You don't exactly need to be a scholar of fashion to know that its pendulum always swings between extremes—dress silhouettes go from bandages to sacks and back, and the instant a trend hits its saturation point, you can bet that its complete opposite is waiting in the wings to deliver its solo. Never has that been clearer than over the past few months, as body-conscious dressing with more cutouts than a slice of Swiss cheese has come into its own, displacing the all-comfort, all-the-time status quo. From Jacquemus to KNWLS to London's Queen of Cling Nensi Dojaka, the fashion industry is betting on all things skin-baring as a mood lifter and life preserver all in one.
And I want to be excited about that. As a lover of fashion and a fan of all the above designers, I'm pulling for everyone involved. But the pressure to achieve what society deems the
perfect
re-emergence look, and the invisible work that often seems to demand, is jarring to think about for those of us who were getting used to clothes that swaddle, rather than display. As lockdowns began here in the U.S., those of us lucky enough to work remotely quickly found that rib-tickling waistbands, underwire bras and shoes that weren't at least distant cousins to a slipper started to feel like relics of a less enlightened time. When I thought about how many days I spent enclosed in the itchy agony of a pair of tights, or buckled over from high-waisted pants, it was like hearing about life in the 1800's: people used to live like this?
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