Calvin Klein have announced that they are reissuing the white dress made legendary by fashion icon Cher Horowitz. You know the one - micro mini with 90s-essential spaghetti straps, the one she wears to go to the party with Christian when she still has no idea he's a "disco-dancing, Oscar Wilde-reading, Streisand ticket-holding friend of Dorothy", where they all dance around to The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Tai (RIP) falls down the stairs wearing some floral-chiffon-dungarees ensemble she borrowed from a Cabbage Patch Kid. The one that prompts the following exchange with her dad just before she leaves the house:
"What the hell is that?"
"A dress"
"Says who?"
"Calvin Klein"
"Well go and put something over it"
"Duh, I was just going to"
At which point she dons this, the most paradoxical cover-up imaginable.
This is a huge relief. Finally I can admit without shame that I spent a large part of the 90s in a mini kilt, knee socks and mary-janes, toting a mini backpack and a metal lunchbox which I made my mum buy me from Harvey Nics even though I didn't take packed lunches to school, in an effort to be more like Cher.
My fondness for slightly edgier 90s fashions is well-documented (see post on my grunge feature for Indicate Issue 5) but fashion and teenage girls are fickle, and the turnaround period from channelling Angela Chase via DMs, army surplus and lots of plaid to spending my birthday money on a pair of baby pink tapered D&G jeans was negligible.
But until now the latter was something to be downplayed in the 'group discussion of teenage memories' scenario. Calvin's 2010 endorsement of Cher's insanely fantastic look has released the memories from their bondage of shame.
