Longing For the Gutter

There's certainly nothing original about stressing over what to wear to a festival, afterall, festival attire is in a category entirely of its own. It's not your typical night-time wear and it's certainly not what you'd wear to lunch with the girls but rather it's an eclectic adaptation of fashions tailored precisely to these summer time events.

Festival wear worldwide has it's own unwritten, unspoken codes. It's encapsulated by celebrities at major international festivals and reviewed after Glastonbury and Coachella by the glossies and scrutinised by we in the blogosphere.

One stand out theory I relate most to festival wear is 'Nostalgie de la boue' or rather a longing for the gutter. It's the idea that the fashion concious scribe higher values to people and cultures considered lower than oneself, i.e. the romanticisation of the primitive: Hence fashionistas with enough money to buy expensive gowns opting for ripped denim, tattered hair, and bare skin.

The aim of dressing for a festival is to make sure you are appropriately dressed and prepared to look like hell by the end of the night. No one wants to see the girl who started out the day in gorgette silk with perfect hair and expensive heels only to bump in to her again around 10pm to find she has her Prada heels in hand, broken straps tragically tied together and make up running down her face. She would look ridiculious next to a subsequently wasted girl who was wearing an old band tee, distressed denim shorts and beat-up military boots jumping up and down to The Hives or Crystal Castles. Profound, oui? It's a case of which of the two looks more appropriately wasted.

Images: The Cobrasnake, Facebook