Check mate

Just as summer wouldn't be summer without rain or strawberries, silly season brings us every year a new article about gingham…

Just as summer wouldn't be summer without rain or strawberries, silly season brings us every year a new article about gingham. While the fabric is firmly established as a summer classic (see also Breton stripe jerseys), it is rarely fashion with a capital F. This year might just change that.

Gingham originated in the Far East. The name comes from the Malayan word genggang meaning "checked cloth". It became popular in British interiors in the 18th century, and subsequently in the newly settled Americas. A hardwearing, easy care fabric it has maintained a universal, if low-key appeal ever since. To Americans it still has an innocent, Westward-ho! charm. Judy Garland wore blue and white gingham in the 1939 Wizard of Oz, while the 1954 musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and the 1955 Oklahoma! are awash with gingham trim. Professional US homemaker Martha Stewart is a big fan.

This side of the Atlantic the fabric is more synonymous with Brigitte Bardot. In 1956 sales of bikinis soared after Bardot wore a gingham bikini in Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman. In 1959, as if to hammer that message home, Bardot married Jacques Charrier in a pink and white gingham dress, currently on show in Paris at the Musee Galleria.

Since then it has become a staple, with Bardot-esque shapes revived almost annually. It is rarely a hard task to find an underwired bikini, a pair of shorts or pedal-pushers, or a sleeveless shirt that ties at the waist in some permutation of gingham. All well and fine if you have that kind of curvy cuteness, but not much use if you're blessed with a face more knowing, or a body less gorgeous than the young Bardot's.

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When the standard silhouette is subverted, however, gingham acquires a far cooler, more modern appeal. Younger or more edgy designers who don't have the same associative baggage can work wonders with this humble cotton. Fashion-Goth designer Olivier Theyskens used a bastardised version on 1980s-style side-buttoning jackets and full skirts. On some pieces he mixed checks with dots, and in others overlaid one check with an off-kilter second to strangely melancholic effect.

Vivienne Westwood's Red Label flirted with over-sized gingham checks on trouser suits. Admittedly this is not a very flattering look, but it is interesting as a directional note. If designers continue to use back issues of Vogue as their primary reference material, it can't be long before giant checks on shoulder-padded jackets stalk the runways.

MORE accessibly, the South William Street shop, Platform Eile, has a beautiful small check grey gingham skirt in an elongated tulip shape, which would look great with the plainest sleeveless T-shirt and flat shoes. D&G have used red and navy gingham in a very simple, sculptural way. Their draw-string halter tops and dresses are simplicity itself, with ne'er a whiff of or barn dance about them.

In addition to those preppy designers one might expect to use gingham - Paul Smith, Ralph Lauren, Thomas Pink - most shops have a few pieces in at the moment, and doubtless more will arrive as summer progresses. Oasis has small check stretch gingham dresses and skirts in pink and purple; Miss Selfridge carries halter tops, corsets and shorts in blue, pink and purple, and Principles has shorts and dresses in lilac gingham.

The best ginghams this year are clean and crisp and avoid broiderie Anglaise and retro pastiche like the plague. Gingham's symmetry of colour and form gives a clean, graphic line that lends itself brilliantly to geometric shapes. Like the colours brown and grey which weaned us off black, gingham can ease the most minimalist among us into pattern. This is important, because pattern isn't going away.