Style Strategy 016: The trajectory of main character dressing

Intent over aesthetics.

There’s something interesting happening in fashion now. There’s not a newness per se, but a doubling down of what’s already happening in fashion.

Trends have long been a dirty word in fashion (I’ve written about it here) but now we’re really going hard with what catches our fancy. Fringing and devore, statement belts, jackets that say something, embellished tiny handbags, surfy board shorts worn off the beach.

As a magazine fashion writer in a former life, I’d be constantly be doing market pages and writing about trends; but I’d often scoff at what was a runway trend and know that it rarely came through so literally in the real world.

The pendulum swing has happened with ‘quiet luxury’, a term ripe for mockery. The lasting lesson ‘quiet luxury’ has given us is to not be swept up in the cosplay, but to actually interrogate what we actually want to be wearing. And, it’s been a reminder that basics need not be boring but should be core tenets of our wardrobe. Remember — the main character of your narrative is you, so you might as well dress like it.

Main character dressing is the something extra, the trimmings, the culmination of the personal. Of your experiences, of your memories. In this era of self-expression, main character dressing isn’t necessarily about buying something new, but wearing your core wardrobe on repeat and knowing how to re-tweak it to wear it over and over again. Making these core pieces really yours, and knowing how to style them up to wear them over and over again.

I wrote this piece about how to add interest to your wardrobe two years ago, and the lessons in it remain relevant today. In it, there are four pillars to consider to add to your wardrobe that adds layers to what you wear: proportion, texture, colour and shine. I still re-read it even now when I’m at a loss to not dress boring.

So what does this actually look like? Hand-craft over automation, upcycling with intention, embracing movement and versatility, and remaking what's already yours.

Daniel Levi works in embroidery and embellishment design for Tory Burch and shares some of the pieces he has worked on, including these shoes, below. As more automation happens through technological advances like AI, there’s been a greater appreciation for pieces that you can see the touch of the hand on. These embellishments below have been done by hand using topaz crystals and tortoiseshell sequins.

Brussels-based designer and creator Janne Aunan shares how she re-models her clothes to give them new life. She cut-up a printed shirt to show how it can be used as a shawl or a belt (left), how she’s used fringe trim as an accessory on a jacket (middle) and tied a piece of crochet fabric into a top (right).

Fashion designer Giovanna Flores upcycles . Here’s a New York Times article about her (gift link). Tessa Thompson wore one of her designs, below. I like her twist sweatshirt in pink and red.

I’ve noticed that scarf skirts are seemingly everywhere at the moment. Dries Van Noten’s long scarf skirts have sold out (I’ve checked… and checked again, for myself), and Zara to other mid-priced brands have riffed it. It started from the then-seemingly innocuous scarf-at-waist trend and graduated into scarf skirts. It has a multi-functionality and convertibility that makes it really personable through being restyled each time, and a bit dramatic, too, which perfectly parlays into main character dressing. Camargue in Brisbane has a stunning draped DVN skirt on sale, not my size otherwise I would have snapped it up. Net-A-Porter have short versions of the skirt left, and I’ve found an old-season style one at a San Francisco consignment store for a very reasonable price.

Don’t get too enamoured by this, you can’t even buy it now.