A Non-Western Guide To Wearing Fringe This Summer

One of the first real tastes of summer style we get comes from Cannes, where stars step out in their freshly steamed ready-to-wear and display the fashion you’ll need to know about for the rest of the season. Case in point: Rihanna went shopping for diamonds (resisting a pun here) and wore a black Khaite dress with a shift silhouette comfortable enough to obscure baby bump number three — and made the argument for a fringe-filled vacation wardrobe.

Fringed frocks have been a mainstay for both couture runways and high-street shops for years, but somehow in the south of France, the tassels were made to feel new and exciting. RiRi’s black dress was a statement of both ease and efficiency: She got all the punches in with texture and movement while still being able to move freely. The festival red carpet, surprisingly, also held nuggets of information for styling fringe in a non-western way (sorry, Beyoncé).

Isabelle Huppert’s chartreuse Balenciaga gown was subtly frayed all the way through, yet kept formal with decadent diamonds and a matching shoe. Dakota Johnson, one of our best-dressed folks of the whole festival, wore a baby-pink Gucci gown and matched her inimitable locks to the cascading fringe of the dress. Julia Garner went the opposite direction and coiffed up her bleach blonde to let her Haider Ackermann-designed Tom Ford stunner do the talking.

Fringe was made to feel formal for the festival, and while not all of us will be ascending carpeted staircases this summer (we can only dream), there’s wisdom to be gleaned for your styling purposes. Keep your makeup simple and experiment with varying lengths of hair (real or not) to complement the tasseling. Go for all-over fringe for a party, but for the daytime, keep it to one piece. The runways also provided a bit of inspiration, with balanced ‘fits from Proenza Schouler and Stella McCartney showing a muted top or bottom counters the wow pieces handily.

As ever, all the glam in the above pictures is simple, so don’t go overboard with glittery lids when you’re wearing a metallic skirt. In any case, don’t be afraid to accessorize it to your heart’s content — just be sure to not feel restricted or fussed-over. When you’re sashaying across a street, you should do so with the knowledge your dress is flowing and doing all the heavy lifting for you. Below, we’ve handpicked five of each ready-to-wear category to consider that all, firstly, don’t lean rodeo (there’s a time and place for it, and this isn’t it), and secondly, can be worn atop a bikini or to a flirty cocktail date.