Sweet gingham

By 1964, when the London label Biba came out with a pink gingham dress, the public was good and ready even if Biba’s Barbara Hulanicki was not. She got 17,000 orders for the dress the day it appeared in the Daily Mail. “We were very shocked,” she told London’s Design Museum. “Our flat was filled with postal orders. Have you ever tried to cash that many postal orders? We suddenly had to buy thousands of yards of gingham, so we were in touch with suppliers from all over the United Kingdom. We were lucky: Our order was so huge that we were able to get manufacturers to produce exactly what we wanted.”

Kane may rack up similar numbers for his gingham outfits—not because they’re sugar and spice but because they’re not altogether nice. While fan-pleated pastel gingham pleads innocence, double thigh splits and seductive cut-outs and bra cups whisper “guilty.” It’s this schizophrenic sampling, like a punchout between Lolita and Laura Ingalls, that makes these dresses both sweet and subversive.

Nothing beats Comme des Garçons’ 1997 lumps and bumps collection for subversive, however. Called “Dress Meets Body, Body Meets Dress and They Are One,” in designer Rei Kawakubo’s usual oracular way, the collection featured oddly padded garments in oversized stretch gingham. People were so fixated on the weird shapes that no one really thought about why Kawakubo chose gingham or noticed the way the sculpted curves intersected with the block pattern, making the outfits zing with energy. But choreographer Merce Cunningham did, and he created a piece called “Scenario” with dancers wearing the joyfully humpbacked gingham.

What Cunningham and Kawakubo must have noticed was that on a purely graphic level, gingham throbs with optic vibrancy. Nike has picked up on this with its strobing, tricoloured Dunk High Premium, which, by looks alone, should give its wearers an extra half-inch bounce-up. For those who are less sports-inclined and just want to feel happy, gingham conspires to make you feel young, wholesome and, now, hip. “If I want to get across a straight American casual look on someone under 30, like a Fred Perry kind of teen, I’d use a Hickey Freeman gingham shirt,” says film and TV costume designer Jori Woodman. In her line of work, wardrobe is shorthand for character development, and, as she puts it: “Gingham can say small town, innocent and old-fashioned.”

That’s not such a bad thing in this hyper-urban, cynical, sped-up moment in history. Perhaps that’s exactly what we want our clothes to say.

Read more
Wear it well: The LBD
Wear it well: Ladylike lace
Get all the spring runway trends here

Read more in our Fashion and Trends channels