normcore

normcore : ironic fashion non-trend ?……basically the Americans have a word for everything and this time it is about the new cool attitude of not having to distinguish yourself from the mass and this by not giving a damn about what you wear. I find it quite hilarious , like it but look at it as a fashion trend all the same.

Don’t get me wrong….I love fashion and consume it , but my feeling is that since the explosion of street- style photography ,every fashion magazine, in both paper and digital form , now gives you daily updates of what people are wearing during fashion week and you are looking at those looks thinking :

SAY WHAT ? !!!!! REALLY ?

….in the beginning I loved looking at these street pix for ideas and inspiration , but now I think it is just a bit unreal and silly because there is no way on earth that anyone normal with a normal lifestyle can dress like that all day , also because : how much does all this cost ? and secondly : can I be bothered ? and third is that in my opinion everyone looks so fabulous that you are thinking “I must look like shit ” . So in a way I am happy to embrace normcore every now and then , and the rest of the time I will be an invisible woman .

The trend forecasting collective from New York called K-Hole have already been throwing that word around and The Guardian and The Cut just wrote about it so coherently , here are some extracts : “ K-Hole had been using the term in a slightly different sense, not to describe a particular look but a general attitude: embracing sameness deliberately as a new way of being cool, rather than striving for “difference” or “authenticity.” In fashion, though, this manifests itself in ardently ordinary clothes. Mall clothes. Blank clothes. The kind of dad-brand non-style you might have once associated with Jerry Seinfeld “

Normcore isn’t about rebelling against or giving into the status quo; it’s about letting go of the need to look distinctive, to make time for something new.

K-HOLE describes normcore as a theory rather than a look. Emily Segal of K-HOLE insists that normcore isn’t about one specific aesthetic. “It’s not about being simple or forfeiting individuality to become a bland, uniform mass,” she explains. Rather, it’s about welcoming the possibility of being recognizable, of looking like other people—and “seeing that as an opportunity for connection, instead of as evidence that your identity has dissolved.”

From the Guardian : ” With the once exclusive world of fashion now open to all through social media, this trend makes sense. Those in the inner circle are rebelling against a “fashion” look and, instead, are adopting a uniform, one that is a blank canvas without easy-to-read semaphores. Anna Dello Russo’s hot-off-the-runway Moschino look is a neon sign flashing “fashion” even to the uninitiated. A Normcore look of sweatshirt, jeans and trainers keeps people guessing. Only those truly in the know will get it – and even then they might confuse you with a tourist. What a sartorial LOL that would be “

The style icon of Normcore was Steve Jobs , his eternal black turtleneck sweaters and levis’ jeans were so functional , so Normcore . We all have to dress in the morning so the return to the purely functional aspects of fashion as opposed to the “self expression” and artsy aspects of it are so refreshing and in a way : subversive. You are rebelling against fashion’s dictates. “Consumerism is associated with conformity” and by extension, fashion may also be perceived as conformist and elitist. The high-fashion world, in particular, is sometimes perceived as authoritarian. . In order to be anti-establishment, the new cool must be anti-fashion because it is not cool to be fashionable.

In the same vein of thought I wrote 10 days ago a post about ” the invisible woman ” and how I embraced a new need for fashion simplicity and practicality read it here , and you should also check out an excellent article from The Guardian called Why Fashion isn’t cool which I also quote from.

Update : The New York Times fashion pages just did a big analysis on it here.…very interesting since I thought normcore would not go mainstream nor survive more than a couple of months.

All pix by Amy Lombard . Courtesy of The Cut