Fashion Translator: your guide to that industry lingo

Never mind those tricky-to-pronounce French designers – sometimes the fashion world likes to speak a language all of its own. Are you “channelling” a “micro-trend” with those “BIJ” sunnies? Get yourself up to speed with our guide to licking the lingo.

“Micro-trend”

A localised sub-trend, usually one that is only big for a couple of months, or within certain geographical perimeters. Sometimes micro trends will grown into fully-fledged macro trends; sometimes they will disappear as quickly as they came (leaving you with a cupboard full of animal ear headbands and nowhere to wear them). Recent micro trends include Doc Martens, letterman jackets and top knot hairdos.

How to use: “Damn, I thought bumbags were going to be a macro-trend so I bought 12 of them, but it turns out they were just a micro-trend. So micro it was barely visible to the naked eye.”

“BIJ”

Stop sniggering, it’s not rude. BIJ stands for Big In Japan, which in turn is shorthand for your outfit getting you stopped in the street so that arty Japanese tourists can take your photo. It’s one of the best mood enhancers you can get for free. But beware, being BIJ doesn’t necessarily mean B-everywhere-else – you could just be the photo they tag as their friends on Facebook as a joke.

How to use: “I wasn’t sure about the post-ironic shellsuit top with these socks and jelly shoes, but it turns out I’m BIJ today. Scooore.”

“Channelling”

There are several reasons that fashion folk use the word channelling so much. One is because it is, to all intents and purposes, another way of saying “copying” that sounds far more admirable and far less like primary school. Another is because it makes getting dressed sound like a form of superhuman act, like channelling the force of some radioactive crystals through our fingertips in order to create a rip in the space-time continuum. It makes it sound important, and fashion folk like feeling important.

How to use: practice correct usage by repeating the term “channelling Chanel” as many times as you can before your tongue dies.

“Sit back”

That’s not an order to relax, but a cover-all term for the dressing down of attention-seeking garments. If you buy a glitzy embellished jacket, for example, you could sit it back with a white vest and some denim cut-offs. Sitting back is a crucial element of modern dressing, allowing you to wear things that wouldn’t look out of place in Danny La Rue’s wardrobe without looking as if you’ve tried too hard. Or at all.

How to use: “That sequinned matador jacket might be slightly too much for the office, but I can always sit it back with some jeggings and plimsolls.”

“Matchy-matchy”

Some of you might have been bought up in the mistaken belief that matching clothes was a good thing. Not so, we’re afraid. The fash pack use this as a derogatory term for anything overly co-ordinated, in colour, print or theme. Matchy-matchiness occurs most often in those magazine dissections of celebrity outfits, particularly when the culprit is head to toe in monogrammed Vuitton.

How to use: “Co-ordinating her purple eyeshadow with her hat, belt and shoes was a little bit match-matchy for my tastes.”

“Boyfriend”

As a general rule, notwithstanding Vera Wang, the fashion industry doesn’t persecute single women to nearly the same extent as other institutions (TV, film, elderly aunts). But every so often even the staunchly autonomous world of style has a moment of weakness and makes us feel crap for being uncoupled. “Boyfriend” style is one of those moments. Used to make baggy, manly clothes sound appealing, the concept on boyfriend blazers, trousers etc is based on the idea that you might have borrowed them from a man’s wardrobe. What it overlooks, of course, is that if you actually borrowed said items from your boyfriend’s wardrobe, they would be too big on the shoulders, too tight on the hips and smell of feet. Sexy though it might be to wear your man’s shirt while you’re doing the decorating, we’re pretty sure Annie Hall bought all her own clothes. So we can too.

How to use: “I borrowed my boyfriend blazer from my boyfriend, but then he broke up with me… does that make it just a blazer?”

“Hoxton”

After the hipper-than-thou East London area, Hoxton has now become shorthand for its own particular breed of art-school edgy, particular if worn by a borderline anorexic boychild with asymmetric hair. The difficulty with Hoxton dressing is that, like some kind of quasi-philosophical theory, as soon as something becomes thought of as “Hoxton”, it will immediately stop being worn in Hoxton. Thus most of the time, you’re locating Hoxton style in Camden and Chiswick. As a general rule, once you’re spotting Hoxton in Fulham it no longer qualifies for the term. See also: Shoreditch.

How to use: “That Barbour jacket and pilot’s moustache are making you look a bit Hoxton today.”

“Conceptual”

All you need to know here is that you will never wear anything described as “conceptual”. You might put it on your coffee table, hang it on your wall or mistake it for a child’s novelty plaything, but you will never wear it. Usually the preserve of a crop of Japanese designers including Yohji Yamamoto, Comme des Garçons and Junya Watanabe, conceptual design is what the uninitiated think of when they think of catwalk fashion. Puffer jackets the size of bouncy castles, dresses made from Perspex, hats with trees growing out of them. Sold in Dover Street Market and bought by rich dowager patronesses who will invite people round for tea just to look at it, conceptual is to the fashion world what Victoria Beckham was to the Spice Girls – impressive, decorative, but not strictly necessary.

How to use: “Is that bin bag a conceptual skirt?” “No, it’s just a bin bag.”