While the fashionistas on Tik Tok and Instagram are showing off all the latest in “Avant Apocalypse” and “Dystopia-Core” clothing, many of you have been dressing this way all along. And you’re probably rolling your eyes at the trends.
But the fact is, dressing like you’re straight out of The Matrix or Dune is a fashion statement that is on the rise this year, and the reason is interesting.
“Fashion statements often have an element of defiance. In this particular case the defiance is the darkness and dystopian aspect,” says trend expert Geraldine Wharry. “The idea that optimism is not cool and doesn’t reflect our current times, similar to what punks stood for during the 70s.”
Does this mean the Laura Ingalls look is finally over? Someone alert Target!
Now I’m a product of the 90s, with its hair-gelled bangs and crimped mullets, but I fondly remember the other side of that social fence with the arrival of grunge and goth — two styles that are now making a comeback.
When you mix the idea of those styles with the fact that many of us have been in lockdown since March of 2020, you get a rebellion that manifests itself as the anti-sweatpants crowd.
“The experience of living through a pandemic is somewhat like that of living through a war: both are traumatising collective experiences, both have people battling on the ‘frontlines’, both result in a distressingly large number of deaths,” says fashion professor Zara Anishanslin. “Given these similarities it makes sense that fashion originally popularised by military use would see a resurgence.”
And this is even taken a step further with a focus on protecting ourselves from a threat that has shaped our lives for over two years.
“The idea of protection is a bit more universal across luxury, contemporary and streetwear now, for sure,” says A-Cold-Wall*’s Samuel Ross.
[Via The Guardian]
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