Yes, style.
The magic word for magazine editors straight out of The Devil Wears Prada, Man Repellers with millions of Instagram followers and the entire fashion sphere.
Showcasing your personality?
Hot trends fresh off the runway?
Timeless or Ephemeral?
The concept of style today is largely democratic and we’re in love with it. Who said you can’t wear sweatpants with stilettos? Hi there vintage 80s suit and futuristic Les Specs. You can incorporate patches of different styles and eras that you identify with: you create your own look, your own personality.
To a certain extent we have to thank the ascent of street style as a trendsetting tool as it has liberated fashion leading to an explosion of personal expression. During every fashion week models, editors and influencers make of the streets their personal runway, presenting their own vision of fashion. It has become inspirational content or ‘the art of humans’ as Shoichi Aoki, the founder Tune magazine, labels it. In just a decade, the power of street style’s mix and match has travelled all the way to the drawing boards of fashion designers.
Alessandro Michele of Gucci brought the concept of the highly personal to high fashion, and bingo: Gucci is the ultimate brand. For the SS18 collection presented in Milan’s Fashion week, Michele combines oversized 80s kitsch with romantic 70s floral and bohemian jewellery all within a setting of Ancient Rome and Egypt. The result is blooming expressivity and millennials love it. It’s no wonder that sales went up by an impressive 49% last quarter.
By looking backwards to the trends, timeless pieces of previous decades but also history and tradition Gucci jumps to the future. Everything old is new again, and this is the power of vintage.
Vintage stores and markets have immensely contributed to the revival of some trends of previous decades on the runway. Take vintage sunglasses, now a must for every fashionista. Once again, you create your style with your own finds. You can be versatile and timeless at the same time, combine clothes of the latest Off-White collection with a vintage Céline bag.
However, style today is not merely the result of a reinvention the past. Emerging niche brands or small labels like Christopher Kane are perhaps the most forward looking and artistically creative brands. They always provide something fresh to impress and target personality unlike mass fashion. See Christopher Kane’s luxury kitsch-chic Crocs for instance. These brands leverage on the idea of identity and tribalism. Through differentiation and the creation of a new vision they have a strong brand personality satisfying the needs of XXIst century fashion aficionados.
Today there is the need to craft your own personality, your own identity and fashion has become a major tool of that purpose. Globalisation and the liberalisation of societies have allowed the acceptance of ‘a style with no style’, a style that is out of the box, unique and expressive of every individual.
A new era of fashion has just begun.
by Daphne Doukidis
