T he red carpet at the Cannes film festival is the pinnacle of glamour. Every inch of that floor-sweeping gown and each falling hair tendril has been picked over by stylists and “glam squads”. So when film director and Cannes jury president Greta Gerwig appeared on the red carpet last week in a dress that was wrinkled, you would be forgiven for thinking that someone was about to be fired.
But Gerwig’s hot-pink Balenciaga couture gown wasn’t accidentally creased, a pesky side-effect of a car ride from hotel to Croissette. It was intentional – from asymmetric shoulder right down to the hemline, it was corrugated like a hot tin roof. The dress, one of several at Cannes possibly inspired by ridge cut McCoy’s, is a barometer of a wider languorous mood, with crinkles and creases enjoying a moment.
Ironing is on the downturn among millennials and generation Z – a recent study found that one in three people under 35 don’t own an iron, whereas 90% of people over 45 do. When younger people were asked why they didn’t iron, responses varied from not owning clothes that needed ironing to participants believing that ironing “is not important to me” or that they simply “did not like it”. A quick poll among my thirtysomething peer group illustrates that weddings and job interviews are the rare occasions when an iron is heated up.
While a whole generation may be terrified of facial wrinkles , they are most definitely embracing the furrows when it comes to their cloth.