The host of Liverpool’s inaugural fashion week is having a terrible time with the crowd. “Shhh, everybody. Shhh!” he pleads, scanning for his co-host, Bianca Gascoigne, who is chatting in the corner. The host has misread his audience. They’re not here to be quiet – this is Liverpool, not Paris. The final straw comes when a curvy girl – all pale-pink taffeta, impeccably bronzed legs and peroxide hair weaves – scrambles onto the catwalk, past Alex Curran, who is sitting in the front row, to get to her friend on the other side. Our man tries a new tactic: humour. “Skinny models only on this catwalk,” he says. The joke crashes through the floor. Kerplunk. “Who is that?” says a girl in a velvet catsuit, under her breath. “Worranidiot!”
If questions are being asked about whether Liverpool is having enough of a real moment to justify being the 2008 European Capital of Culture, perhaps they should send in the city’s ladies. Here at Newz Bar, venue for the last show of fashion week, no hemline is too short, no hairdo too high, no statement too raucous.
It isn’t high-concept stuff: a lot of the frocks coming down the catwalk are variations on the baby-doll or tunic. The Scouse girl knows that shortish, with room for the hips, is what she looks best in. In fact, it’s probably what most British women look best in. This practicality, coupled with an obsession with getting glammed up for a night on the tiles, explains why Liverpool – the birthplace of the Wag – has had more influence on how 21st-century British women dress than any other city in the UK.
The obsession is real. Right now, all everyone wants to work out is who designed the dress Curran is wearing with her YSL heels. And, result! In the ladies, a pretty girl with messy blonde hair is touching up her make-up. A stranger offers some unsolicited advice by the hand-dryer: “Your face is gorgeous, but your hair’s a show. You need to do something with it.”
“You don’t need to take that from her,” says Curran, who just happens to be in the ladies too. The insult stings, but the girl shrugs. At least now she is close enough to see that Curran is wearing Miu Miu with those YSL heels.
Grooming like you mean it
It’s 5pm on a Friday and, while the offices and factories empty out and the rest of the city takes a disco nap, Barbara Daly is packed. Daly’s is just one hair salon in a city of hair salons, the same city that is said to have more sunbed shops than newsagents. It’s blow-dries à gogo, acrylic nails being fixed and weaves tightened. “Liverpool girls are seriously style-conscious,” Daly says. “They might come in one weekend and say, ‘I love Victoria Beckham or Agyness Deyn’s bob,’ and have that done. The next weekend, they’ll be in for extensions.”
A customer agrees. “I get a new outfit and a makeover every two weeks, and spend maybe £70 in here each time – and that’s not even a lot. Some girls become beauticians and nail technicians because you get free services. It’s that important here.”
In the Mac shop round the corner, the make-up artists are mad busy. “The girls are in here every Friday afternoon to get their false eyelashes and faces on,” says the girl in charge of makeovers. “They love it. It’s £20 for a full face. Sometimes it takes 10 minutes to scrape off what was there before. They like heavy eyes and nude lips. We try to advise them to go easy, but some of the girls go for base, liner, lipstick and gloss.”
The Coleen factor
It’s hard to exaggerate the importance of local girls Coleen McLoughlin and Alex Curran to their Scouse peers. “We love Coleen,” says a girl in H&M. “She’s a proper Scouse woman.” McLoughlin, in particular, is honoured for having the sort of life everyone dreams about without losing touch of her roots. Recently, she has been spotted shopping in town wearing rollers, so now loads of girls are doing it. A few years ago, she took to wearing pyjamas with Uggs in town – just a week later, they were selling them at the market for a fiver. If McLoughlin is a Scouse girl, however, she is also a national celebrity. She wears what Scousers wear – but she wears it on the pages of celebrity magazines. In that way, the Liverpool look is disseminated across the world.
The question is: can anyone rock the look? There are a few rules you need to know: don’t wear a handbag on your shoulder (only on your arm, hanging from the crease of the elbow); pluck and style your eyebrows ruthlessly; always have big hair and a tan; and above all, never, ever wear the same outfit two nights running.
“Scouse girls pick up fashions much faster than other girls,” says Georgy Charlesworth, 20. “Celebrities will wear something in the mags and, a month later, it’s been murdered. Like double headbands – everyone’s got them. I won’t go near them now.”
Shop till you drop
If you don’t have much cash, you might just window-shop at the Metquarter, one of Liverpool’s newest shopping centres. It is entry-level designer: the big draw is a two-storey Armani Exchange, but it’s also home to Kurt Geiger, All Saints, Levi’s and a branch of Bratz, the designer children’s clothing chain, where a pair of Burberry booties has been consigned to the discount bin. Natasha from Atomic Kitten has a cafe here, serving upmarket full English breakfasts.
Down the street is Quiggins, a labyrinthian bazaar littered with concessions selling vintage clothes and cheap knickknacks. One store contains just a girl, a sewing machine and a rack of designer knock-offs. “I’ll do worrever you want,” she says.
On a rails hangs a row of tops in bright, synthetic fabrics, unlined, for £35 a throw – wear it once and chuck it. At a dressmaker’s round the corner, last season’s bestseller was a floaty, ruffled chiffon and jersey number that I instantly mistake for a blouse (it’s a dress). She was back-to-back with orders last season, at £80 a go. “At the moment, they’re liking ruffles,” she says. “This shape covers the hips and shows lots of tit, which is great for Scouse girls. With a bow, maybe. It’s all about ruffles, boobs and bows.” If I want to order something, I’ll have to wait a few weeks, though. She is taking next week off: “Barbados.”
It’s Cricket
On her weekend shopping rounds, your Merseyside style maven might pop into Cricket. The most famous fashion boutique in the north – and arguably the cradle of the Wag look, since McLoughlin and Curran both honed their styles there – it is a perfect example of what a high-end designer boutique should be. On the counter, alongside a copy of McLoughlin’s Welcome to My World and a help-yourself tin of Bendicks Mingles, is a stack of this season’s Merseyside must-have, the Cricket PVC shopper. Available for £18, the bags are a solution if you can’t afford the Louboutins (of which Cricket sold 500 pairs last year). The owner, Justine Mills, and her staff aren’t bothered if you want to pop into the shop, rifle through the racks of £2,000 dresses, then nip down the road to buy the Topshop version. “They may not be able to afford it now, but they might in a few years,” she says.
Cricket also sells branded bag hooks, to keep handbags off sticky club floors, for a tenner. “The good thing about Liverpool girls is that they’re not bothered about going over the top,” Mills says. “If they make a mistake, there’s always next Friday.” The shop’s enormous success is down to Mills: she understands the power of celebrity and scans the gossip weeklies the way a broker reads the FT. She understands sexy, as in Liverpool sexy, as in Juicy-Fruit-coloured Matthew Williamson dresses, bottom-skimming crochet numbers by See by Chloé and the new McQueen 1962 bag, which stares down predatorily from a shelf. This season, she has gone big on Balenciaga (“Coleen is mad keen on it”), Alice Temperley (“It suits everyone, even our bigger girls”) and Marchesa (“Wear this dress with wedges and your hair tied loosely to the side”). The real news, however, is Lanvin. “Alber has been tuning the collection to be younger, more obviously sexy, more Liverpool,” she says, paying the head designer, Alber Elbaz, the ultimate compliment.
The Wag backlash
Not every girl in Liverpool has a season ticket to the local tanning salon. At Korova, the centre of Liverpool’s underground band scene, the bar staff are Camden nonchalant. Korova is so cool, you can sense Liverpool evolving from a city full of in-your-face show-offs into something far more knowing.
The girls here are different from their brassier neighbours. Yet, if they’re indie, they’re still a glossy version. Peroxide bobs, red lipstick, polka-dot shirts, good heels – it’s Betty Boo meets New Young Pony Club. They are inspired by local success stories such as Abby from the Zutons and Candie Payne – and united in their dislike of Curran and co. “Alex Curran? She’s the downfall of Liverpool,” says a girl with short hair and an asymmetric top. “She isn’t very inspirational, is she? She’s a shopper. Lots of girls think she’s it, but it’s a pretty sad life to be 25 and only go shopping.”
The big night out
It’s 9pm outside Garlands nightclub and the queue is a catwalk. Alexes and Coleens are two-a-penny. Opposite is G Bar, which used to be the hub of Liverpool’s gay scene, but these days, like everywhere else, is packed with girls. On Concert Square, music from several bars blends into a cacophony of caffeinated house music. Girls come out of one and dash through the rain into the queue for another, absent-mindedly rubbing each other’s shoulders to keep warm.
By midnight, we’re in Baa Bar. It’s a shot bar: £2 a shot or doubles for £3; five shots and you get one free; do a bingo card of 34 and you get a special cocktail. On the dancefloor, it’s girls in groups and boys dancing shyly in pairs. “Scouse boys are proud of the girls,” says a girl wearing a leopard-print dress with a matching clutch bag. “There’s a contract between the boys and girls in Liverpool. The boys are macho and do what they do, and they let the girls do what they want to do.” “How much will you spend tonight?” I ask a girl ordering shots at the bar. “£100,” she replies.
A good Friday or Saturday night will end in Chinatown, where everyone congregates at 4am. Sure enough, the street is full of girls, all still looking perfect. In the chippy, there’s a poster for a party at the Pleasure Rooms. “It’s goin’ off, big time!” it says. Some girls at a table are discussing next weekend’s outfits. Everyone jokes that a Scouse girl starts getting ready on a Monday for a Saturday night, but there’s no harm in starting early, is there?