If fashion is a reflection of the times, the latest trend identified by US Vogue is suitably bleak. “War-core” has replaced “normcore” as the look du nos jours, according to the style arbiter. Fashion’s latest neologism describes dressing for “geopolitical meltdown ... reflective of the violence, chaos and widespread anxiety in the world at large”. And you thought the return of bumbags was grim.
Aesthetically and conceptually, it is all pretty problematic. One Los Angeles label, Alyx, is producing face scarves of the kind worn by soldiers in the desert and fashioning vests from ultra-tough fabric used in anti-ballistic and anti-stab armour. Another, Heron Preston, makes waistcoats that look like flak jackets. At the most recent round of menswear fashion shows, model Bella Hadid wore a Louis Vuitton bag strapped to her thigh like a gun holster. She was just one of a phalanx of street-style stars whose balaclavas and multi-strap utility vests looked a little OTT for the task at hand: sitting in an air-conditioned room to watch a presentation of some very expensive trousers.
Military clothing has segued with civilian fashion for hundreds of years. So influential were the uniforms of Russian and French armies in the 1800s on men’s tailoring, for example, that Esquire has described the Napoleonic Wars, a soupcon glibly, as “fashion week on steroids”. Brands such as Aquascutum and Burberry were popularised in the trenches, in the Crimean and first world wars respectively. In the 1980s, Martin Margiela and Comme des Garçons were preoccupied with the apocalypse; recently, Rick Owens and Kanye West’s Yeezy have made similarly bleak dirt-and-dirt-hued survival gear, or have strapped sleeping bags around models’ bodies. Around the time of the Gulf war, in the 90s, combat trousers and dog tags were on-trend.
What is notable about the recent rash of end of days references is the weird specificity: one cult streetwear brand is producing a riot shield. It certainly makes you feel prematurely nostalgic for 2014, when the internet was up in arms about “normcore”, a term that described dressing like Larry David in unbranded, generic clothing that didn’t quite fit. It was a bit smug, a bit snobby, a bit of a fashion in-joke. But at least it wasn’t this.
