinge of sympathy for Rhys (who I spotted in a London bar not too long ago, looking, shall we say, decidedly worse for the wear and no happier for it), or even for Balthazar’s wife, she instead has been flaunting what Rhys is missing and her new beau is getting like nobody’s business. Her attire of late has tended toward teeny tiny shorts worn with bikini tops and floppy hats (for hanging out with her new “just good friend” in L.A.), and bikini bottoms and nothing else while on holiday with him on the requisite private (save for the odd paparazzi) beach. Meanwhile Kate has been taking a similar approach: tiny black minidresses encrusted with gems for casual afternoons out with friends, tiny shorts and boots for drinks down the pub. Sartorial expressions of self-pity feature about as much in her wardrobe as signs of contrition do in Sienna’s. Yet while some might object to these getups, it’s hard not to feel that this is all a definite improvement on the wardrobe of another serially single A-lister, Jennifer Aniston. Say what you like about Sienna, but in my book, anything beats a mournful yoga outfit hanging off protruding hip bones.
Incidentally, a word about another star who may or may not be single soon: Madonna. Unlike pretty much every other celebrity watcher on the planet, I am not going to pretend to know what’s going on between her and Guy because, strangely, she has yet to confide in me. But I will say that this woman is most definitely NOT having an affair with A-Rod. As Sienna would doubtless concur, any woman who’s just starting an illicit romance would not wear bloomers. When Madge swaps the bloomers for hot pants, then Guy should call the lawyers.
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