Tis the season of darkening mornings, so I bring you glad tidings: I have a remedy for the morning grumps. This failsafe cure works almost as well as having someone bring up your first cup of tea to drink in bed, and indeed the effects have been proven to last longer into the day. Your magic ingredient? A mood-boosting fruit or vegetable print.
We all know fruit and vegetables are wholesome if you eat them. But did you know they will also do you good if you wear them? It is literally impossible to be in a bad mood if you are wearing a dress printed with lemons, or a shirt covered in artichokes, or a cherry-emblazoned skirt.
After tomato girl summer, get ready for greengrocer girl autumn. Prints straight from the fruit-and-veg aisle are fashion’s favourite new look, because they hit a sweet spot of being jolly without being silly. They are much less traditional than florals, which makes them feel a bit extra. There is a pleasing element of surprise about wearing a tomato or a pineapple rather than a rose or a daisy. But they are still glamorous, rather than silly, which is crucial.
A dress printed with rabbits or rainbows can be a bit novelty, a little babyish, but there’s something quite sophisticated about the Ottolenghi-recipe-vibes of a pomegranate.
(A word, though, on the five-a-day thing. With fashion, one is enough, otherwise the effect goes a bit – well – bananas. A print dress with a simple blazer, or a fun shirt with jeans, is a good balance.)
Greengrocer prints have serious fashion pedigree. Twenty years ago Bay Garnett, stylist and pioneer of vintage chic, found a banana-print scoop-necked T-shirt in a secondhand shop and put Kate Moss in it with white hotpants and cowboy boots for a Juergen Teller shoot in Vogue. Phoebe Philo loved that picture so much that she used it as inspiration for a Chloé banana-print scoop-necked T-shirt, which she put on the catwalk at Paris fashion week in 2004.
Dolce & Gabbana has been conjuring up the dolce vita lifestyle with prints featuring luscious figs, peaches and aubergines in its collections for decades. Recent fashion weeks have served up radishes at JW Anderson and peaches at Vivienne Westwood.
Each fruit or vegetable variety has its own distinct fashion flavour. Bananas, which Andy Warhol loved, are a bit pop art, with a sauciness that makes them slightly challenging. And they are, obviously, yellow which isn’t the most low-key colour to wear. So super fun, but probably not for a job interview? Ditto aubergines, for obvious reasons.
Strawberries are a classic: shouting good clean fun, they make you think of English picnics and watching tennis at Wimbledon. Cherries are a bit sexier. Pomegranates symbolise good luck in many parts of the world, so wearing a pomegranate print feels a bit like wearing a love-heart print, a lucky charm.
I find the style usually matches the taste. Sugary fruits, like pineapples, are sweet and adorable – anything that has a bit more tartness on the tongue brings a slightly cooler aesthetic. This is why lemons are the stone-cold classic, with a gin-and-tonic-on-the-Amalfi-coast elegance that never goes out of style.
Vegetable prints are a bit more unexpected, so if fruit feels a bit childlike, fill up on artichokes instead. Or hedge your bets with tomatoes, which are basically a vegetable pretending to be a fruit, or the other way around.
The tomato girl summer was over way too soon. But pumpkins, the patron saints of this season, have their own kind of magic, from Halloween to Cinderella.
Who’s ready for mellow-fruitfulness-girl autumn? I’m feeling better already.
Hair and makeup: Sophie Higginson using Living Proof and Laura Mercier. Model: Priyanka at Milk Management. Blazer: Arket. Dress: River Island. Earrings: Pilgrim.
