ENGLISH SLANG – 15 trendy fashion words

Hi, everyone.

In this lesson we're going to look at trendy fashion words.

These are words that I'm hearing used a lot now around our times, so let's have a look

through the words and learn them one-by-one so we can sound really cool and fashionable.

Let's start with: "en pointe".

If something is en pointe, it means perfect, it looks so good.

What you're wearing today, that dress, your dress is en pointe.

It's so fashionable, it's so, so hot right now.

Very similar meaning to something being "on-trend".

If we think about the word "trendy", it means fashionable.

But to say something is trendy isn't fashionable enough anymore, we have to change it and say: "on-trend".

We could also change it and say: "bang-on-trend".

If it's bang-on-trend, it's even more now, happening right this minute.

Next, if we're talking about makeup...

When I was younger we used to talk about wearing lipstick or wearing red lipstick, or a pink

lipstick, but now instead of saying the word "lipstick", it's described as: "I'm wearing

a red lip today."

And the same thing, instead of saying: "eye shadow", "Oh, I bought this eye shadow.

It's blue.

Look at it on my eyes", you don't say that because it doesn't...

Doesn't sound... Doesn't sound fashionable enough, it doesn't sound like you know about makeup.

So, what people who know about makeup say is they say: "Oh, today I'm wearing a smokey eye."

I'm not wearing a smokey eye, I haven't got anything on, but a smokey eye is when the

eye shadow looks grey or dark, and it's most often worn at night when you're going out.

You get your eye shadow these days in "palettes".

And instead of wearing just one eye shadow, like, wearing a pink eye shadow, the eye shadow

palette comes with about...

Well, as many as you want I suppose, but from 4 to 12 eye shadows, and what they do is they

put on the different eye shadows from the palette.

So, they will talk about creating the smokey eye from palette number three, or whatever.

Next is a makeup term that's been around for a few years.

This makeup term came from when the Kardashians got famous because the kind of makeup Kim

Kardashian would use was a kind of makeup that shades her face to give it a certain...

To make it look like there's more shadow on the face and a more dramatic kind of foundation,

which is done with different brushes.

It's a kind of makeup technique called "contouring".

Apparently it comes...

Apparently it's a makeup technique that's been around for ages, but before, drag queens

used to use it, men who...

Men who were still men, but dressed up as women mostly for performance and being in shows and things like that.

So it originally comes from there.

And I did experiment with contouring.

I once watched a few too many YouTube videos, and it all went terribly wrong, so moving

on from contouring.

Next we have "drugstore makeup".

In England we don't have drugstores, we have pharmacies where you go and buy your medicine,

and you can buy toiletries, but we don't have drugstores.

We have chains of drugstores, for example, Boots or Superdrug, and you can go in there

and buy makeup, but we never call those places drugstores.

Yet, when people talk about makeup now, the younger generation, they will...

They will talk about buying drugstore makeup, which means the kind of makeup that only...

Only costs you a few pounds to buy, it's not the really, really expensive makeup, and you can...

You can buy it easily, close... Close...

Close where you live.

So, drugstore makeup is the kind of makeup you can do that doesn't cost you so much money

as the really expensive brands.

So that's an American term, but it's being used a lot here now in England.

The next... The next two terms are about hair.

These are newer fashionable techniques for dying your hair, and the two words come from French.

In the English pronunciation we'd say: "balayage".

If your hair is balayaged, or the adjective, if your hair is balayaged, then it means in

the salon it cost...

It took you many hours and it cost you a lot of money for the hairdresser or the colourist

to paint on highlights on to your hair very gently, very slowly, and it comes out in the

end looking like a natural sun-kissed kind of hair, like you've just come back from holiday

and you've been in the sun for a few weeks.

So that's a trendy thing that people are doing now.

And the next hair term is: "ombr�".

When your hair has been dyed in the style of ombr�, it means that your hair fades

from one colour to another.

So, it could be that you're blonde on the top and your hair fades to brown at the bottom,

or it could be the other way around.

So, it's light to dark or dark to light for that kind of hair technique.

Now we have a "lookbook".

A lookbook is something that a YouTuber or a fashion...

A fashion blogger would put together to show their audience of all the different outfits

they're wearing Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or they'd put the lookbook

together to show all the outfits that they like to wear for spring.

It could be any theme, but instead of how...

Instead of how when you would buy a magazine, and...

A fashion magazine and look through it, and there would be a theme of the outfits that

comes from that magazine, and everything that the editors decided and did all themselves

in a big team.

A lookbook is something that a person with an interest in fashion who has their own YouTube

channel or blog puts together themselves.

So you can...

You can watch their lookbook and get inspiration about what to wear from it.

Next, when somebody says: "This is my go to lip...

This is my go to lip balm", or: "This is my go to mascara", that means that it's their

favourite one, the one they like to use the most or the one that they use most often.

So, it's a fashion...

Fashion vlogger kind of word, a beauty vlogger kind of word, and instead of saying: "This

is my favourite mascara", they'll say: "This my go to mascara".

Next we've got: "haul".

A haul is when you go to a particular shop and you buy loads, and loads, and loads of

stuff there.

It could be that you go to a particular drugstore.

Boots in the UK or Superdrug in the UK, and you buy lots and lots of makeup from the same

place, that's then a haul.

Or it could be you go to a particular shop.

You went to TOPSHOP, which is a fashion chain here in the UK, and you bought so much stuff,

it was a haul.

Next we've got "dressed down".

When you're dressed down for something you didn't...

You didn't wear your best outfit, your most expensive outfit, your most formal outfit.

When you're dressed down it could be that you just went wearing jeans and a t-shirt

and trainers.

It doesn't mean that you...

That you didn't make any effort, it just means that you're...

Today you're just wearing something relaxed.

You're not trying too hard.

So, for whatever you're doing, perhaps...

Perhaps you go to work, but on Fridays you dress down.

You don't wear such formal clothes.

Now, a more...

A more common meaning for "dress down" is: "to give someone a dressing down", and it's

important to know because it has a totally different meaning.

When you give someone a dressing down, it's like you're telling them off for something.

It could be your boss dressing you down at work, telling you you didn't do something

exactly right.

But in terms of fashion and beauty, "dress down" is about what you're wearing and how

much effort you're putting into it.

And the last word here is: "date night".

This also comes from the US.

"Date night" is when you go out with your boyfriend or your boyfriend...

I don't think men use the term.

"Date night" is when you go out with your boyfriend and you go and do something together

as a couple, you go out to eat, go to the cinema, whatever it is you do together.

And when...

When you go on a date night you wear special clothes or you try and look more sexy or more

attractive than normal, so you could talk about your date night outfit.

What you're wearing on date night is the opposite kind of clothes to what you wear when you're

dressed down.

When you're dressed down, you haven't got anybody to impress, it's not important, but

on date night you want to look good.

And the last idea I want to talk about here is quite funny, it's this idea that behind

all the glamourous Instagrammers that always put pictures up of their really cool outfits

and their en pointe shoes, behind every one of those glamourous, fashionable women, there's

a boyfriend who has to take their picture, wherever they go.

If they go to a lovely, sunny beach, the boyfriend is there for hours taking hundreds of pictures

until he gets the one that looks...

Looks en pointe and looks perfect.

So, behind all these fashionable, glamourous women, always remember the "boyfriends of Instagram".

Thanks for watching, and now you can do the quiz on this lesson.

Join me again soon. Bye.