English Version | There is no such thing as ugly fashion

18 Jul 2023
By Ana Murcho

They sound like crimes against Fashion, but only up until the moment Vogue says they're not: and they're not.

They sound like crimes against Fashion, but only up until the moment Vogue says they're not: and they're not.

“The big mystery of The White Lotus’s second season was supposed to be who died at the end. But all season long, it was continually upstaged by a more urgent one: What the hell was Portia wearing?” This is how The Chaos Theory of Gen Z Fashion began, an article published last December in The Washington Post analyzing the (allegedly) apocalyptic aesthetic of the new generation. Ashley Fetters Maloy, the journalist responsible for the piece, wrote: “Haley Lu Richardson’s fresh-out-of-undergrad character first appeared on-screen wearing a chartreuse-and-aquamarine patterned sweater vest with a choker; later, her cropped Tommy Hilfiger rugby shirt clashed spectacularly with her drawstring linen pants. Then she wore a … zebra-print bikini top? With a rainbow sweater-shrug over it? By the time she appeared on-screen in a Lee Pipes shirt — directly after a cosmic-psychedelic bandeau-and-flares set befitting of a Spice Girl — Twitter users were all-capsing about it. And what was the crocheted bucket hat about?” Opinions were divided between those who praised Portia's “original and unique style” (Harper's Bazaar decided she was the best dressed character on television) and those who considered her choices an attack on good taste. In between, no one was indifferent to her colorful, psychedelic, and perhaps schizophrenic closet — a reflection of what is found in many young people's closets today. As Maloy pointed out, Portia “was many Americans’ first glimpse of a Gen Z aesthetic.” And, consequently, the world. This is the generation that is “assuming authority and relaxing the rules of presentable adult attire, smushing together discordant patterns and colors and silhouettes into chaotic combinations and putting lately-unseen body parts once again on display.” And how are you doing it? Mostly by picking up trends from other decades — and wearing them all at the same time.

Portia is just the most visible example of something that has been noticed for several seasons: fashion has long stopped worrying about being "right" and "cute", preferring instead to be "interesting" and have "personality". Imperfection is celebrated, flaws are exalted and faults are not hidden, they are highlighted. After years of insisting on the "ugly trends" key, perhaps the time has come to assume that there are trends that simply are not for everyone. Like dad sneakers, which still chill the flesh and hair of many women, who swore together never to wear them — because they are not "women's shoes" — and who managed to convince many others, whose religion forbade approaching less than 200 meters of this type of shoe, much cooler than a pair of lame white sneakers. Or Crocs, the end of the line when it comes to elegance and grace, that clog horror that even Balenciaga and Christopher Kane have elevated to a luxury icon... And they look great with the right outfit (Ana from 2016 would think I've gone crazy, this is called evolving, I guess), just follow three rules: choose your clothes well (it shouldn't be necessary to say, right?); wear socks, always; consider where you're going to go, they're totally wrong for a dinner, for example. Or Birkenstocks, which many of us equated with "Samaritan sandals", and which for trillions of years we saw on the feet of Nordic tourists, those wise men. Ha, the fear, the horror, ha, the most comfortable thing ever, ha, how silly and petty we are when we do not know things and rush to judge them! Here we are in 2023, and Birkenstock must be the most sought-after brand by Generation Z, Millennials or Boomers alike — no one can resist them, except my friend Daniela, who stopped in 2002 and will regret her choices a lot later. "That's horrible, you know that, right?", she threw at me in a satirical tone when I sent her a picture of my clogs, proudly bought at the brand's flagship in New York, after months of searching for a pair in my size. I felt like telling her that those chunky shoes (a mix of bad army boots and sneakers) we wore in the early 2000s, bought at the now-defunct Praça de Espanha market, were far from being a work of design, but I didn't feel like touching that subject — I'm loaded with faux pas. And I'm very proud of them.

All these pieces (dad sneakers, Crocs, Birkenstocks) are things that Gen Z wears like no other. Like other " little treasures" such as ripped pants, leggings, jeans with a very, very low waist (those that in the year 2000 I would be able to find "the most" and that I now see as an unfortunate return, synonymous with two things that are hard to accept, aging and the lack of an index that helps us to understand, definitively, which pairs of jeans we should NEVER throw away), fanny packs (we, adults of 40 and above, were only "allowed" to like them in two moments, in adolescence and now), chokers (which many point out as the biggest sacrilege in terms of common sense, right after the uncontrolled use of hair bands on the wrist), sequined sweaters/dresses/blazers/skirts (if worn during the day, all the worse for the world, all the better for me, any time is a good time to feel like a mirror ball, plus it will always be happy hour somewhere in the globe), the Hawaiian shirts (which no law mandates to be worn only by men, or only on the beach, hence the anger they provoke in some more minimalist minds) and so on. On this new revival, earlier this year The Guardian quoted trend forecaster Sean Monahan to explain that we are facing a new cultural movement. "We had the hipsters, then we had the hypebeasts and now we have... whatever this is.” The term 'vibe shift' has been parsed through every medium, though it only caught on when New York magazine decided to unveil it. For Monahan, it may be 'a return to a more fragmented culture', a return to 'naughty 80s nostalgia', a return to rock music and a return to irony. He admits he hasn't quite figured out what that means in terms of clothing, but one thing's for sure: we won't be queuing for sneakers anymore."

Good news, then. Whether you like Portia's look or not, it is impossible to disagree that she, unlike many impeccably dressed celebrities, has a point of view — she doesn't flaunt the trends of the season, she doesn't wear the latest it bag, she doesn't have her hair styled like she just stepped out of a salon. She looks like any other girl her age, who spent two hours getting dressed, tried on three hundred different things and left her room a mess. Is there anything more relatable than that? After years and years of highly thought-out outfits of the day, chosen as if they were a monochrome Instagram feed, made for highly worked and retouched bodies, here comes something new, fresh, messy, scruffy — or "schlumpy", as Alex Bovaird, costume designer of The White Lotus, calls it. "Now," writes The Guardian, "given the state of the economy and the climate, it's not only hard to look like this, it's weird. Such is the case with schlumpiness, which is not just about saying no to trends, fast fashion and hyper-consumerism, but a total — and healthy — turnaround. (It also helps that the best way to 'get the schlumpy look' is to scour the shelves of second-hand and charity stores, rather than online at Shein)." Of course, this doesn't mean that overnight we're going to empty our closet and donate all our clothes that don't make us look like a Goblin. That's not the idea. Not everyone was born for this type of style, whose ultimate goal is not to elevate beauty, but to accentuate personality — my friend Daniela will always be a princesswhen dressing up, and that's fine. I, on the other hand, might bless myself with Portia's choices, and do the same or worse months later. As I often say, when it comes to fashion, danger is my profession.

Translated from the original on The [Un]Popular Issue, published July 2023.

Ana Murcho By Ana Murcho

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