Roaring 2020s: The comeback trends for the next decade

Heritage Revival

The last decade or so has seen some revivals of the “grand old dames” of fashion such as Balmain, Schiaparelli and Courregès. More recently, the “sleeping beauties”— dormant luxury brands with immense historical cachet yet with no current commercial activity—are undergoing a reawakening in the form of modern transformations led by a group of new- gen designers. Take Nina Ricci, for example, an haute couture house founded in 1932, who has appointed millennial designers Rushemy Botter and Lisi Herrebrugh as creative directors in 2019. The Dutch design duo first burst into the scene with their menswear label Botter, known for deconstruction menswear infused with Caribbean warmth and elegance. The duo has since brought similar methodologies to the couture house by the way of grounding couture memories in everyday expressions, often in silhouettes manifested in a “dressed” look disguising a fit and tactility native to sports or casualwear.

Courregès—a Parisian house known for its space-age, futuristic designs in the ’60s—is now led by another young designer, Nicolas Di Felice. Instead of a design overhaul, one of the first things Di Felice did after arriving at the house was to reissue brand’s strongest pieces in a much more eco- responsible vinyl, claiming himself as “a creator with social and societal concerns.”

Elsewhere, Rochas is now helmed by 24-year-old couture new prodigy, Charles de Vilmorin while Patou is reinvented by the flamboyant vision of Guillaume Henry. More recently, Emilio Pucci named Camille Micele as new Artistic Director as part of the brand’s bid for a mainstream revival. With the right design direction and approach in fostering change within the fashion system, these “sleeping beauties” could very well be awakened into a bright new world and live happily ever after.

Return to Form

The Fall/Winter 2021 Haute Couture season marked a poignant and significant return to dressmaking and signalled a genuine need for elegance and rigour. One of the biggest highlights in Paris this July was the return of Balenciaga couture. Fifty-three years after Cristobal Balenciaga closed the doors of his couture salon, Demna Gvasalia reopened them with a triumphant collection. Gvasalia, a master in internet populism, in the 6 years since he arrived at Balenciaga, has perhaps managed to capture the zeitgeist better than anyone else in these globalised, fashion-for-all times. But what made the collection so successful was not only the techniques and the materials applied (which by the way was mind-blowing: microbladed leather to imitate look of feathery frocks and handknit sweater made of metal chains), it was his ability to redefine luxury by staging a counter-revolution in the highest level of design through couture—the most rarefied, most expensive, most art-for-art’s sake part of fashion.

The recognition of American couturier Daniel Roseberry has been gaining momentum at Schiaparelli, the haute couture house founded by Elsa Schiaparelli in the 1920s, defined by surrealist trompe l’oeil imagery. In just under two years, Roseberry has managed to inject a striking modernity into the heritage house where he often put female form front and centre by way of golden breasts, nipples, and mouths and noses plastered on bags and gowns. His bold and irreverent grandeur and take on surrealism have not only brought couture to new heights but made him one of the most exciting couturiers of modern times.

This haute couture season was also full of newness: from the revelatory partnership between Jean Paul Gaultier and Sacai, as well as the debut of Kerby-Jean Raymond, the first black designer to appear on the official haute couture calendar. A new day has dawned in couture, and perhaps like what Demna said in his show notes,“couture isn’t only relevant in today’s mass-productive industry, but even absolutely necessary for the survival and further evolution of modern fashion design.” Couture might very well be the defining fashion in the next decade.

I’m Bringing Sexy Back

After months of isolation, it seems like people are not only hungry for human touch but also new outfits that expose lots of, lots of skin to express a new social freedom. New York Times reportedly declared this past summer “the season of bare” as “bralettes, itty-bitty bandeaus and crocheted bikinis are everywhere....Daisy Dukes cut high enough to expose buttocks curvature.” The suggested trend is perhaps spiralled by the whole self-love and body positivism movement that has been going around a lot since the #Metoo era. And then on the runway, designers are tossing the idea of dressing to get undressed again! From Gucci, Saint Laurent to Pieter Mulier’s debut at Alaia, the art of seduction via layering delicate laces, transparencies and revealing cutouts all point to a similar direction: yes, sex is back, and the body is under spotlight again.

Of course, in 2021, the lens through which sex is seen is very much different from “that male gaze” before. At Gucci Aria, Alessandro Michele picked up the sex story of Tom Ford in the ’90s and imbued it with kink and sensuality, whips and harnesses, plunging silk blouses and sheer lace dresses with revealing bras and panties underneath. Anthony Vaccarello also delivered high-octane, sexed up glamour at Saint Laurent through metallic bodysuits, underwear as outerwear and barely-there dresses and miniskirts. Meanwhile, Matthew Williams suggested a new hard-edge sex appeal at Givenchy with some models walking down the runway in bras with the triangles cut out.

On the other end, a slew of emerging designers like LVMH Prize winner Nensi Dokoja, Rui Zhou and Charlotte Knowles spark conversations about what might femininity look like in the changing world with their barely-there pieces, lingerie construction and revealing cut-outs. All these looks on women have one thing in common: they don’t look exposed, rather they look empowered. Sex might be back in fashion and but this time round women are presented as subjects, not objects.