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FORGET big hair and teetering heels, the new fashion buzzword is “the make-under”.
Famous women are wiping off the slap — and queuing up to look like the girl next door. Which should be good news for those of us fighting hereditary frizz and 1970s teeth.
Just look at Sarah Palin. Republican spin doctors dressed her up with a wardrobe costing £93,000. Designer everything from Valentino to Dior. But then it all backfired, and now Palin, in the last days of the battle for the White House, has re-embracecd her “hockey mom” image, switching to jeans, a plain white T and monochrome jacket.
Ultra-glamorous French TV presenter Laurence Ferrari, 42, has been ordered to dress down. When she took over as anchor on the main French evening news this summer her blonde hair, glossy lipstick and youthful smile were blamed for driving away viewers, particularly the over-60s — forcing the French TF1 channel to order an overhaul of her look.
Out went tight white jumpers; in came dark waistcoats. Her hair went from vixen to helmet. And she's now sporting that regulation orange makeup that makes a foxy lady look twice her age.
Ferrari is only the lastest high-profile victim of Ordinary Woman Syndrome. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy ditched her rock-chick style for buttoned-up tweed and pillbox hats the second she wed the French premier. We Brits aren't much more enlightened. Women to come under fire for not looking their age include Antiques Roadshow presenter, Fiona Bruce, 44, (recently criticised for being too giggly and gauche for the show) and glamourpuss newsreaders Emily Maitlis, 38, (speaks Russian, but dangerous cleavage) and Natasha “Spangles” Kaplinsky, 36.
Viewers, it seems, don't listen to what comes out of a woman's mouth (Ferrari is actually credited with giving the news a more serious tone; Bruce is a proper feminist). Instead they're more worried about policing her thigh boots. Five actually put Spangles in jeans and a T-shirt when she took over the early-evening bulletin to stop her scaring the dads.
The dark art of the make-under gets them all in the end. But then Hollywood trophy wives have been pioneering it for years. Our own Catherine Zeta-Jones famously adopted a more matronly wardrobe so as not to look too girlish on the arm of elderly husband Michael Douglas. Katie Holmes, one of the sparkiest indy girls on the block, is now an identikit “female” Tom Cruise — with matching middle-aged crop and preppy wardrobe.
We mortals should be thrilled that the make-under is in vogue. In principle we can now go out looking really dishevelled without a scrap of Clinique. Don't believe a word of it.
The “make-under” takes twice as much bloody effort as serious grooming. From applying litres of barely-there foundation to blow-drying the “natural” bob — you're up at 5am. Better still, don't go to bed at all. That hairstyle doesn't sleep.
