Basic B*tch

The future of fashion

Will fashion survive 2020?

Hopefully not without major reform — it’s a horrifying industry! But this is the question being asked, it seems, repeatedly, and the answer is: probably.

At the moment, in these strange in-between times, the trendulum is swinging and no one knows where it will settle.

But we know one thing for sure: it will either be one, or the other.

After so long dressing from the waist up for Zoom, fashion will inevitably swing to below-the-belt parties:

I’m talking bell bottoms, I’m talking trousers that look like they were made with two of Sienna Miller’s 2003 maxi skirts.

Or, having eschewed trousers for so long, we have found that they’re pointless. Top-half dressing only becomes more intense — ruffs make a comeback.

Sunglasses will be either become enormous or tiny, with face masks becoming ever more abstracted from the concept of ‘face mask’, with ribbons and bibbons and ruffles and tulle. The ultimate cool will be a minimal blue dental mask but only when worn with this knowledge.

Footwear was becoming increasingly comfortable before corona: ugly runners were flying high and Birkenstocks were only going from strength to strength. Will quar’ have cemented our intolerance for toe-discomfort and banished stilettos to history? Or will the backlash be mighty, after binging on Sex and the City in slipper socks for months, dreaming of out?

Similarly, after months of little to no underwear, it’s hard to say whether underwire will be completely cancelled, or whether full corsetry will come back as an existential statement, ‘I am perceived’.

Hats with large brims to encourage social distancing. The size of the brim will correspond to your white privilege.

Demand for lip fillers may fall in favour of eyelid Botox — or perhaps in favour of new beauty standards that we haven’t thought of at all yet: like the whites of eyes. Influencers will shill whitening eye drops.

The mouth will become the Victorian lady’s ankle. Or the opposite.