Dresses with giant anthuriums. Corsets and minicrinolines . Gremlin Bags. Mud Parades. A powerful celebrity closing the show, be it Cher, Paris Hilton, or Kim Kardashian. With Bella Hadid and Copernic at the helm, spring and summer 2023 is already a season that will go down in the annals of fashion history. Or not, but today more than ever virality is that little beast that no brand forgets to feed in its parades, whatever the format. Sometimes it is a wink, another icon of the past, the way to ensure that a certain image or video spreads like wildfire on social networks. Collections have been devised for a long time with this dual purpose: on the one hand, what sells. On the other, what makes noise? The viral is a marketing strategy whose economic return will only be known by that inside, but for practical purposes, as a whole, for those outside it is pure anesthesia for the senses.
And yet, there are those who, amid that dullness, is capable of striking a blow with the ability to transcend the expiration of the season. In addition, using the simplest techniques. Credit goes to Matthieu Blazy at Bottega Veneta and his ability to translate the most basic into the most successful. Let’s put ourselves in a situation: facing autumn, the French designer made his debut at the Italian house, opening a collection with a 90s style. He just needed a white cotton tank top and baggy jeans to work his magic.
Styling is a statement of intent. Amid a complex season that calls for dressing up in visible bras and see-through pants and skirts, this outfit is precisely the best asset for embracing the most acceptable trends among ordinary people. That the white tank top was going to be everywhere was already a fact that other firms such as Loewe or Prada predicted. What is relatively unexpected is that among so many impossible garments, the magic formula once again hung from the back of the closet, among the garments that we all already have. It’s a constant of spring 2023: Stella McCartney is the latest that has proposed combining wide jeans with a white tank top and adding a jacket. Both Gaucher and GDCS go for the combo, going for relatively faded jeans and a completely plain T-shirt. Dior also includes both garments in its collection, giving a twist to the top, with transparency.
From here, each designer takes both basics to their field. In Y-project, his alliance plans in a trompe l’oeil format, with dress trousers that simulate the effect of both through print. If Ganni opts for the total look in white, Collina Strada replaces the tank top with one studded with embroidered flowers. Theóphilo opts, like Dior, for transparencies, but adds silver-effect jeans. On the other hand, Isabel Marant replaces the most common straight jeans with wide ones with cargo pockets, another trend of the moment.
The magnetic power of this styling lies not only in the ease of being adopted. Also in its democratic spirit, it is difficult to find a more universal combination than jeans and a tank top. The styling jumps with the same elegance from one model to another, adapting to the western trends of Casablanca, the ripped pieces of Doublet, or the minimalism of Y-Project. We do not know if the sales of both basics will skyrocket between this year and the next, but both integrate a uniform that is already impossible to resist. His shadow lurks everywhere.
