Maximalism, Gen X and the glorious return of looking like you've got a personality.

Can we just talk about how fucking exciting fashion is getting again?

Because I don't know about you, but I've spent the last few years wondering when we all collectively agreed to dress like the waiting room of a very expensive cosmetic clinic.

Beige. Cream. Oatmeal. Mushroom. Apparently there are 47 shades of looking like you own a Pilates membership and not a single interesting thought.

And look, I love a beautiful neutral as much as the next woman, but Copenhagen Fashion Week has genuinely done something to my brain. I haven't felt this inspired in YEARS. The colour, the clashing prints, the ridiculous proportions, the women who looked like they'd got dressed in a room full of things they actually loved rather than following a list of things some 23-year-old on TikTok told them they needed.

It was fucking glorious.

And the best part? The cool girls are the weird girls again. The art-school girls. The ones who make jewellery out of things they found in a drawer. The girls with messy bedrooms, questionable collections of vintage clothing and a two-year-old cigarette butt floating around the bottom of a handbag they refuse to throw out because it's vintage darling.

You know the girls. The ones who were always a little too much.

Well, apparently we're fashionable now.

Took everyone long enough.

The clean girl has officially left the building.

I'm not saying we need to hold a funeral, but I wouldn't be opposed to a small private ceremony. Dress code: absolutely no beige.

The slicked-back bun, the matching sets, the whole expensive dumpling aesthetic. She had a lovely run, but I think we've all had enough of looking like we share the same three Pinterest boards.

I want to see women wearing things that make absolutely no sense on paper. Leopard print with tartan. An old rock tee under a beautiful tailored jacket. A vintage silk scarf tied around a bag that's been through three marriages and a divorce.

I want to see a woman walking down the street and immediately know she's got stories. That she's travelled, made questionable decisions, had a spectacular night out or two and probably knows where to get a decent martini.

Remember when getting dressed was FUN? When you'd spend two hours in your bedroom trying things on, music absolutely blaring, with every item of clothing you owned on the floor because you were convinced there was a combination in there that was going to change your life?

I miss that girl.

Actually, I don't think she ever went anywhere. She just got busy paying bills and remembering everyone's fucking birthdays.

And can we please discuss Gen X for a minute?

Because the fashion industry seems to have suddenly discovered a woman who's been standing right in front of them for the past thirty years.

She's got money to spend when the economy isn't actively trying to kill her, she's got opinions, she's got excellent taste and she's got absolutely no intention of asking a teenager whether her jeans are still in fashion.

She's running businesses, raising children, looking after ageing parents and carrying the mental load of a small European nation. She's also wondering why she's sweating through her shirt in the middle of a perfectly reasonable conversation.

Armed with a perimenopausal patch, a deeply suspicious attitude towards authority and a wardrobe that has survived more fashion cycles than most influencers have had birthdays, she's becoming the it girl nobody knew they needed.

And I am absolutely fucking here for it.

She's wearing her high-school rock band tee under her work blazer because she has a meeting at ten and still remembers every word to Pour Some Sugar on Me. She's wearing wide-leg jeans one day and skinny jeans the next because she survived acid wash, bootcuts, low-rise denim and the whale tail. She's not taking fashion instructions from someone who thinks the early 2000s are a historical period.

We've already done the 90s, darling. The first time. Without a phone to document it.

And here's the thing about getting older that nobody really tells you. You eventually stop wanting to look like everyone else. You've spent enough years figuring out who you are, enough money on things you never wore and enough time worrying about whether something was appropriate for your age.

At some point you just think, fuck it, I like the jacket.

And you wear the jacket.

Maximalism is back, and my wardrobe is about to become everyone's problem.

I have always loved clothes that tell a story. Things collected over time, things with a little history, things that remind you of somewhere you've been or someone you used to be.

I'm not particularly interested in looking expensive. I'm interested in looking interesting.

There's a difference.

And maximalism, at least the version I'm falling in love with, isn't about throwing every colour and print you own onto your body and hoping for the best. Although frankly, some days that sounds like an excellent idea.

It's about trusting your eye again. Putting things together because you love them, not because someone has explained the mathematical formula for a perfect capsule wardrobe.

A beautiful pair of jeans with a completely ridiculous top. A printed dress with a jacket that technically has no business being there. Leopard print and tartan having a very questionable affair in the back of your wardrobe.

It's about that moment when you look in the mirror and think, oh FUCK yes.

Not because you look younger or thinner or richer. Because you look like yourself, only on a particularly good day.

And after a long day of mothering, running a business, answering emails and generally being responsible for the continued survival of other humans, sometimes I want to shut my bedroom door, turn the music up and play dress-ups like I'm seventeen again.

Except now I have better shoes and a much lower tolerance for dickheads.

Spring weather has commitment issues.

Of course, all this glorious fashion freedom is arriving just as Australian spring weather is having its annual nervous breakdown.

It's freezing when you leave the house, boiling by lunchtime and somehow raining sideways by three. You dress for a lovely afternoon in the sunshine and end up looking like you've been evacuated from a music festival.

But I actually love dressing for this time of year. The layers, the jackets, the opportunity to wear things together that you wouldn't normally consider.

A great blazer over an old band tee. A printed dress with boots. Denim with something completely unexpected. The cardigan you bought five years ago that suddenly looks incredible with the skirt you've been trying to work out how to wear.

And that's another thing. We don't need to replace our entire wardrobes every time the season changes. Especially not in this economy, Jesus Christ.

Sometimes the most exciting outfit is already sitting in your wardrobe waiting for you to stop wearing it the same way you've worn it for the last six years.

Pull everything out. Try the weird combination. Put the leopard with the tartan and see what happens.

Worst-case scenario, you look ridiculous in your own bedroom for five minutes. We've all survived worse. Some of us had spiral perms.

I think I'm just really happy to see personality coming back.

That's what Copenhagen reminded me of. Not that we all need to rush out and buy a hundred new things, but that fashion can still surprise us.

I want to see the woman in the outrageous coat. The girl with the handmade bag. The fifty-something in the incredible jeans and the vintage tee. The woman who's clearly spent years collecting beautiful things and wears them all with absolutely no concern for whether they're from the same decade.

I want to see what people love.

I want to see the things they've kept, the things they've inherited, the things they found in a little shop somewhere and couldn't stop thinking about.

And I want women to stop apologising for being a bit much.

Because honestly, haven't we spent enough of our lives trying to be the right amount of everything?

The right age. The right size. The right level of fashionable. Sexy but not too sexy. Interesting but not too interesting. Confident but for God's sake don't make anyone uncomfortable.

I'm exhausted just writing it.

So this spring, I'm going back to the things that made me love fashion in the first place. Colour, print, beautiful clothes, weird combinations and women who have absolutely no interest in looking like carbon copies of each other.

And if the clean girl aesthetic really is on its way out, I'll happily attend the funeral.

I'll be the one wearing leopard print with tartan, an old Def Leppard tee and a blazer that cost more than my first car.

Probably sweating.

Definitely overdressed.

And having a fucking fabulous time.

Heather x