November 19, 2024 |
My first encounters with clothing came through experimentation and misappropriation: I would put my feet through the sleeves of my jumpers, reconfigure blankets into something resembling a cape and use socks as gloves. I remember a particularly affronting moment for my father when, at age seven, I insisted that no, I would wear my underwear over my trousers for my first day of school (clearly, I was destined to be very popular). This haphazard form of garment construction came from a childlike impulse to play, to invent; but it was also a symbol of my freedom from the burdens of adult taste. As I got older, my clothing choices conformed: now, my sleeves are for my arms, my socks for my feet… there is a right way to wear clothing. My underwear, thankfully, remains beneath my trousers.
This fashion season re-educated me on how to (mis)use clothing with this sort of ‘garment anarchy’ that swept across the runways of London, Paris, Milan and New York. At Balenciaga, Demna’s show notes – which, in true Demna style, were written on a crumpled piece of workbook paper – nodded to how he drew “looks on cardboard” before “cutting them out and making ‘fashion shows’” on his “grandma’s kitchen table” as a child. This is a call back to a childhood I identified with: one without the stuffiness that has come to reflect my very ‘pulled-back’ and ‘minimalist’ style. Now, 35 years later, and the designer literally fashioned a giant dining table as a runway, reconnecting with that sense of childlike experimentation. While a heel-as-bag piece debuted for autumn/winter 2024 and a T-shirt dress featured in the 2024 couture show, a more articulated form of reworking garments was on display in a series of trench coats-turned-hoodies – created by folding the garments up and over heads, making space for faces to pop out from between button closures – and handbags adorned with jumpers that looked like the overflowing contents of a gym bag.
photography courtesy of Balenciaga
At Miu Miu, childhood experimentation was also celebrated. Compared to Balenciaga, it was less about playing with form and more about an impulse to reinvent garments through almost random styling choices – or what Miuccia Prada calls “unschooled gestures”. Prada describes in the collection’s online description that she was trying to reconnect with a childhood where “each individual is honest to themselves, to their ideals” before being indoctrinated into a cult of uniformity that dictates the right way to wear clothing. Sound familiar? Naturally, unlearning adult taste formed the basis for the collection, where Prada tied jumpers over midriffs to create makeshift tops and folded dresses around the body – often with leftover straps hanging down torsos – to show how youth is a period of absolute truth. Perhaps, my early decisions to wear waistcoats without shirts and scarves as headpieces was a radical rejection of prescribed behaviour.
photography courtesy of Miu Miu
Elsewhere, I was happy to learn that ‘garment anarchy’ was a full-fledged political moment that meant, for the first time ever, I could dust off my International Relations degree and contribute something valuable to the discussion. At Vetements, Guram Gvasalia was inspired by the global economic downturn. He drew on a world where the “opulent past of luxury fashion is financially and creatively bankrupt”, a world where it’s about “taking what’s left, repurposing it and challenging the idea that new always means better”. A quilted blanket became a floral dress (full circle moment, I know), hosiery became a skirt and the waists of trousers became sleeves for a jacket. There was also a series of whimsically layered tops that left spare sleeves and neck holes dangling from otherwise quite traditional silhouettes. In a move that would make my very Marxist undergrad self smile, Gvasalia wanted to highlight that DIY dressing is just as valuable as expensive haute couture. Anyone can look like they’re wearing Vetements, even if they’re not.
photography courtesy of Vetements
But it’s about more than just rejecting conventional ways of dressing. In Rei Kawakubo’s collection for Comme Des Garcons, which took misusing clothing to the extreme as means for responding to an unstable reality, I learned that perhaps, experimentation is about hope. Whimsical ensembles like a giant ballet flat beneath which a face peered through red ribbon laces, and a colossal red dress that conjured images of children’s bedsheets reignited a sense of freedom in me. Oh well, the world is in such a grim state that I may as well wear what I want. In the words Kawakubo’s husband, Adrian Joffe, – whose backstage commentary has become an unofficial window into the designer’s work – “with the state of the world as it is, the future as uncertain as it is, if you put air and transparency into the mix of things, there could be the possibility of hope.” There may, it appears, be a freedom to using clothing in unexpected ways.
photography by Christina Fragkou, Comme Des Garçons SS25
Junya Watanabe’s latest offering provides a similar insight: I should ditch therapy in favour of rejecting the structures that have forced me to wear my clothing in particular ways. That is the real path to enlightenment. For spring/summer 2025, the Paris-based designer created ensembles out of “modern recycled materials” like reflector patches, soundproofing foam and car interiors to highlight a need for abnormal, almost absurd forms of dress in daily life. This full-on rejection of the so-called ‘fashion rules’ came to life in a reflective, doll-like puff skirt made of materials one is accustomed to seeing on a car windscreen in the hottest summer months and a knee-length dress that felt like the model stepped directly through the seat of a Formula One race car. The result of this defiant sensibility? A joy that comes only from breaking the rules.
photography by Christina Fragkou, Junya Watanabe SS25
Though they come from very different conceptual places, these offerings are united by a focus on experimentation with the disruptive elements of fashion, by breaking the rules that we’re taught define adult taste. Whether this ‘garment anarchy’ stems from a childlike impulse to create or from a challenge to an unstable reality, it represents a move towards a freer, less defined version of fashion that promises to usher in a new era of customisation. I, for one, am excited to see my underwear-over-trousers ensemble take on new life on the pages of the high-fashion Instagram girlies who appear on my feed every Fashion Week. Perhaps I’ll even jump back onto the trend.
Top image from left: photography courtesy of Miu Miu; photography by Christina Fragkou, Junya Watanabe; photography courtesy of Balenciaga.
