Legendary stylist Patricia Field explains her problem with everyone wearing jeans and a T-shirt
In a Q interview, the visionary costume designer and stylist shares her honest opinion on fashion these days
The award-winning American costume designer and stylist Patricia Field is as much a visionary as she is a provocateur in the world of fashion.
For more than five decades, starting with the opening of her New York City boutique in 1966, Field has used her unconventional eye and natural creative instincts to transform the way we think about our personal style, from combining unexpected colours and textures, to mixing high and low fashion. For her, it all starts with imagination — something she says young people typically have in abundance.
"[My shop] was very imaginative as far as the fashion was concerned," Field tells Q's Tom Power on today's show. "Of course, the people that worked in the store reflected that and it created a fashion environment for young people…. Young people love imagination. Their brains are open. They haven't solidified their brain matter yet and I love working with young people for that reason, because even though I may not be young, my brain is still open, I think."
Now, Field is the subject of a new documentary, Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field, which details her journey in fashion and her work as a consulting costume designer for film and television. Some of her credits include Sex and the City, The Devil Wears Prada, Ugly Betty and Emily in Paris.
Reflecting on the impact of her work and some of the most iconic on-screen outfits she's created (Carrie Bradshaw's tutu, for instance), Field says she's just "happy that people got out of their dull rags and put on some imagination."
Jeans and T-shirts reveal a weak economy.- Patricia Field
In her opinion, outfits that fail to express the wearer's individuality are boring and sad. "Happy clothes" are pieces that make you feel good and make a statement about who you are.
"I think that's what's important," she says. "How you express yourself in the way you present yourself — and you don't present yourself by the dictates of a magazine … it has to come from you. You're inside yourself. You express yourself like nobody else does."
Beyond expressing individuality, Field's theory is that fashion reveals what's going on in the culture at large.
"For example, if people don't have a lot of excess money, they wear jeans and T-shirts," she says. "What are people wearing today? Jeans and T-shirts. Over and over and over…. In my mind, it reveals a person that is not so intuitive about how they present themselves to others. Jeans and T-shirts reveal a weak economy."
So according to Field, why should you consider wearing happy clothes?
"If you dress in an optimistic or intelligent or interesting way, that means that you're alive and your brain is operating," she says. "If you just go wearing jeans and a T-shirt, you're just doing what everybody does. And I think our culture, at this point, is revealed in the way people dress, which is not that interesting."
The full interview with Patricia Field is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Patricia Field produced by Cora Nijhawan.
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