Hands up if you’re seriously struggling to wait for the next season of The Great British Bake Off. If, like us, your hands are firmly in the air, we expect that’s at least partly down to the addition of Nigella Lawson as a judge.
We all love Nigella, right? Not just for her incredible cooking (to this day, I still rely on her years-old brownie recipe for anyone’s birthday or an office bake-off) but her entire being – so it makes sense that we’re full of excitement at the prospect of her being on our screens weekly. Will she rename another appliance, as she did the meecro-wah-vay? What will she wear? Just how sexy will GBBO’s usual innuendos become?
While we await confirmation of the release date of the first episode (all we know so far is that it’s this month), we’ve been eagerly consuming all the first-look photos and videos of the new season. And in doing this, we’ve noticed something: for her GBBO wardrobe, Nigella is sticking to one simple rule.
That rule? Always, always, cinch in the waist.
It’s a trick Nigella has used for years – if you look at photos of her outfits, you’ll find the majority have a fitted waist, which accentuates an hourglass shape – but it’s become particularly apparent recently. That’s because, rather than opting for dresses with a tighter waist, for GBBO her outfits thus far have stuck to a simple formula: a jumpsuit plus a belt at the waist in the same colour.
First off, in the first official photo of the new Bake Off line-up – that’s Nigella, Paul Hollywood, Alison Hammond and Noel Fielding – Nigella opted for a black jumpsuit (we believe it’s by Finery London), complete with a matching belt, buckled and with the end looped back for a neat finish.
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Then, in promo videos for the show, Nigella has worn a purple jumpsuit by Me & Em... again with a perfectly matching belt. And again, it’s not just buckled, but the end is looped back through.
Wearing a belt with a jumpsuit or dress in the exact same colour is genius on multiple levels. Any belt will do the trick of pulling in the waist while leaving the rest of the piece looser, creating an hourglass effect even for those of us who aren’t lucky enough to have Nigella’s proportions. But a belt in the exact same colour as the item upon which you’re wearing it functions to make the wearer look taller, too. As it’s all one colour, there are no interrupting horizontal lines, unconsciously drawing the eye up, rather than across.
When we say this is a trick that works for everyone, we mean it. And once you become aware of it, you’ll notice loads of celebs using the exact same method. Scroll back up to that promo photo – Alison Hammond’s at it, too! And, as proven by Alison, the technique isn’t limited to jumpsuits alone. Any dress that’s pulled in at the waist will do the exact same thing.
We’ll have to wait and see if Nigella’s belted jumpsuit combo will be her uniform for the entirety of the new GBBO season (we hope so, especially if she continues the trend of matching her make-up to the jumpsuit’s colour, too), but we’d place a confident bet that whatever the cook wears, the waist will be cinched.
Plus, we’re likely to see repeat wears. Nigella’s previously said that she and fashion ‘can never be friends’, and that she prefers a ‘uniform’ to avoid the frazzled ‘What do I wear today?’ morning panic. ‘When I do find something that fits or flatters, I bulk-buy and wear it year in, year out,’ she wrote in a column for The Sunday Times. ‘I don’t mind how often I go out wearing the same thing.’
Rightly so, we say. Once you find a formula that works, why stray?
