Is fashion starting to get interesting again?

[GarlicGrace]

It's been as boring as hell for years. Choose between straight lines in a limited palette of solid colours or droopy floral numbers. Lately we've had the exciting additional option of stripes, in combinations from the limited palette.

I'm leaving out the 'sexy' (tight) and 'classy' (beige) side-tracks as they will always exist, changing only slightly with each passing year. The S&B board used to groan under the weight of 'classy' with a smattering of 'sexy' and a surfeit of tediously comfortable stretch jersey. Suddenly, it's all changing!

I should probably note that, old and financially challenged as I am (with the body shape of a large carboard box), I'm wearing mostly straight-line stripy garments in comfortable fabrics. This doesn't stop me wanting fashion to Do Fashion, though ... and it looks like it may have restarted! Whoopee!

I've been up all night clicking fascinating links on here, then following through. Here are five images from my open tabs - and there's so much more! It's all so INTERESTING!

Now I have been up all night, I'm going to post & run. Further comments & showcases welcome, whether from Mumsnet fashionistas (current or superannuated like me) or those who think new stuff is just weird.

It’s pretty impossible for anything to be a ‘street style’ now because if it’s interesting it’ll be all over social media and Shein will be selling a knockoff within days.

Besides which, I’m not sure ‘the street’ is where anyone goes to express themselves sartorially any more. Creative people work from home, too busy trying to stay on top of rent and bills to spend much time parading about - and anyway they’re wearing pre-owned clothes. So there’s surely not much for designers to grab hold of - the source material is too diverse.

Well, they must still be getting out in pubs & clubs (or wherever The Youth socialise nowadays), @CapaciousHag. That was what "street" meant back then, too. Oh, and art schools of course.

Today in The Backwater I saw a few girls literally on the street, in a very similar look to Grunge v.1. Assorted layers over short patterned dresses with uneven hems, massive black footwear and decorated hair. They looked lovely! I imagine their London sisters were doing this five years ago? Considering Culture Club sort of invented that look, it would be fun if today's young 'uns similarly evolved into their own version of New Romantic 😁 They might have a bit of difficulty getting their heads around the gender blending, though ...

It’s pretty impossible for anything to be a ‘street style’ now because if it’s interesting it’ll be all over social media and Shein will be selling a knockoff within days.

I do feel social media/influencers has ruined things as it almost kills a trend before it happens. I'm over stuff before it actually happens in real life.

I didn’t mean just literally ‘the street’!

But honestly, all the young creative people I know are under enormous stress, hustling around the clock. They might get ‘dressed’ for Instagram, or website photos or meeting various sponsors or patrons in person, but no one really has the sort of time and leisure afforded by the late 20th century.

I agree that the influencer phenomenon (I'm not talking about individuals) has not been good for creativity and nor are modern working practices. But when I think about how designers have the whole world and so much history at their fingertips and yet continue to serve up rehashes of late 20th century western fashion - well let's just say, it tempers my sympathy.

I think you make a good point, @CapaciousHag (and I love your username each time I see it!) Significant movements in fashion tend to originate from leisure. I don't know about the other practical arts - any experts in ceramics or furnishings feel like weighing in?

Sometimes it's been a pure child of privilege & status, like French queens demanding ever more lavish designs for both visual and physical dominance over space, and sumptuary laws restricting styles by social class. You damn well needed plenty of leisure to be a fashionable Victorian or Edwardian, with five different outfits required for a day's activities!

There are elements of necessity as well; I'm thinking of the long battle for women's trousers, and the outburst of WW2 innovation driven by textile shortages. Big movements in the later 20th century, though, came from a different kind of necessity - unemployment, which also granted leisure. Mods & rockers, hippies, skinheads, goths, punks, new romantics (and so many more!) didn't have much money, but they did have time to develop philosophies and to express those as music, art & fashion. Lots of the famous designers also came from that background, so they personally transferred 'street' fashion to the showrooms.

I'm just mulling, really. Maybe fashion needs the economy to crash 😛

I would really like long hair on men to become fashionable again <sort of missing the point but still, it would be great>

I actually saw lots of things I liked when I had a mooch round the shops between meetings in London.
A return of nice tailored dresses and jackets in interesting colours. Some really pretty tops with interesting textures through embellishment, layering and appliqué. I've used the word interesting twice but it feels like the first time in a long time I'm actually seeing a range of clothes that aren't blah.

Oh wow I recognised the designer in your first photo straight away having been in Aus recently. I bought this but not sure uk is ready for it 😂.

Gosh OP, those clothes are BEAUTIFUL! I’m sure out of my price range and my lifestyle (very run of the mill), but we can but dream 💭….

I’m occasionally ahead of fashion. I wore Jean flares in the 90s and people openly laughed at me!

So I am excitedly predicting there might be a lot more colour???!!! (excited). And maybe tailoring (less excited as a bit old and chubby for that).

The beige look is also about money (Meghan Markle I don’t even have to try I’m so rich and it’s basically expensive material and cut) or just kind of sexually reductive for the youth look (basic porn-beige I think of it!).

Heres hoping to more interesting vibes :)

The porn word was maybe a bit uncalled for. So to rephrase - the everything beige says “I’m too rich and successful OR too young and sexy to care about fashion; NO EFFORT NEEDED in my one-dimensional world”. I guess it makes life simple if somewhat reductive ….

You lucky, lucky thing, @50but17inside! I would travel to Australia purely for a trip to an original Alemais shop. I can’t think of a single other brand that’s making clothes as beautiful as those costing in the hundreds rather than thousands.

Your dress is glorious. (Although … I would probably want to position the belt at my actual waist, rather than where the skirt pleats start. But hard to judge proportions from a photo.)

Change is absolutely in the air and it's great. I've also noticed the same with interiors, the wall to wall gray home seems to be rapidly dating and we are seeing lots of colour, basically joy bringing and individuality shining through.

I never got on board with the grey craze and I have wondered what everyone will do with all their expensive grey furniture when it ‘out of fashion’!