Women, fashion has you covered
It is a truism of the history of dress that decade-defining looks generally don’t congeal until quite late in the period they eventually come to represent.
The miniskirts and Crayola colours of the 1960s, the power shoulders of the ‘80s, the minimalism of the ‘90s — all reached critical mass well into the midpoint of those eras, when whatever had been bubbling up in wardrobes and on sidewalks found its reflection in the wider world.
Well, we have finally reached that stage in the 2010s. The tectonic plates of fashion have shifted. Look around. What do you see?
Look to the runway: during the recent round of fashion shows, suits — and sleeves and long skirts — dominated. Look to the street, and the stores.
“Women who once bought strapless dresses with a little skirt are now buying evening gowns with sleeves and high necks,” said Claire Distenfeld, the owner of Fivestory, the destination boutique on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. “Four seasons ago we couldn’t sell a blouse, and now everyone wants a blouse. Young women who used to come in and buy Balmain’s nonexistent dresses are leaving with knee-length skirts with a sweater or blouse by Emilia Wickstead.”
And speaking of Balmain — even that label offered long knits, long sleeves and long crocodile skins among the short-‘n’-fringed styles in its last collection.
Look to the red carpet: there was Ruth Negga owning the last awards season in a series of generously sleeved frocks, and then showing up at the Oscars almost entirely covered in red Valentino — long sleeves, high neck, long skirt — and making pretty much every top 10 best-dressed list of the night. Ditto Jessica Biel (in long-sleeved, highnecked, floor-length gold KaufmanFranco) and Isabelle Huppert (in long-sleeved, crew-necked, floor-length white Armani Privé). Look to your own closet. “It’s a macrotrend,” said Ghizlan Guenez, founder of The Modist, a new fashion site.
Which is to say, a trend that goes beyond fashion. But what exactly is it?
The end of the naked look. The beginning of a new age of female “pluri-empowerment” (as Iza Dezon, a trend forecaster, told CNN), as expressed through the kind of dress that prioritizes the individual and her needs over the clichés of female role play. Arguably it began, as these things do, at least three years ago — The New York Times began chronicling young women on the streets of Brooklyn layering clothes in creative ways that shielded or swaddled their bodies back in 2015.
But it is only now reaching critical mass, thanks to a convergence of social, political and cultural factors as reflected in clothing. And as far as those issues go: women, fashion has you covered. In every sense of that word.
“We live in an age of reality TV and transparency, where everything is out there,” said Lucie Greene, worldwide director of the innovation group at J. Walter Thompson.
“Images of women being intensely beautified, sexualized and shown like dolls over many years has had an impact on me, as I believe it has on us all,” Phoebe Philo, the creative director of Céline, wrote in an email.
As an alternative, Philo has focused her work at Céline on designing clothes — often oversize, soft, enveloping — that act almost as a chrysalis from within which the woman can emerge.
This is one kind of esthetic reaction, but not the only one. It is not only about hemlines, for example, at least not in the vein of Newtonian fashion physics (everything that goes up must come down). It’s not about power dressing in the old, battering ram shoulder sense, but in the sense that when you feel secure and comfortable and protected, you feel stronger.
It is reflected in both the hip historiana of Giambattista Valli’s floral silk chiffons with their long sleeves, sweeping skirts and chaste necks, and the head-to-toe character-actor dressing at Gucci. In the boho Puritan lines of Pierpaolo Piccioli’s Valentino and the slouchy tailoring of Stella McCartney, the elegant rock-star suiting of Haider Ackermann and the windswept Victorian romance of Erdem. Also the swaddling chic of Michael Kors.
“When people are seated at fashion shows wearing pasties, the only thing that could be shocking is a tailored suit,” Kors said, referring to the surprise appearance last month of Nicki Minaj at 10:30 a.m. on a Saturday at the side of Haider Ackermann’s runway, her left breast almost entirely exposed.
Perhaps because, as Greene said, one of the hallmarks of these clothes is that to a certain extent they “reject the strictures of the male gaze.”
“They are not about what men want any more,” she continued, “but about what women want.”
As women have found their voice politically, they have begun to express themselves sartorially, be it through white pantsuits, so-called pussy hats or the modest fashion movement. “Elegant” is a word that comes up a lot in association with the move to the more covered. “Sophisticated” and “practical,” too.
“I am convinced,” Kors said, “that there is something far more alluring about women wearing things that give them confidence, that don’t make them feel as if they have to tug at their hemlines or yank at their straps.”