Normcore: the latest in the fashion lexicon

Trend is all about blending in, not standing out, in style

Is it anti-fashion fashion? A trend called normcore has been sweeping social media and blogs lately, but what it really means is up for interpretation.

The trend is described, variously, as dressing blandly to blend in; or as an anti-fashion fashion statement, a rebellion against the rule of individualism that has defined fashion for at least a decade.

So depending on your interpretation, it’s either a self-aware ironic statement from hipsters or just the way soccer moms and dads dress. (Jerry Seinfeld is often cited.) Think baggy high-waisted jeans or khakis and white New Balance sneakers.

For the record, and to bolster the fashion statement side of the argu- ment, every high-end designer has a sneaker this spring, often in basic white.

Buzzfeed’s normcore quiz asks whether Barack Obama or the Seinfeld gang are style icons, whether you eat bagged salad, shop at the Gap, or would wear a mock-neck zip-top fleece top, among other queries. (I got “not normcore,” but an original snowflake.)

“We’ve been carrying your #normcore staples since 1969,” Gap tweeted.

Some observers — perhaps with an interest in selling high-end fashion — see it as classic, no-nonsense and luxurious fashion from the likes of Céline, Hermès and Michael Kors.

New York magazine’s The Cut has been on top of the buzz with its blog post, Normcore: Fashion for Those Who Realize They’re One in 7 Billion, which was retweeted almost 2,000 times and liked on Facebook 28,000 times. Its take: “Self-aware, stylized blandness.”

New York trend forecast agency K-Hole appears to have coined the term last October in a report called Youthmode: A Report on Freedom.

“Normcore moves away from a coolness that relies on difference to a post-authenticity coolness that opts in to sameness,” the report says. And then: “To be truly normcore, you need to understand that there’s no such thing as normal.”

In Montreal, few fashionistas had heard of the term.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no normcore on the street or in the shops, self-aware and ironic — and not.

“Once it reaches media, it’s not normcore any more,” said designer Sabrina Barilà, who dresses pretty normcore herself and has come out with a line of sweats called La Montréalaise Atelier.

“It could be normcore,” she said of her brand. “I’m not trying to follow a trend. I am trying to fulfil an everyday need that Montrealers have and create products that last, that are timeless, that are not trendy.”

Normcore is not an anti-fashion movement, says designer Travis Taddeo. “Anybody who is buying anything over $100 is not anti-fashion.”

But price is not the determining factor in whether something is fashion or anti-fashion statement.

“It has to do with the motive to look a certain way,” Taddeo said.

“If you don’t care, that’s anti fashion,” he said.

Normcore is about people taking an anti-fashion approach, says Win- nie Wong, an owner of Editorial boutique. “But they are still in fashion. It’s irony.

“The trend will come to Montreal before the name.”

In fact, it’s already here, ironically and not.

Browsing at Editorial was hairdresser Maral Poladian, wearing a grey sweater, black coat with big collar and white knotted headband. The top was a $2 Hanes T, bought at Kmart years earlier, and Poladian made the headband from leftover fabric from a top she cropped.

“I can honestly tell you I am antistyle, I am anti-fashion,” she said, citing the fact that her fashion designer sister takes the style limelight in the family.

“But my hair is always perfect. I can tell you that.”

While she dresses up for fancy affairs, she feels less is more. “A $2 sweatshirt comes off more appealing if it fits right than a $2,000 shirt that looks good but doesn’t fit right.”