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News › Biker Style Goes Sleek, But Also Remains Tough
Designers give the look a high-fashion update that fuses masculinity, femininity.
From the moment James Dean first rumbled across the screen, the biker look -- hulking leather coat, rugged jeans and street-wise swagger -- has been ingrained in America's style DNA.
Designers are returning to the staple, but with a high-fashion update: Sleeker jackets in body-hugging silhouettes paired with hippie tops and edgy, style-conscious accessories round out a Boho-biker look that merges hard and soft.
Supple, studded leather ankle boots and candy-colored fingerless gloves fuse femininity with the masculine style, as designers offer even the most dainty fashionista a chance at feeling like a bad girl.
But make no mistake: Biker style may have gone sleek, but it hasn't gone soft.
"There's a real toughness," says InStyle fashion director Hal Rubenstein, who sees heavy emphasis on the dark, moody sex appeal of the biker aesthetic. "But there's also a real hippie quality."
Rubenstein says designers are focusing on cropped jackets with ornamenting in shapes that are less boxy-bulky. Pants, meanwhile, are tight.
Belts and link jewelry seem to overshadow the zippers and buckles traditionally associated with biker chic.
"There's a tempering of the toughness," says Rubenstein, who points to Gucci's gypsy-rocker fall collection as defining the look. The label pairs floaty mini-dresses with hardware belts and knee-grazing boots bearing ultra-long, fringe accents that could be at home swinging from a Harley-Davidson's handle bars.
At Rodarte, skintight pants and a gauzy cardigan get a punch of toughness with copper and peach fingerless gloves and studded bracelets.
But Rubenstein warns against straying too far from the classic biker ethos this season.
"It's all about black leather," Rubenstein says. "It connects to so many things -- it's bad girl, it's bad boy, it's the Marlon Brando rebel ... There is a certain iconography here that you don't want to play around with."
Source: AP
Posted by editor on Sunday, April 27, 2008 (00:17:38) (163 reads)
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