This season, designers and fashion houses are returning to their roots: out with excess and ornamentation, in with the essential, the practical, the stripped-down.
The observation is clear: fashion is reconnecting with the very essence of clothing, with what it embodies in its most direct form. Already, during Men's Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2023-2024, the shows hinted at the beginnings of a new sobriety. Fitted jackets, structured coats, pleated pants that slim the silhouette, T-shirts worn with an assumed simplicity… At Bottega Veneta, Gucci, and Prada, the message was clear. The time has come for comfort and functionality—two pillars that fashion houses now want to place at the heart of their approach.
Just getting dressed is what matters.
In 2023, fashion is making a marked return to an assumed sartorial “normality,” giving rise to a new generation of normcore. While this aesthetic, popularized in the 1990s by figures like Jerry Seinfeld and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, aimed to blend the individual into the crowd, it is now taking a more assertive turn. This new version of normcore celebrates a chic sobriety, inherited in particular from the discreet elegance of Phoebe Philo during the Céline era.
The result: a refined minimalism, tinged with an Old Money vibe, has taken over the catwalks from Paris to New York, via Milan and London. A stripped-down fashion, but never neglected.
At Miu Miu, femininity was questioned in the light of 2023, subtly exploring its multiple facets. Gucci, for its part, paid homage to the house's expertise, highlighting the imagination and hands behind the creations through refined looks, free of any superfluous ornamentation. Prada revisited the great classics of the menswear wardrobe by playing on the very structure of the garment, while Ami focused on the authenticity of relaxed cuts and silhouettes, where every detail counts.
The watchword? Prioritizing the portable, the everyday, the essentials. This great return of minimalism—or even assumed banality—is not absurd. From a consumer perspective, it is often more reassuring and practical to choose sober, socially accepted pieces that are easy to integrate into a wardrobe. A simple and functional aesthetic prevails over statement clothing, which is more daring, but whose appeal can fade as quickly as it appeared.
Why this return to a more essential fashion? Social media plays a role. As Lily Miesmer, co-founder and designer at Interior, explains in an interview with iD : "The click economy has flattened fashion. It now favors visual shock, the immediate effect, to the detriment of mobile." On Instagram, the eye is naturally drawn to what surprises, what creates buzz, even if it means moving away from reality and everyday life.
In this context, returning to basic clothing—simple, durable, wearable—is almost like a breath of fresh air. A way to reconcile style and authenticity.