SNP’s word of the day: Glamourflage

Glamourflage illustration by Lewis Mirrett
Illustration by Lewis Mirrett

Glamourflage illustration by Lewis Mirrett
Illustration by Lewis Mirrett

Word: Glamourflage

Meaning: “To wear Brobdingnagian accessories in a stylized effort to shield or distract.” — from a Sunday Styles profile on celebrity stylist June Ambrose

Usage: “As a teenager in the ’80s, she dressed in elaborate get-ups to glamour-flage her severe acne.” — from the same article

You should know it because: I thought glamourflage meant, like, camouflage-print velvet, but if the New York Times says I’m wrong, well…. Anyway, it’s a pretty great word for something almost every significant style icon does. Think of Isabella Blow, said to have hid her dark moods under the brightest lipstick, the biggest hats. Or Daphne Guinness, who recently told the Daily Mail that for her, even as a child, dressing up was a way of hiding. “’What started off as a camouflage became something that made you stick out like a sore thumb,” she said. That’s the essential binary of fashion as protection or, perhaps, distraction.

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