Patti Smith's 'barefoot' style has stood the test of time

["Andrew F Wilson" <andrewfwilson>]

Patti Smith's 'barefoot' style has stood the test of time
By Lisa Armstrong
>From The Times, Wednesday, 2 April 2008

Talking of growing up, Patti Smith's exhibition of sketches,
photographs and films has just opened at Fondation Cartier in Paris.
Smith - now, incredibly, 61 - tells this month's French Vogue: "I've
never struggled against the passing years. I just ignore them. My
parents always worked and I've always worked. I'm like a farmer who
has to till the fields whether he's 20 or 90" - a farmer who happened
to collaborate with some of the seminal creatives of the 20th century,
including Robert Mapplethorpe, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg.

Smith's is undeniably a style that has stood the test of time. Baldly,
it's white shirts or T-shirts, men's trousers (she practically
invented the current strain of sartorial minimalism), scrubbed face
and wild black hair, now streaked with dignified shafts of grey, as
untamed and free a metaphor as Amy Winehouse's surreal beehive is an
emblem of a subjugated, orderly discipline that seems lacking from the
rest of her life.

Thirty years on from her ground-breaking rock poetry album, Horses,
Smith is still working the same look and, for all any of us know, the
very same items of clothing. How ecological. Granted, the rigorous
androgyny slides into full-on scary Iggy Popness these days, but you'd
have to say that, on the whole, it has served her well, and the
millions of women who have adopted a similar understated approach.

There are several lessons here, and, yes, one of them is that bad
girls do get the lion's share of good outfits. While Smith has always
maintained that her wasted looks are the results of a sickly
childhood, rather than drugs, there was more than a whiff of hedonism
about her. The difference is that in the 1970s, drug-taking quaintly
unfolded behind closed doors rather than on YouTube. Its symptoms were
obliquely alluded to, as opposed to being itemised in Grazia. They
certainly weren't turned into commodities by cynical fashion brands.

The other lesson is about keeping things simple, particularly as one
ages. "Elegance is refusal," as Diana Vreeland said and, although she
encountered the odd obstacle in following her own advice (don't we
all?), she was right.

A well-cut jacket, expensive "basics", accessories that are the
antithesis of "try hard" (Smith is a barefoot or sneakers kind of
girl), clothes that are beautifully cut with an inbuilt slouchiness
that allows real figures to feel at ease in a flattering state of
grace - these are genuine must-have items, and worth saving for.
Luckily, tailoring is about to have a fashion moment again (R.I.P.
frou-frou frills and body-con bandage dresses). So, if you can just
get through this summer without succumbing to parishiltonitis, I
strongly urge you to do so.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/fashion/article3660610.ece