Warning – this is a bit of a rant.

I read Harlequin books, more these days than before. I just seem to be on a Harlequin jag right now.

Anyway, pick up a book from the Presents line (Modern Romance in the UK) and you’ll find a reference to “designer” clothes. It is really beginning to get to me. When I read about another 25 year old dressed like a 40 year old, in elegant clothes which are described as “designer,” I want to hurl the book across the room.

Maybe if you understood my background better, you might guess where I’m coming from. All her working life, my mother worked with dress designers. She was a sample machinist and pattern cutter and grader. That means she worked to take a dress off the catwalk and turn it into a viable commercial product. Before she retired, I had a lot of designer clothes, because when a company, Debenhams or John Lewis, say, bought a designer original in order to reproduce it en masse, they weren’t allowed to sell the original. My mother would take the original garment to pieces, find a suitable, more commercial (i.e. cheaper) material, turn a 3D design into a series of flat pieces, and then lay the pieces out on the chosen fabric to get the most out of it. When I visited her at work, phrases like “I can get 6 of those to the roll” and “we can change linen to cotton here,” were legion.

After the garment was put into production, sold and they passed on to the next one, the company was left with a designer garment in pieces. Which my mother, and people of her team, put back together and ‘disappeared.’ So while most of my clothes were a season or two out of date, they were designer originals—and yes, I can name the designer, although for the most part they came without labels. You really don’t need labels to name a designer. Sigh, today, I have to manage with Marks and Spencer and Monsoon, but I’ve never found it much of a hardship, because if it’s for something special, Mum will tailor it for me. And it’s a relief, in a way, because clothes by named designers have to be honoured. See what I mean when you slip on a Givenchy or a Prada.

Then there are the lucrative offshoots, which often provide far more profit for the company than clothes, which are labour intensive and expensive. Perfume, accessories, jewellery, so that we can all afford a bit of Chanel. You can get a piece of clothing with a label from most large stores these days, and they don’t mean a great deal, except that a certain designer has signed off on them. So is our heroine buying from Debenhams and calling it “designer”? She could be.

So, this is designer:

And this:

and this:

and this:

Quirky, different, special. “Designer” means attention to detail, expensive fabrics. It doesn’t mean perfectly fitted, not necessarily. The couture collections are the ones that are made to fit, and there are only a handful of women in the world who can afford to buy regularly. Pret a porter, or Ready To Wear, are the big, commercial collections, but they don’t contain bland, beautifully fitted gowns and clothes. Once, that might have been the case, but when I think of designers like Courreges and Thierry Mugler, somehow I doubt it. I do feel passionately about fashion, because I’ve seen what goes into it, how hard people work, and how committed most designers are about their collections.

(BTW I was more than sad to read about the death of Alexander McQueen. He will be very much missed).

“Designer” means nothing on its own. I can draw a stick man on a piece of fabric, and wolla, I designed it. It’s ‘designer.’

And while I’m on the subject, I would absolutely love for the heroine of a Harlequin novel to dress her age. All these 25 year olds who dress like their mothers—no, I take that back, like their grandmothers, maybe. Give them more than jeans as a token to their age. Give them decent pants, give them a sense of fashion, or a style or something. Please. If they want to dress in classic elegance, then let them be aware of it. Soft pullovers and jeans don’t necessarily make for casual. I can see what’s happening here, and why for so many years Harlequin appealed to the older reader, but these days older readers have a bit of style, too. They dress in jeans, hippy wear, because, let’s face it, they were hippies, some of them. I’m guessing that a Harlequin writer isn’t allowed to mention a designer by name, and that’s half the trouble. So make some up. Get a Harlequin fashion house, call it, I don’t know, Banel or Devenchy, and rock it.

But not just “designer,” please. It’s smacks of the “designer” craze of the 1980’s, and it doesn’t mean anything.

BTW, those designs above pair up. Two each from two designers. Can you name the designers, and say which pair goes with which? And yes, the name of the designer is in the source of the picture, but don’t cheat! (And don’t you just love that big dress at the end?)