From fashion to wood

I don't know about others, as Creanga said, but when I surf the internet, I get the idea to combine information. And as I was looking at the designers' proposals for spring 2016 fashion, I was attracted by the "granny chic" or "mamie manie" style - as the French call it, that is "grand chic" or "grand mania" as we call it. In short, this spring we're dressing like 60s ladies, and the models who inspire us are just under or over 80. Let it be said that youth is no respecter of old age.

A quick glance down the street shows that teenage girls today prefer sneakers, skinny jeans, t-shirts and shirts, whether they're going to school or on a date with their boyfriend. But there is also a category of young women who clearly want to break away from adolescence and are looking for the coolest attitude (coolitude), choosing to wear overcoats or capes, midi skirts, scarves, headscarves and wedge heels - a picture that is right out of the 1960s fashion picture. There's a hashtag on social media for this style, 'granny chic' or 'granny chic', and we, like we said, can quietly call it 'granny chic'. The creators behind this phenomenon wanted to pay homage to that figure who, for any of us, represents calm, tranquility, love - grandma. And at the top of the list of these creators are the Italians, because they have a highly developed sense of family, for them the grandmother - "nona" - is sacred. You can see what I'm talking about by doing a search on the name Alessandro Michele, Gucci's artistic director. Miucia Prada also fits in with the trend, except that her model is a shaggier grandmother with thigh-high socks and pointy-toed ballet flats. Although the collection is a big hit, fashion analysts say, not every woman can walk the streets like this. This really is about coolness, otherwise you risk being thought of as having no money for fashion magazines and taking inspiration from your children's cartoons or, heaven forbid, missing a dowry.

Some wonder whether this "grand chic" style is not also a nostalgia for calmer, quieter times, for the traditional, solid values of the not too distant past. And the experts confirm. There is a clear need to stop the speed imposed by social networks today and as a result, part of the younger generation is resisting the fast life trend. To revive the dress codes of our grandparents, to return to the fashion heritage of the 50s and 60s and 70s, is in a way to return to a time when our relationship with clothes and objects was different. To use clothes or disposable objects was heresy then. Still under the fear of shortages of all kinds caused by the war (you may have heard that everything, including clothes, was given away on a card), our grandmothers knew how to patch and patch artistically, to make an old blouse into a new one by adding a crocheted collar or a cuff from another blouse. Everything was transformable, reusable, salvageable. Hm, doesn't it all rhyme with sustainable?

And that's how we came to the converted furniture or, more recently, the bench that "Wooden Magazine" presented as "a new life given to an old piece of furniture" and which fits very well, in my opinion, in the "grand chic" style. Surely you have something in your home worth keeping and reviving, if not a piece of furniture, perhaps a coat to exercise your creativity on. Let's get caught up in the retro fever. Don't throw away the miles and crocheted tablecloths. They can become skirts, blouses or even parts of them. Wouldn't that embroidered tablecloth from grandma's house look beautiful on a newly repainted wooden table? Yes, yes, right where you're having your afternoon tea and take another look to see who/what else has posted on FB? Modernists have reason to shudder, "grand-chic" is the style that is taking the world by storm today from Paris to Los-Angeles. Wouldn't it be chic to join in?