Crystal’s Crystal Ball: August

When it comes to trends, it’s important to stay ahead of the game. That’s why we’re bringing you a monthly column from our favourite style maven, the one and only Crystal Rasmussen. Blessed with an innate gift for communing with the fashion Gods (not to mention the industry’s best Little Black Book Dress) each month Crystal will gaze into her crystal ball to give us a head start on what to wear…

Crystal’s Crystal Ball: September Fashion Trends

Last week, after a particularly painful wardrobe mishap at a Zoom fashion event (let’s just say I wore something, to shame, from last season) I realised that I was losing my fifth sense for fashion. I was freaked, and after I Ended Meeting For All, I dialled my Style Doctor immediately for a consultation. To treat my symptoms, a stylish stranger in a floor length Rejina Pyo leather trench coat prescribed me The Red Pill(™), which they guaranteed would return me to my usual state of clairvoyance. What it revealed was quite something! I saw beyond this society and into what lies beneath it. And what lies beneath, dear reader, (aside from some La Perla silks) were some of the most on-trend people I’d ever encountered.

Yes, there in that bunker in a place called Mega City, there was a Matrix of models in all leather (and some pleather) everything. Head to toe Alexander McQueen, Givenchy, Gucci, — like a scene from a movie I’ve certainly seen but can’t remember the name of. Kinky dresses, faux python shorts and neo-goth-military (although of course I’m a pacifist), paired with chunky soles and heavy biker boots from the likes of my pal Trinity’s (and my) favourites: Sacai, Prada, Dries Van Noten, Manu Atelier and Dr. Martens.

After escaping this enlightened realm, I finally made it back to the blissful ignorance of my penthouse at The Ritz, just in time for a Zoom call with my good friend the Long Island Medium. Now, she’s never been so good at fashion, but this time she did tell me something very important. She told me to button up (and not just on the gossip front). Of course, I told her that telling a woman how to dress is wildly problematic for countless reasons, but she clarified that she was only repeating a message from my long dead friend Ms. Queen Elizabeth the First: that button down dresses, shirt-dresses as Liz used to so fondly call them, were about to be all the rage for the late summer. When I asked which brands I might look to, at that moment four garments fell from the rails of my walk-in wardrobe. The brands in question? JW Anderson, MM6 Maison Margiela, Simone Rocha, Chloé. As I picked them up filled with shirty hope, a pair of square toed mules flew at me from my shoe-drobe. Which can only mean one thing: Bottega!

The next morning as I left the Ritz (after charging the room to my ex-husband Jeff’s card), in my brand new pre-fall Miu Miu head to toe checked outfit, I realised I was being checked out by more people than usual. When I finally stopped a man dressed as Yoda in Leicester Square to ask why he was staring at me, he said “checks are all the rage, or so the Force tells me.” Of course, I called my good friend and esteemed colleague Jaqueline Follet, who has recently taken the reins at Runway mag, and she confirmed the message bequeathed to me by the Jedis: that checks are indeed IN. “From coats to knitwear,” she said, “go GANNI, Burberry, Brogger baby! And don’t forget to pair it with a 90s shoulder bag — Jil Sander’s doing them, Staud’s doing them, Marni, Gucci.” And then she was gone, on a seventeen-hour flight to Australia.

I had no time to waste; I headed to the shops — diamond encrusted mask in tow — stopping en route for a chin wag at Heaven (the Charing Cross branch) to see what my brothers in arms were wearing. There, my Good Gays(™) told me that this season it’s all about the Seventies: flared trousers, paisley and patchwork prints — Marine Serre, Gucci, Ahluwalia, Bode.

Then the clock struck midnight and I realized I’d lost my glass slipper in a swamp of commuters at the station. But then, in a final stroke of luck, Prints Charming appeared, and placed the shoe back onto my dainty foot. “How will I find you again?” I gasped, eager to pop his deets onto my list of potential suitors. “I’ll be the one in clashing prints from the likes of Gucci, Opening Ceremony and Alexander McQueen,” he whispered, before melting back into the melee.

And so off to the shops I went, but not before stopping at my favorite midnight eatery [redacted]Donald’s and chowing down on a double cheeseburger: which, not to my surprise, was actually cake. Isn’t everything these days?

Crystal Rasmussen is the alter ego of writer, performer and media personality Tom Rasmussen, author of 2019’s bestselling Diary Of A Drag Queen.

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