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Who Wears Short Shorts?
Forget Michelle’s arms—bare legs are in for summer. From tailored minis to soft scalloped pairs, stars are walking tall in shorts this season. VIEW OUR GALLERY.
Blame it on a recession-induced aversion to formal wear (at the Met’s Costume Gala earlier this month, cocktail dresses far outnumbered haute couture), not to mention men reportedly trading in banker-chic for more casual attire: Shorts are cropping up on red carpets across the country. Once relegated to gymnasiums and weekend wear, the trouser-alternative has gotten an upgrade thanks to a handful of designer heavyweights. At Fall 2009 Fashion Week, Chloe's Hannah McGibbon followed up last season's much-coveted silk scallop shorts with cuffed leather versions paired with thigh-high pirate boots; Miuccia Prada introduced wool hot pants, while Alexander Wang topped off his biker chick-inspired collection with spandex shorts.
Meanwhile, the style is already being adopted by a slew of trendsetting starlets. From Chloe's aforementioned scallop shorts, to rompers (another ubiquitous fashion this spring), Gossip Girls and Goop's Gwyneth Paltrow alike have been strutting leggy looks on red carpets from Madison Square Garden to Melrose in recent weeks. See our gallery for the spectrum of short shorts turning heads this season.
Click Image Below to View Our Gallery
Alisa Gould-Simon is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer. She also covers fashion and culture for BlackBook, New York magazine, and PAPER among other publications.
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Alisa Gould-Simon is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer. She also covers fashion and culture for BlackBook, New York magazine, and PAPER among other publications.
Most of these women have scarily thin legs. As if they don't eat enough. Only the first two girls (forgot their names, but they have to do with Gossip Girl) seem to have healthy legs. For what it's worth, of course.
I would avoid assuming that they are unhealthy, especially from looking only at a single photo still of each, and not perusing their medical charts. Coming from a family of twiggy-legged people, I know that skinny don't always mean you are medically underweight, or unhealthy.
For what it's worth, the fashion and media industry, especially outside of America, seem to grow increasingly cognizant of their past errors in the damaging physical exploitation of female models. If you think they are returning to this trend of telling their models to stay unhealthy, perhaps rather than targeting the women with your assumptions (who would, given that your impressions are correct, are already being victimized), you should target the industry that perpetuates the image of these women.
Also, it would take guts for a woman with an endomorphic figure to don this style of shorts, because they would become obvious targets of ridicule from the other side of the fence to yours. Just my two cents.
oh. my. god. hot pants are back? i'll never forget one of the first times i saw them as a fad was when judy carne (perky judy carne from laugh-in and burt reynolds ex-wife) came out wearing them on a talk show, i'm thinking either the tonight show or the joey bishop show.
they've made various comebacks since then. i recall wearing a nice pair of dressy shorts with panty hose and pumps to work at my job in miami in the early 80s.
"everything old is new again..."
If this is the fashion this summer, I must buy some new glasses. Stimulating the economy, my new motto
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