Festival fashion 2013

Every year around this time, thousands of music lovers prepare to flock to locales across North America and Europe for weekend-long celebrations of peace, love and cut-offs. Think Woodstock 2.0, where the new brand of flower children wear hair wreaths purchased at Urban Outfitters, performers don Céline (ahem, Kanye), and the only cause is having your picture taken by a street-style blogger.

Music festivals such as Coachella (California), Bonnaroo (Tennessee) and Osheaga (Montreal) have become important trend-breeding grounds for designers and retailers; festival fashion items like crop tops, feathered headdresses, knit vests and flowy maxi dresses have become almost as relevant as what comes down the ready-to-wear runways.

And while the festival fashion trend serves as mainstay inspiration for designers like Isabel Marant, Anna Sui and Blugirl, it was given new life for Spring 2013 with an explosion of crafty macramé, 1990s-era printed T-shirts and fringe.

3.1 Phillip Lim’s largely 1990s-inspired collection set the freewheeling tone of Spring 2013′s brand festival fashion showing bright overalls, breezy floral printed jumpsuits, parka-esque summer weight vests along with those good ole logo T-shirts in black, white and red. Acne went even more literal, emblazoning “Music” across its cut-off T-shirts.

Even Upper East Sider Tory Burch had festival fashion fever, swapping out her typically preppy wears for embroidered blanket sweaters, oversized crochet necklaces, tie-dye dresses and fringed shorts.

The festival fashion trend has resonated since the original rock gods put their stamp on festival style at Woodstock during the summer of ’69—Janis Joplin’s circular rose-tinted glasses, Jim Morrison’s lace-up leather pants and Jimi Hendrix’s headscarves. But its transference into our collective style consciousness can be chalked up to one now-iconic look: Kate Moss, Glastonbury, 2005. Wearing tiny cut-offs, a black buttoned vest and—the festival pièce de résistance—mud-covered Hunter wellington boots, she redefined the look of a supermodel as she traipsed across the show grounds with then-boyfriend (and Babyshambles frontman) Pete Doherty. That paparazzi shot of Moss inspired leagues of lookalikes, propelling the British heritage brand’s wellies to the forefront of cooldom. And the love fest continues.