Life & Style | Beauty & Fashion
Living in leather
Follow Penelope's cue and get close to something smooth, dark and sexy.
- By Natalie Long, Deputy tabloid! editor
- Published: 23:43 August 26, 2008
Picture this: You're a teenage actress with a role in a top-rated teen drama. Except that teen drama is populated with other teenage actresses, each one better dressed and groomed than the next. How do you stand out at a party?
Take your cue from Taylor Momsen, aka Gossip Girl's Jenny Humphrey, who rocked up to a party last weekend looking like Joan Jett's little sister. In a sea of body-con dresses, her black leather jacket was refreshing, risky and runway-ready.
The leather jacket is this winter's go-to coat - and you don't have to team it with smudged eyeliner like Momsen (although I'm certainly not going to say don't do it).
When Anne Hathaway topped her ballerina-like dress with one at the Marchesa show back in February, the stage was set for a good-girl-bad-girl aesthetic come autumn.
Cheryl Cole's now got ownership of that look, throwing it over an Hervé Leger dress for dinner with Ashley last week. The freshest thing about her look? The three-quarter sleeves, a must for any jacket this winter but cooler than ever on black leather. Phillip Lim's got a great one, as does See by Chloé.
But you don't have to stop at black, as Katharine McPhee showed in a blue-grey jacket in New York recently.
The other leather jacket option? Brown, like Mischa Barton's. (Welcome back to the style pages, by the way!) She's worn her dark tan one over shorts and satin dresses, her ubiquitous Chanel bag teaming up a dream with the battered biker look.
Penelope Cruz has banished her bad-girl attitude for some time now (didn't everyone hate her when she started dating Tom Cruise so soon after his split from Nicole?). But that hasn't stopped her from collaborating with her sister Monica to design a leather coat for Mango. In stores soon, it's cut a little longer than most but stays closer to her body than Javier Bardem.
Ladies, that's the way to keep it. As for the Oscar-winning boyfriend... who knows? A little leather goes a long way.
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