Crystal ball, crystal ball, what does fashion hold for us all?

Its 2 days till the end of the year and I find myself not only thinking of the year that has gone by; 2009, but also the decade about to finish; The Noughties. I’ve been alive for two decades! Scary thought that is, especially when I wonder what the next two decades might hold for me: wrinkles, saggy boobs and possibly 3 screaming kids under 10. I’m rambling, my apologies.

Over the past few days I’ve been considering the events of the decade just gone: starting with the millennium and the alleged dot.com crash, to the return of the Spice Girls and the rise of GaGa. The fashion blogosphere exploded, Twitter was born and Beyoncé had us telling our men to put a ring on it (Uh oh oh, uh oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh).

Posh and Mel C at the O2

Beyoncé

Lady Gaga

In contemplation my mind also goes back to the terrorist attacks of September 11^th and July 7^th as well as the attempted one on Christmas day this year. Global warming and climate change became more of an apparent issue with the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004 resulting from the Indian Ocean earthquake as well as Hurricane Katrina the following year. I also wondered if we had become a more tolerant race; of gender, religion, the colour of our skin, our sexual orientations. January 2009 saw Barack Obama become the first African American president of the United States but only a year before that Benazir Bhutto, the first female Prime Minister of an Islamic nation, was assassinated 2 weeks before the Pakistani presidential elections.

Arise African Fashion Week

Fashion has also had its ups and downs: the skinny jean vs. the wide leg, and then no pants altogether; and we flirted with the mini, the midi and the maxi. The elegant sixties silhouette with its clean cuts and no frills returned and we revisited the 80s crazy print leggings and neon colours. We saw international influences with Oriental infusions and Ankara from West Africa and hit shows like Gossip Girl left us wanting to be more preppy. Fashion went futuristic infusing rubber, leather and plastic but contrasting this with soft romantic lace, bows and see-through sheerness. This season on the catwalk showed power dressing making a comeback with our boyfriend blazers and Balmain shoulders and we learnt about investment pieces where jewellery and accessories became as important as the clothes themselves. Michelle Obama showed that politics can be fashionable and the term ‘Mobamabelted’ was coined.

With fashion we have the upcoming shows at Somerset House and Bryant Park which gives us an insight into the future trends, sort of the crystal ball of What to Wear. I wonder what the future does hold in store for fashion. In the past decade we have been witnesses to the renaissance of fashion and the birth of new trends. What more can we expect from The Tens? Only time will tell.

The Obamas

All images are courtesy of Getty Images
Ekaete Inyang also blogs at My Heart is in New York