“Everything looks the same,” was the most-uttered line at New York Fashion Week.
It’s a superficial and largely unfair description of most of the week at face value. But it’s true that many designers are making lots of the same things: a grey or navy crewneck, an overcoat with a matching shawl, a sock-like shoe or slingback kitten heel, a small rectangular shoulder bag made to be held tightly under the arm.
The explanation by general consensus is a lack of creativity from the designers, critics have said, plus designing what will certainly sell in an uncertain industry landscape plays it safe but keeps the lights on. Commerciality seems to have won out over creativity. And sell it will, because everyone in fashion dresses like this today (well not everyone, but more on that later).
Fashion folk have undeniably found a new uniform over the past year. A quick scroll through Vogue Runway’s street style gallery from NYFW confirms it: tie a sweater over the shoulders of a boxy blazer and hold your handbag — the go-to is currently the Alaïa Le Teckel, which was crowned the Best Accessory of 2024 in our Vogue Runway poll — under your arm, and add a bright red detail for bonus points (socks or gloves are ideal this winter) and you’ve fashioned yourself a fashion person.
The original influence(r)s
How we got here involves an influential set of twins: one terrific stylist, and a generation of fashion editors and enthusiasts in desperate search of a defining look.
Twenty or so years ago, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s Proenza Schouler came along and helped define the uniform of New York’s fashion set. Their connections with the city’s It-girls, including Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, helped catapult their label to fashion stardom. Back then, the uniform was more abstract — edgy and contemporary but dressy, think printed frocks and leather details and some severe outerwear — but it existed. Then came Phoebe Philo’s Céline, which all but took over this customer base with its kooky and artsy but still sophisticated dressing.
The Row, the cult favourite label by the Olsen twins, then somewhat filled the void left by Philo after her departure from Céline almost 10 years ago. Many of the fashion girl-isms of today derive from the way their collections are presented and styled — particularly those red socks. Some of this has to do with the stylist Brian Molloy, who has been styling The Row collections for a handful of years now and has also lent his hand to brands including Tory Burch and Tod’s. There is a playful take on elegance that characterises Molloy’s hand, and the Olsens’s. If you’re reading this, then it’s likely made it to your closet in one way or the other. Such is the influence of The Row that Rachel Tashjian, fashion critic at The Washington Post, has dubbed the designers who have followed their lead “the Rowdents”.
It is Miuccia Prada, however, who is the ultimate influencer behind this trend. Prada, and particularly Miu Miu, have grown exponentially since the designer hired Raf Simons as co-creative director at the former and put those micro mini skirts on the runway for the latter. Mrs Prada’s reach was crowned with a Vogue cover in March of last year, but it’s mostly seen on the streets and runways. Fashion has always had a uniform, and it’s almost always been set by an influential designer, but the age of the algorithm has flattened its nuance and range into just a few recognisable items that have created a pack mentality of dressing.
The new ‘basic’
In a way, the look is also an evolution of TikTok’s quiet luxury craze — it shares most of the same components and the same strait-laced, mature undertones — but it’s also a visceral response to TikTok aesthetics as a whole. The nothingness of the look — it’s chic and elegant but doesn’t quite call back to anything specific — poses it as an anti-trend. This sure is a somewhat oxymoronic statement considering it’s indeed trending, but when placed against the context of the ‘core’ trends that have plagued our feeds since 2022, and the many conversations around “personal style” on TikTok that are partial to the kooky, exuberant and often unwearable outside of the context of the internet, the timelessness and anti-ness of this look — its ‘basicness’, if you will — has positioned it to be a blockbuster among fashion folk.
Don’t mistake my use of ‘basic’ as a descriptor as a stab at those who partake — how could they not! Rather, understand this denomination as a way of contextualising the popularity of the trend. Are red socks the new Uggs? Not necessarily, but they are currently representative of a specific look, and arguably in a similar path to ubiquity these days.
Consider also who gets to join in on this fashion ideal: the look itself is representative of a pocket of consumers who engage with fashion consistently, or at least enough to know where and who to look for to find inspiration. That this particular style of dressing has become popular among fashion writers, influencers and the Substack crowd — its consumers and content creators — zeroes in on a more affluent demographic. It would be remiss to add that when I wrote about how quiet luxury changed dupe culture and triggered the comeback of many mid-market and mall brands — from J Crew and Cos to Gap and Banana Republic — this specific set, by way of this specific look, was largely behind it, too.
Fashion goes ‘trad’
The more nuanced discussion of what’s behind this look is that much of this overarching aesthetic, which we currently see affecting fashion in the US primarily, as seen at New York Fashion Week, stems or is at least adjacent to the rise of conservatism in culture through the latter half of 2024.
All of this talk in 2023 and 2024 about ‘old money’ aesthetics and ‘the real quiet luxury’ in reference to what truly affluent people buy and dress like has swung the fashion pendulum moving in this direction. That designers both independent and established, from Christopher John Rogers and Diotima’s Rachel Scott to Alessandro Michele at Valentino and Francesco Risso at Marni, are responding to this wave of ‘sameness’ in fashion by doubling down on the singularity of their aesthetics, is the clearest example of reactionary design. What they are reacting to is this homogenisation.
During New York Fashion Week, Vogue Runway director Nicole Phelps reminded me how acolytes of Philo’s Céline, with now The Row and Jil Sander as its successors, were called “fashion nuns”. It’s not that all fashion for women should harness the high-octane sex appeal of the ’80s and ’90s, but it is worth investigating why so many designers during the week set forth this quasi-puritanical aesthetic. Attempting to sit out of the fashion cycle by prioritising taste and simplicity over trends, but falling right into the trap anyway, shows us that something in fashion has broken.
Where we go next will be determined by the direction of fashion’s winds of change. This subset of the fashion consumer is often easily swayed and trend-inclined, which means that fashion’s new look will be, well, whatever fashion’s new look on the runways is — next week will see debuts by Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford and Sarah Burton at Givenchy. Two designers known for their elegant, sophisticated and oftentimes dressy outputs. June will welcome Michael Rider’s debut collection for Celine and Matthieu Blazy will unveil his plans for Chanel in October. Until then, fashion portends more change (the menswear role at Dior, for one, is open, as is Fendi’s womenswear position).
Let us not forget that Glenn Martens is taking over Maison Margiela following John Galliano’s spectacular swansong. A true fashion nonconformist to follow the iconoclast that came after Martin Margiela, one of fashion’s most revered and referenced designers. I’ll leave you with a curious note: the true precursor to this almost clerical interpretation of luxury and elegance was indeed Margiela during his time at Hermès. Except then, none of fashion looked like that.
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