Is Food the new Fashion?

Like a well cooked meat stew this trend has been on the burner for a while. Mary Berry started it with her floral bomber jacket from Zara and now Katie Holme’s wants a piece too.  Fashion has fallen in love with food and now everyone wants a slice of the pie! (Last foodie pun I promise…maybe!)

It is probably fair to say that food and fashion haven’t always gone hand in hand. From heroin chic models to size zero starlets you would have been forgiven for thinking that no-one in the world of fashion even so much as looked at a plate of food. Food was the enemy; it was what stood between you and the latest trend. Well recently – and most people would say this is long overdue – the fashion world has started embracing food. Not only that, they like it. Suddenly models are starting to look like real people again and Mom jeans are allowing us to eat that extra potato with our Sunday roast without even thinking twice.

Okay so cookery shows aren’t a new thing and foodies have been around for a while but it’s the fashion foodie that is getting people excited. Women who show us that stylish doesn’t mean stick-thin and that enjoying food doesn’t mean waving goodbye to your skinny jeans. My first glimpse of the fashion foodie was Rachel Khoo with her ‘Little Paris Kitchen’, which somehow quickly became a Saturday morning favourite of mine for the six weeks it was on. It wasn’t just her unique take on complicated French cooking that drew me in; her shabby chic apartment, the cute outfits, and the way she skipped around local markets getting authentic ingredients in her wedges, made me want to up and move to Paris and start cooking for strangers in my tiny kitchen. Sadly her standard of French cooking is probably a bit of a stretch, plus I have a mortgage.

TV companies jumped on the bandwagon with a plethora of shows dedicated to whetting our foodie appetites. Who would have guessed that the stand out star of these shows would be the humble “Great British Bake Off”? And it’s not just trained chefs who are working fashion into their food. Gwyneth Paltrow has been showing fashionistas that food doesn’t have to be fattening with her ultra healthy recipes and Sophie Dahl abandoned the world of modelling to host her own cookery show.  Even Katie Holmes is said to be desperate to leave her acting days behind her and reinvent herself as a domestic guru and foodie. Rumour has it she is due to replace Nigella Lawson on the US version of The Taste.

From food porn on Instagram to pop up restaurants and street cuisine, food has never been so fashionable. Never one to let a trend pass her by, Victoria Beckham has even got in on the action by dropping a few cookery tips on to her Twitter feed.  Admittedly about Kale; nice with a bit of rock salt apparently!

 By Samantha Vandersteen