This was the year even ‘normcore’ went extreme
When it emerged from the cradle of facetious thinkpieces at the beginning of 2015, “normcore” – that instantly ubiquitous confluence in fashion of hypermundane finery and conspicuously laissez-faire posturing – gave the impression of willful defiance, a sort of unconscious grassroots consumer movement in revolt against costly brandname panache.
But it wasn’t long before the fashion houses consumers were defying appropriated the trend and sold it back to them at several more figures an item. That’s fashion for you: it’s a conversation between organic interest (we want to wear this) and top-down commands (you will wear that). Embrace charcoal sweatshirts and penny-plain shoes all you like. They will ascend to the runway, luminescent with co-opted designer glory, soon enough.
How things change. Two years can make quite a difference, in fashion as in global affairs, and 2017 is a rather different place. On the streets normcore has faded into a sort of pop-cultural punchline, like “chillwave,” the embellished fancy of pundits on deadline. Of course people still do wear or- dinary sweaters, and relish unpretentious style as a de facto go-to look. It’s just that the rhetoric of revolutionizing the sartorial hegemony has been taken up by a lot of people who do take it seriously – people in the fashion industry. It may seem as though normcore as a concept is obsolete. But this year it was upgraded: on runways across the world the story of normcore has passed into legend, into myth. It seems appropriate to the times. Impassivity in the face of abject political horror? Why not wear it, embody it, respond to the tumult that’s engulfed the planet by spending a thousand dollars on monochrome sweatpants? It’s only right that if we are going to be living in a dystopia, we ought to dress for the occasion. If the entire western world is going to resemble A Clockwork Orange in character and action, we might as well throw on all-white jumpsuits and savour the resolute absence of flair. This is what you must wear, the fashion houses insist: all-gray uniforms at exorbitant expense. Well, fine. We’ve already sabotaged the social fabric. Let’s get going on literal fabric too.