Fashion icons don’t follow fashion

Part four of my series on the fashion industry’s biggest secret.

So far, we’ve seen that neither the fashion editors who push new trends nor the fashion designers that create them actually follow fashion themselves.

Today I’ll show you that the fashion icons so adored by industry insiders also don’t follow fashion trends. They wear their signature look consistently for years, regardless of fashion’s dictates.

I’ve picked my own personal favourite fashion icon for the sake of illustrating my point, but look at almost any fashion icon and you’ll see a distinctive personal style that evolves subtly over their life, but rarely changes dramatically.

Audrey Hepburn didn’t follow fashion

My favourite of all the oft-cited fashion icons, Audrey Hepburn, is a classic example of a woman who wore what suited her throughout her life, fashion trends be damned.

(Images, L-R: AudreyHepburn.com, Audrey Hepburn — L’Ange des Infants)

Throughout her life, Audrey Hepburn wore simple shapes, often in dark colours, with simply styled hair and the eyeliner that highlighted her characteristic ‘doe eyed’ look. Her look evolved subtly over her life, but she was always recognisably herself.

Look at any acclaimed style icon and you’ll see a similar pattern: they find what suits them and stick with it. From Marilyn Monroe’s overt sex appeal to Grace Kelly’s regal chic or Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ feminine but untouchable look, the people who are lauded for their taste long after their death are the ones least susceptible to jumping on unflattering fashion trends.

It’s ironic that the people paid to sell fashion trends now, so often reference the look of women who dressed consistently throughout their lives to do so — and a lesson that a constantly-changing wardrobe might not be completely glamorous after all.

Tomorrow: so who does follow fashion trends?