I love Vogue’s idea of ‘British girl energy’. But what does it involve? M&S knickers? Weaponised politeness? | Emma Beddington
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° Сhioma Nnadi who has taken over by British Vogue, says she made a smooth return after 20 years away from the UK. “I realized how much growing up in London had shaped me,” she told the Vogue Club podcast. “I’ve been talking to my friends a lot about this idea of British girl energy; it’s just irreverence, a kind of impertinence, it’s not very polished and it’s a little undone…”
British girl energy huh? I like this: it’s time to claim our own style identity, like the French or the Scandinavians; something to be spoken of in vague, reverent generalities. This could be our new Cool Britannia moment without the Gallagher brothers ruining it. But what is BGE, beyond Nnadi’s idea of swagger and lack of polish?
British girl power is not yet fully formed as a concept – google it and you’ll get a Shell advert for an engineering course for ‘young women’. My mental mood board only offered a few packs of M&S trousers, politeness armed as a lethal weapon and those lovely Leeds girls in Gogglebox who love snacks and gossip on the sofa, so I asked around.
A friend instantly provided an ad agency-style list of bullet points, as if she’d been sitting there waiting for me to ask. “Spandex, fast talking, false eyelashes; they have (and have) a friend at work, they love bargains, holidays are a basic human right.” Someone else offered the haiku-like ‘Beans and cheese jacket/Going out without a coat because you’ll lose it/Rimmel lipstick.’The tension between tights and no tights got a lot of airtime: “We want to feel warmth on our faces while we’re devastated that we have to stop wearing black tights for three months” sounds like a concept that should have a German word for it. “Tea and eyebrows,” simply said another.
It’s so confusing so far, but that’s good news: vague, possibly contradictory definitions are a key part of making BGE elusive and enviable. All we need is a British girl equivalent je ne sais quoi and we are in business.
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