The great fringe debate: Their flirty and playful style is intoxicating, but they're not for everyone

From hippie deluxe to shimmying showgirl, fringes are everywhere this spring, but while some love them, others hate them. Our fashion experts discuss.

(PATRICK KOVARIK/AFP/Getty Images)

It's flirty and playful, says Tilly Macalister-Smith

A strange moment occurred in 2013: a slew of designers were segueing chic black-and-navy menswear inspirations into their collections, and, as if in neat defiance, Tamara Mellon – she of glossy hair and limbs and formerly of Jimmy Choo – showed a dazzling black leather fringed skirt in her new collection.

It was a pencil shape cut to the knee with fringing slashed to the calf and I wanted it… in a slightly “grabby” uncomfortable way that I hadn’t wanted anything for some time. This came as something of a surprise. Fringing, I had led myself to believe, and all its flirty playfulness, was not my “thing”.

Monica Feudi (Monica Feudi)

Since then, I have come to respect fringing for its ability to turn an otherwise level-headed shopper into a crazed one. I’ve been there. Take, for example, Hedi Slimane’s rendering over at Saint Laurent.

Slimane has done for fringing in the Teens Swhat Janis Joplin, Anita Pallenberg and Joni Mitchell did for rock’n’roll in the Seventies. Slimane agrees; he asked the last of these to front his current campaign. His fringed leather jacket and tan suede knee-high boots with a mane of tassels running down the calf are at the top of many wish lists. Fan or not, his unshakeable vision of a be-tasselled, sexy rock’n’roll girl is as compelling as Isabel Marant’s perennial “I woke up like this” woman (another designer who is doing roaring trade in fringed tunics and cheesecloth ponchos right now).

The sun may have set over crowds of suede fringed gilets, denim shorts and arms held aloft in California’s Coachella desert, but the focus will simply shift to the razzle-dazzle of the red carpet. Josephine Baker’s vintage look, with fringes of tiny beads that flirt and fly as you twist and shake, has been causing ricochets of excitement on the red carpet of late. Look at the faces of Gwen Stefani, Naomi Campbell and Lupita Nyong’o: they can’t help but have a good time in those beaded dresses that channel the glamour of Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby.

And therein lies the intoxicating appeal: these are clothes that you can’t stand still in; clothes to discover your rock’n’roll alter ego in; clothes to break a smile in; clothes to enjoy.

Daniele La Malfa (Daniele La Malfa)

For fancy dress only, says Rebecca Gonsalves

I have a confession to make. My name is not Lola and I am not a showgirl; I don’t wear feathers in my hair and my dress is cut down to nowhere near there.

Sorry, Mr Manilow, for that mangling – but as the fringe began to fly on the catwalks for spring/summer, the sorry story of the shimmying showgirl sprang immediately to mind. And we all know what happened to her…

So perhaps my fear of fringe is down to the fact that my severe lack of co-ordination means I can no more merengue or do the cha-cha than see myself chilling at Coachella, where the hippie-de-luxe take on the trim – or “sexy Pocahontas”, as one fashionable friend calls it – is de rigueur. Or maybe the knowledge that the closest I will ever get to being one of Tina Turner’s fleet-footed back-up dancers is bouncing awkwardly around to “Proud Mary” in my bedroom is what’s keeping me from setting fringing swinging.

Because, trust me, I see the temptation in taking a lesson from Stevie Nicks and twirling and whirling your troubles away, and if the rumours are true and Fleetwood Mac do grace the Glastonbury stage, we can expect the fringed shawl to overtake the onesie as the festival garb du jour. But that’s just it – to me, the fantasy of fringe is so couched in the context of performance that in reality it feels like fancy dress.

Comme des Garçons

On a lithe, leggy model, the long strands of Proenza Schouler’s souped-up grass skirts conjure an empowered image of keeping cool in a hot city, teasingly revealing bare flesh. But on anyone who actually lives, works and commutes in that city, they’d end up more closely resembling the grotty grey strings of a much-used mop.

Even the party-perfect outfits trimmed with tufts of short fringe shown by Preen by Thornton Bregazzi and Marco De Vincenzo would lose their lustre once caught on your cocktail ring or knotted into clumps by a spilt glass of champagne. And all the bugle beads in the world aren’t going to bring back your shine at that point.

That’s an issue, too. I neither have, nor desire, the glossiness necessary to bring Seventies suede back from the brink of pastiche, while flapperesque fringe would conspire with my bouncy body to take someone’s eye out.

I’m sure Comme des Garçon’s blood-red blooms could tempt me, or I could be swayed by Meadham Kirchhoff’s slashed and shredded skirts. But I’d be forced to stay very still for fear of getting tangled and tripping over my own feet.