Looking back at the last century, we can identify these fashion vibe shifts—a term coined in 2022 by Sean Monahan, a trend forecaster—as special moments where the view of a designer or a group of designers aligns perfectly with the preoccupations of society and culture at large. Think Mary Quant’s miniskirts and hot pants in the 1960s as young people rebelled against the status quo or Claude Montana’s power suits as women entered the workforce en masse in the 1980s. The industry last experienced such a change almost a decade ago, when Michele showed his first Gucci collection for the fall 2015 menswear season, followed by Demna’s debut at Balenciaga the following year. Both designers were relative unknowns at the time. Michele had spent 13 years at the Italian brand, working his way up to become head of accessories, when he was famously asked to put together a menswear collection in five days after Gucci’s creative director, Frida Giannini, departed her post earlier than planned. The resulting collection of silk pussy-bow blouses and fur-lined mules, modeled by androgynous-looking men with long hair, kicked off the trend of genderless fashion that became one of the defining characteristics of 2010s style. Demna—who back then went by his full name, Demna Gvasalia—was the leader of a collective of designers responsible for Vetements, whose conceptual rethinking of everyday garments and dramatic silhouettes sent a jolt of electricity throughout the industry. Vetements had three collections to its name when Kering tapped the designer and both legitimized and amplified his anarchic point of view. Demna added new words like pantaboots to our vocabulary, a neverending supply of ironic logos emblazoned across clothes and accessories, and the idea that a jacket can never be too oversized nor its shoulders too wide.
Looking back, we can describe the moment as the beginning of an auteur era, where new ideas introduced by outsiders completely changed the way people—all people, beyond the fashion cognoscenti—dressed, as their clothes made their way not only to mass retail stores but also became embedded in the identity politics of our time. Most importantly, they opened up the discussion about the meaning of clothes themselves, exploding gender and class signifiers as a way to break with society’s expectations.