What a time it is to be alive (and wearing clothes). Fashion as we know it is experiencing a sea change, accompanied by a fundamental realignment of aesthetic standards. Spring 2017 has already delivered a smorgasbord of strange delights: vaguely unappealing knitwear in grubby pastels (Yeezy Season 4), nonchalantly ill-fitting outerwear (Vetements) and, supreme above them all, the surreal deconstructed ‘Invisible Clothes’ of Comme des Garçons’ Rei Kawakubo. Among this menagerie it is almost difficult to remember what clothes even looked like before we discovered asymmetry and dazzle patterns (best of course in combination with each other).

Someone once said: “you don’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been”. And the same is probably true of fashion. To understand current trends, we must understand the aesthetic values they are in dialogue with. The iconic pieces of the last century (think of the Little Black Dress, the Burberry Trench and Yves Saint Laurent’s ‘Le Smoking’ as classic examples) can be characterised by the way in which they strike a careful balance between simplicity and function. These pieces pay homage to the strong line and unified form, producing harmonious visual unity from a combination of understated colour palettes and careful minimalist detail. This textbook explanation, while not untrue, tells us precious little however about why these pieces, and the design principles they embodied, have been so influential.

On an alternative view, we can take these classics to be paradigm examples of the basic forms of what we now think of as modern clothing. If the Little Black Dress is the archetypal dress, ‘Le Smoking’ is the archetypal jacket and so on. Later designs are variations on these original themes, limited only by the bounds of physical possibility (despite the best efforts of designers, the discovery of a triangular lapel with two sides, or four-dimensional fabric, remains unfortunately elusive).

New trends can be interpreted as collective variations of forms. The deconstruction of forms, as exemplified by the interest in Le Destroy (clothing characterized by its unfinished, taken apart character) in 2010 is at one end of the spectrum. At the other is the evolution of forms towards more complex shapes, as shown by the appearance this season of ruffles and elaborately structured sleeves. 

We are living through an exciting period – fashion houses are increasingly delivering clothing that challenges the boundaries of what we consider aesthetically appealing. Designers are engaging in increasingly complex ways with the idea of fashion as art and statement. At its heart, this is fueled by the feeling that the basic forms have been exhausted, and that the way forward must be marked by a radical break with traditional aesthetics (see: ugly shoes, mom jeans, ‘grunge’-inspired streetwear – the list goes on).

Is it time to declare a fashion revolution? Yes and yes, in two senses of the word:

Revolution, n.: 

1) Alteration, change, upheaval

2) An instance of revolving, motion in orbit around an axis or a centre

On the one hand, fashion is undergoing a period of unprecedented change, influenced by shifting consumer behavior and the rise of international online media. On the other, fashion continues to revolve in orbit around the basic forms. Though the distance between current trends and traditional ideals might increase or decrease, ultimately all clothing lives in the conceptual shadow of its predecessors.

Can we escape this shadow through the kitsch, the ugly or the ridiculous? Not really – the basic forms are (logically) inescapable. Plato, I think, would be faintly amused