Chioma Nnadi, who has taken over at British Vogue, says she has settled back in seamlessly after 20 years out of the UK. “I realised just how much growing up in London shaped me,” she told a Vogue Club podcast. “I’ve been talking a lot with my friends about this idea of British girl energy; it’s just an irreverence, kind of a cheekiness, it’s not too polished, and it’s a little bit undone …”
British girl energy, eh? I love this: time for us to claim our own style identity, like the French or the Scandinavians; something to be spoken of in vague, reverent generalities. This could be our new Cool Britannia moment, without the Gallagher brothers ruining everything. But what is BGE, beyond Nnadi’s idea of cheekiness and lack of polish?
British girl energy hasn’t fully formed as a concept yet – Google it and you get a Shell advert for an engineering course for “young women”. My mental mood board offered up only multipacks of M&S pants, politeness wielded like a deadly weapon and those nice girls from Leeds on Gogglebox who love snacks and sofa-based gossip, so I asked around.
One friend delivered an instant bullet-pointed ad-agency-style list, as if she had been sitting poised, just waiting for me to ask. “Spandex, fast talking, false eyelashes; they have (and are) a work bestie, love a bargain, holidays are a fundamental human right.” Someone else offered the haiku-like “Jacket potato beans and cheese/Going out with no coat because you’ll lose it/Rimmel lipstick.” The tension between tights and no tights got lots of airtime: “Wanting to feel warmth on our faces, while being devastated at having to stop wearing black tights for three months” sounds like a concept there should be a German word for. “Tea and brows,” said another, simply.
So far, so confusing, but that’s good news: nebulous, possibly contradictory definitions are a key part of making BGE elusively enviable. All we need is a Brit girl equivalent of je ne sais quoi and we’re in business.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
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