Schiaparelli’s gilded “opera gloves.” Loewe’s armor-like physique sculpting. Marine Serre’s head-to-toe catsuits. The brand new mode of dressing takes inspiration from bracing for the apocalypse, however with a stronger, sexier MO than your typical Blade Runner fare. It’s glamorous, dripping in gold and rife with baroque patterns. Maybe the rise of this aesthetic stems from our obsession with dystopian collection like Station Eleven. Or possibly it’s the concept that we’re actually shielding ourselves in a brand new means, after years of collective struggling brought on by the pandemic and the local weather disaster.

The idea additionally owes a debt to TikTok, the place the #avantapocalypse tag has over 500K views. Contributors are deconstructing, slicing, repurposing, and upcycling items they have already got of their wardrobes, placing an emphasis on the physique with skin-revealing cutouts and curve-hugging materials. When apocalyptic-leaning kinds initially hit it large within the ‘70s and ‘80s, “individuals had been responding to financial instability and desirous to insurgent in opposition to the standard values of older generations,” explains style historian Caroline Elenowitz-Hess. The 2022 incarnation is about being coated up, however revealing your self in a robust means on the identical time. It’s a brand new type of safety that takes its cues from “dopamine dressing,” body-conscious silhouettes, and maximalism, all of that are on the rise.

“As we now have been sheltered for thus lengthy, it’s concerning the feeling of freedom,” says Tiffany Hsu, vp of womenswear and kidswear style shopping for at Mytheresa. “Girls are purchasing for gadgets that remember their our bodies.” Linda Fargo, style director of Bergdorf Goodman, concurs: “As we reasonably actually emerge from the confines of the pandemic and shed our layers, so too the physique desires to be revealed and launched,” she says.

The Berlin label Ottolinger integrated sculptural wire that swept off necklines and torsos into twisted, shredded attire, evoking glamorous dystopian cocooning, whereas Elena Velez, who counts Solange, Grimes, and Charli XCX as followers, confirmed impartial silhouettes with metallic components impressed by “what I prefer to name ‘aftermath industries,’ the place individuals have needed to create throughout some form of societal collapse, actual or hypothetical.”

Schiaparelli inventive director Daniel Roseberry credited the sci-fi basic Dune as one of many inspirations for his spring 2022 couture present. Fashions had been shrouded in bejeweled arm coverings that had been equal components robotic and protecting; their shoulders had been wrapped in gold orbital items (the designer refers to them as “rings of Saturn”) that will make anybody maintain their social distance; and metallic strips engulfed one elegant black gown from collarbone to hem. “I feel embracing the physique is a unconscious type of liberation,” says Roseberry when requested about his aerodynamic shapes and armor-like bodices. Regardless of the literal heaviness of the items, “there’s a lightness to the way in which you put on your id. After I’m in a spot of struggling or being upset, it’s as a result of I’m taking myself too critically.”

This text seems within the Could 2022 problem of ELLE.

Earlier than Rina Sawayama was a pop star, she was a gamer. Together with her arms on a controller, clambering round a digital world, she might get out of her head and “be that character for the 50 hours or regardless of the recreation’s going to take.” Video video games had been additionally an enormous affect on her songwriting (and never simply because she samples the Closing Fantasy theme track on “Snakeskin,” the ultimate monitor on her debut studio album, 2020’s Sawayama). “For me, all the pieces’s about tales. A great online game is a good story,” she says, including that every time she places pen to paper, she asks herself: “Who’s the primary character, who’s the facet character, what’s occurring round them? Who’s going to hearken to this, and what are they going to really feel?”

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There have been causes Sawayama might need wished to retreat into that 8-bit world. After her dad and mom’ painful and protracted divorce, she was dwelling in London together with her mom. Her father wasn’t in her life a lot. Music supplied one other manner out. Her mother listened completely to classical and Japanese music at dwelling, however in school, Sawayama broadened her vary. She attended a Church of England highschool the place she joined a gospel choir, a drumming group, and a Motown-style band. “I feel music was a approach to escape the tradition that I didn’t need to be a part of, which was the Japanese tradition on the time, and to discover,” she says.

Due to the rise of LimeWire and streaming companies, her musical tastes mirrored the potent Lengthy Island Iced Tea of genres—Britney, No Doubt, N.E.R.D, and Evanescence—that exhibits up in her work now. The digital revolution “really leveled the taking part in discipline,” she says. “I perceive why, when you may have restricted assets, you’ll need to be ascribed to a sure camp inside music. In case you didn’t have the cash to be a Britney fan and another fan, you then’d have to choose one facet,” she says. However her era shattered any such divides, like so many out of date CDs, in favor of a gleeful mingling of references. “I used to go to the Virgin Megastore in Piccadilly Circus and hearken to albums, or sit outdoors Brixton Academy at 9 A.M. and wait to get into the Bravery gig. Music was the excuse for escapism and operating round London,” she remembers.

It might need begun as an excuse, however quickly sufficient, music turned her raison d’être. Sawayama has been releasing songs since 2013, however her debut full-length album discovered an on the spot foothold with a glitz-deprived public in lockdown. Elton John reached out to do a collaboration, as did Charli XCX (whom Sawayama says she’s been following since her Myspace days), and Woman Gaga tapped her for a track on her Daybreak of Chromatica remix album. “To be surrounded by people who find themselves pushing the envelope, pushing the boundaries of music prior to now and current in so some ways, is such an honor,” Sawayama says. “I imply, the truth that Gaga even is aware of I exist is simply insane.” (She’d additionally die to work with Kacey Musgraves sometime: “I feel I would faint.”) However discovering fame in a pandemic was a blended bag. As a substitute of taking part in to adoring crowds, she was at dwelling, fermenting tempeh. “It was superb, however I used to be actually [sitting] in my room,” she remembers. “There was completely no work-life stability, as a result of there was no life to be lived.”

Then got here one other bump within the street. When Sawayama first walked into the places of work of what would develop into her label, she stated that her final objective for the album was to win the celebrated Mercury Prize, awarded to the most effective UK album launched by a British or Irish artist. The one downside: Candidates are required to have a UK or Irish passport, and the Japan-born singer, who moved to Britain at age 5, doesn’t. “My group reached out and was like, ‘Hey, are you able to simply change this, as a result of Rina’s lived right here for 25 years?’” she remembers. The request was denied. Sawayama was disenchanted, however didn’t need to make a giant deal out of it. “I’m probably not a callout tradition sort of particular person,” she says. However then the nominations got here out, “and there have been articles about the truth that I wasn’t nominated, and other people didn’t know why. I used to be like, ‘Okay, perhaps I’ll do one thing.’” Addressing the scenario on Twitter and in interviews “sort of made me cringe a little bit bit,” she says, “as a result of I used to be like, ‘Is anybody going to care?’”

Amongst those that cared: the BBC, The Unbiased, and Elton John, who posted on Instagram about how she was missed for the prize. In an period that has seen an unlucky rise in anti- Asian and anti-immigrant violence, her exclusion turned a information story, and an object lesson in who is taken into account British. (After she spoke out, the hashtag #SawayamaIsBritish trended within the UK on Twitter.) Because of her assertion and her followers agitating for her to be included, the foundations had been modified final yr, and a fellow immigrant artist, the Trinidad-born rapper Berwyn, has since been nominated. “If I might simply assist on this tiny approach to break down some barrier, then it was positively price combating for,” she says now.

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Sawayama graduated from Cambridge with a level in political science and says she’s at all times seen the world by means of a political lens. She considers it her mission “to make a pop track that sounds good, but in addition has which means. It’s actually vital to me that it has substance, it has soul.” For instance, the music video for “STFU!” addresses anti-Asian racism and the microaggressions she’s confronted; the lyrics for “XS” are about how capitalist overreach has helped spur local weather change; and “Chosen Household” celebrates the bonds cast between queer individuals, a subject that’s considerably uncommon in pop. “I grew up with songs about heterosexual love, and I don’t negate them,” she says. “I feel there’s a spot for them. A lot of the world is heterosexual; it’s not a giant deal. However my greatest pals and my chosen household and I are queer, and they don’t seem to be listening to the songs that signify them.”

Even when her material is hyper-specific, Sawayama strives for some degree of universality. “Being kicked out [of your home] for being homosexual just isn’t one thing that a lot of the world experiences, however that feeling of parental rejection is,” she says. “I at all times attempt to preserve the refrain extra common, generic, so it’s straightforward to know, after which attempt to inform a narrative within the verses.” As she prepares a brand new album, she says, “That’s one thing that I’ve actually amped up for this [next] document, and I’ll proceed to do. If I can heal somebody round me or somebody that I don’t know with the songs I write, and I’ve been given a chance to take action, why wouldn’t I take it? There are such a lot of songs on the market on the planet, it sort of turns into noise, and I simply need to do significant work,” she says. In any case, “as we noticed from the final two years, we’d die at any second.”

Sawayama laments the truth that within the UK, “there’s been a giant shift towards transphobia. And it’s similar to, I can not imagine that trans individuals are the scapegoat now. It looks like at one level, it was immigrants, and now it’s trans individuals…. It has real-life penalties,” she provides, pointing to the upper suicide charges among the many trans inhabitants. “I don’t have faith that I can change laws,” she says, “but when I can present music that makes individuals really feel happier, then that’s what I need to do.”

That impulse to run towards pleasure additionally comes by means of in her fashion, which is heightened even by pop star requirements: a lavender Balmain robe with extra layers than a mille-feuille, or a floral Richard Quinn look that requires a number of ft of hallway clearance. An avid pupil of Woman Gaga’s vogue in her The Fame Monster and Born This Manner eras, Sawayama says that she “loves being a chameleon in garments.” For this shoot, she wore primarily high fashion, which, she says, “clearly is the head of vogue and artistry and tailoring and creativity. I used to be so, so excited.” Her favourite: the Schiaparelli ensemble, full with a ring-of-Saturn-size hat; she’s additionally “an enormous fan” of South Korean–born newcomer Miss Sohee. “I saved touching the garments as a result of they had been so well-constructed,” she says. “I really began off as a mannequin, so I’ve a giant appreciation for everybody on set, and I’m fairly used to being a canvas.”

Donning high-end designers wasn’t at all times straightforward for her, although. Early on, “it was extra advert hoc, there wasn’t actually a plan…. Clearly, whenever you enter this trade, it’s laborious to drag appears to be like. You’ve set to work your manner up there to be trusted by PRs and vogue homes to put on these items,” she says. “I really feel so fortunate that I’ve slowly constructed my relationships with designers in a manner that they’ll mortgage me these unbelievable items.” She now works with stylist Jordan Kelsey, a Katie Grand alum whom she met on a shoot a number of years again. “She’s so clever, and she or he actually thinks forward about what a sure model goes so as to add to my undertaking or how individuals understand what I’m doing,” she says. “It’s simply so enjoyable to speak with somebody who speaks my language in that sense. And so, for this upcoming document, it’s been a far more constant imaginative and prescient.”

Sawayama has additionally develop into a Style Week fixture. She was a face of Coach’s Satisfaction marketing campaign final yr, for which she requested a group made up of queer or POC people. Through the fall 2022 season, she sat entrance row on the model’s New York Style Week present, the place she was subsequent to Euphoria heartthrob Angus Cloud. (“Megan Thee Stallion, Tommy Dorfman, and I had been sharing his Cheetos. We had been so hungry!”) Being in that place now’s “surreal,” she says. “I imply, I spent the longest time attempting to get into exhibits at London Style Week, and it’s simply so loopy to be within the entrance row.” As a longtime follower of vogue exhibits, she says, “It’s such an honor to have the ability to see these garments and have the pure, direct expression of what the designer or artistic director is pondering for that assortment, and it’s fed to your eyeballs right away.” She’s additionally made inroads into Hollywood together with her first main movie function, starring reverse Keanu Reeves in John Wick: Chapter 4, popping out subsequent yr.

When lockdown first started, Sawayama battled author’s block (“I used to be so creatively caught,” she remembers) whereas attempting to finish her upcoming document, which guarantees to be one other banger-stuffed genre-bender. However once we communicate, she’s readying herself to lastly carry out her 2020 album on a tour of 13 North American cities. In any case these one-sided digital performances, she’s wanting ahead to lastly having choruses shouted again at her by an area of followers. “As an artist, that you must road-test your songs,” she says. “It’s good to see how individuals transfer at exhibits—and in case you don’t know that data, then how are you going to write down the subsequent factor?” In the end, Rina Sawayama’s airtight world might be joyfully damaged open.

Hair by Odile Gilbert at Publicity NY; Make-up by Tom Pecheux for Yves Saint Laurent Magnificence; Manicure by Marie Rosa; Set Design by Nicolas Lallemand; Produced by Louis2 Paris.

This text seems within the June/July 2022 situation of ELLE.

Type Factors is a weekly column about how style intersects with the broader world.

Couture is planting its ft firmly up to now. For just a few years, the medium has been advancing an argument for why it nonetheless is smart within the 2020s; see: final season’s futuristic, sci-fi take and the prior season’s newcomer-filled schedule and playful choices. However that temper has ceded to a fall 2022 season that riffs on the medium’s midcentury Humorous Face heyday. Style is at all times going to mirror the instances, and might’t exist outdoors them, as a lot as it’d wish to. However these collections appeared to comprise nostalgia for a time earlier than political statement-making was de rigueur on the runway. It was not escapism a lot as the concept, typically, creating one thing stunning can itself be political, a small act of resistance in an unsightly world.

At Balenciaga, Demna (the designer is now going by his first title solely) has nodded to the home’s previous silhouettes and mores, like fashions carrying numbers denoting every look. Kim Kardashian pulled a Dovima in a fitted black robe and Nicole Kidman, Dua Lipa, and Hunter Schafer joined her in their very own retro runway stylings, guaranteeing headlines can be made. Nevertheless it wasn’t simply big-name couture newcomers who made an look: Danielle Slavik, who was a home mannequin for founder Cristóbal Balenciaga within the Nineteen Sixties, returned to the catwalk, closing the loop between previous and current. Nonetheless, this being Demna, there was an abundance of recent touches, too—most notably a Bluetooth sound-system bag made in collaboration with Bang & Olufsen and a couture face protect that gave the wearer the look of an eerie replicant.

Elsa Schiaparelli was a lady who thought of the lobster—after which didn’t hesitate to place it on a robe. Her still-influential Surrealist imaginative and prescient—at the moment on show on the Musée des Arts Decoratifs’ present “Stunning!”—is alive and properly in Daniel Roseberry’s intelligent reincarnation, which remixes her motifs along with his personal. In reality, he titled this season’s assortment “Born Once more,” with Elsa-worthy riffs that included doves-as-epaulets, flowers erupting from a bodice, and “drawers,” full with gilded pulls as an alternative of pockets. Even the appears that didn’t channel Surrealism felt like they have been nods to a bygone time, like his Christian Lacroix-influenced ’80s ensembles or Mariacarla Boscono’s swirling, celadon-skirted robe and black choker worthy of a Sargent heroine.

In his present notes, Roseberry made an specific argument in favor of fantasy in a world the place style is now anticipated to interact with each present occasion. The directive that reveals mirror the instances is a mindset that has, he acknowledges, resulted in some “extraordinary work…. Nevertheless it’s additionally led to a typically dreary self-seriousness, one which foregrounds style with sloganeering,” he wrote. “The harder path is remaining an engaged member of society whereas additionally, in a single’s work, daring to return to a sort of artistic innocence, to the state of marvel and awe all of us felt after we noticed our first transcendent present.”

Giambattista Valli has at all times been drawn to perfecting the previous. In his first present since 2019, the designer seemed to English gardens and New York nightclubs (particularly Studio 54) to create appears the place spangles met foliage, his beloved ruffles labored into numerous botanical shapes. There have been lashings of feathers and society swan-worthy updos, a callback to the intricate, ornamental touches of a long-lost world. Magnificence will get a nasty rap, in that it’s usually seen as incompatible with seriousness. And retreating into fantasy could be an apolitical selection. However different instances, the medium is the message. As Roseberry put it, “I feel we typically get defensive when our critics accuse us of simply eager to make stunning issues. However what’s incorrect with eager to make stunning issues?”

On the 2022 Billboard Music Awards on Could 15, Doja Cat took dwelling 4 trophies for High R&B Artist, High R&B Feminine Artist, High Viral Music, and High R&B. If that wasn’t sufficient, the “Kiss Me Extra” singer made our jaws drop on the gorgeous Schiaparelli black robe and gold equipment she wore for the awards present. By now we count on the pop star to seize our consideration with each new look, however we did not count on her to point out as much as the occasion with quick nails or intricate gold rings that appear like they’re price greater than my pupil loans.

The “Say So” singer did not hesitate with taking dangers for this look, one thing we love from her. Make-up artist Ernesto Casillas gave her a impartial smokey eye with a touch of vibrant yellow on the inside crease and waterline that complemented the daring robe properly. As for her hair, hairstylist Jared Henderson (often called JStay Able to many) slicked her darkish hair right into a excessive ponytail with a flipped finish that we now have a great feeling was enjoyable to whip round.

Getty Photographs

Fashion lovers like me who grew up with a dog-eared copy D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek MythsWe are no longer in the midst of idle daydreams about walking among deities. For spring 2022, echoes of antiquity breathed new-old life into the runway, from the dreamy gathered gowns at Loewe and statuary-inspired trompe l’oeil triumphs at Thom Browne to looks fit for Aphrodite herself at Alaïa, Proenza Schouler, Rick Owens, Schiaparelli, and Dries Van Noten. Dior’s cruise 2022 collection was shown at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, each model’s silhouette casting a long, elegant shadow on the weathered marble of the Olympic site.

Fluid lines and exquisite drapery will never go out of fashion, but the new designs give a new twist to the Greco Roman chitons. During a particularly difficult pandemic period in early 2021, Roksanda Ilinčić found herself with “a desire to create these otherworldly women who are standing strong and very feminine… to create something beautiful but also timeless.” She started conceptualizing her collection—a silken feast of volume and movement, creating the impression of a dancer twirling and contorting in the throes of some Sibylline power. Ilinčić was searching for a way to show how creativity can still thrive in spite of heavier circumstances: “I think we all needed some really elevated and positive and bright vision of the future.”

Sam Lobban, senior vice-president of designer and new concept at Nordstrom agrees. He attributes the increase in ethereal runway pieces and the feeling of releasing lockdown and reuniting in celebration to this feeling. “They’re empowering styles that are comfortable but emotional,” he says, pointing to how the silhouettes and fabrications of these flowing goddess-style pieces make a glamorous statement while still boasting versatility and ease of wear. (What can I say? Some WFH dressing habits die hard.)

Dimitra Petsa, the designer behind the “wet look” brand Di Petsa, has made a name with her goddess gowns, worn by FKA twigs and Doja Cat. Her dive into mythology for spring 2022 stemmed from her Greek heritage—she grew up in the Athenian suburb of Rafina, by the sea—as well as the introversion and introspection that suffused much of her pandemic experience. The resulting collection, “Nostos-Touch” (nostos, Greek for “homecoming,” the kind that Odysseus kept trying to make happen for 10 years), was about returning to one’s body and rediscovering sensuality, sexuality, and pleasure itself. The models who wore her form-clinging pieces to Paris Fashion Week writhed against rocks as if they were temptresses capable of shipwrecking sailors. “The siren was a perfect symbol,” Petsa says, describing a lingering feeling she still had from the worst days of the pandemic: craving touch, while also recoiling from it. Sirens can’t be approached, or at least not without paying a terrible price.

It’s a slightly different take on mythical femininity than the kind presented in the softer, diaphanous tones elsewhere on the runway. But, in a way, aren’t they two sides of the same coin? The virgin and the temptress, Ilinčić’s bright lady and Petsa’s dark siren—in legend, and in real life, all expressions of what it means to inhabit one body, multiple selves. There’s an overwhelming sense that we are looking for something primal, something profound, to help make sense of everything that has happened over these past two years.

“I think the Greek goddess style is emblematic of a time when there was a lot of ritual,” Petsa says. “We’re all trying to go back to nature and to connect to something a bit bigger than [ourselves].” Maybe it’s only by gazing backward that we can finally move forward.

This article appears on the March 2022 issue ELLE.

Type Factors is a weekly column about how trend intersects with the broader world.

The worlds of sci-fi and couture may not, initially, appear to have a lot overlap. Besides, after all, for the truth that each are rarefied realms with obsessive devotees who collect periodically with Comedian Con-level enthusiasm, and the place probably the most minute particulars are endlessly fixated upon. However that is the place the similarities often finish. Which is why it was such a pleasant shock to see references usually reserved for the D&D desk pop up at the newest couture exhibits.

Take Fendi, the place Kim Jones cited the home’s dwelling metropolis (“the eternity of Rome, the spirituality of Rome, the celestial Rome”) as his main inspiration, but additionally drew on the lore of Dune and Star Wars. Jones just lately made his means by way of the 800-page behemoth that’s Frank Herbert’s e book, and, he advised WWD, “I’ve all the time beloved Star Wars. I nonetheless have Star Wars toys throughout my research.” The present opened with a glittering cassock-like robe that Padmé Amidala would possibly’ve worn, backgrounded by a moody sci-fi set.

One other Dune convert was Daniel Roseberry of Schiaparelli, who took the home’s trademark Surrealism in a sci-fi route along with his first bodily present because the starting of the pandemic. “After two years of desirous about the Surreal,” Roseberry defined in his present notes, “I discovered myself as an alternative desirous about the empyreal: The heavens as a spot to flee from the chaos of our planet, but additionally the house of a legendary excessive priestess, without delay goddess and alien, who would possibly in reality stroll amongst us.” His alien goddesses wore Barbarella-by-way-of-Madonna pointy breastplates, or large disks round their heads and wrists; a Saturn-like ring of gold actually orbited one mannequin.

Science fiction is the last word escapist style (and it helps that lockdown gave many the time to lastly decide up volumes like Herbert’s.) With the latest remake of Dune, the most recent chapter within the Matrix saga, and upcoming releases like After Yang, we appear to be in a growth time for the style on the multiplex. For moviegoers, the enchantment of imagining alternate worlds proper now hardly wants clarification—for designers, whose job is in a way to create their very own fantasy realms, it is no shock that reference factors from Blade Runner to 2001: A House Odyssey pop up on a regular basis.

However science fiction, for all its escapism, has additionally smuggled in metaphors for a number of the darkest elements of our existence, from local weather change to American imperialism. Roseberry discovered himself pondering easy methods to create in such a fraught time, explaining that his final couture assortment, an exuberant yawp of gold and otherworldly florals, “was conceived in a short interval of hope: It was April. Vaccines had been turning into broadly accessible. Journey was turning into a chance as soon as once more. We might start to think about that our collective nightmare was behind us, or a minimum of would quickly be.

“And but, now, braided with that hope is a way of loss. The lack of individuals, most wrenchingly. But in addition, the lack of certainty; our lack of surety; the lack of our collective future. There may be additionally the pervasive sense of exhaustion all of us really feel: That churn of red-carpet appearances, award exhibits, even trend displays—one thing about it feels lackluster. Aren’t all of us exhausted by all of it? Trend has insisted upon its relevance over these previous two years, and but I can really feel that even a few of its practitioners are now not satisfied. What does trend imply, what does trend need to say, in an period by which every little thing is in flux? And, with reference to this Maison, what does surrealism imply when actuality itself has been redefined?”

When imagining the long run feels so charged, generally it is comforting to return to rosier previous visions of what it might be like. Whereas Jones and Roseberry delved into the planetary darkness and uncertainty of this time, different couture collections time-traveled to a extra optimistic period, specifically the ’60’s embrace of house journey and its attendant House Age design. The ’60’s-fest we noticed at spring 2022 ready-to-wear continued right here, with Mod white fits at Dior, house cadet cutout leggings at Valentino, and a ruffled robe at Giambattista Valli that was spliced along with a silver leg—Princess Leia meets C-3PO. Bear in mind optimism? Pleasure? Expertise filling us with a way of hope versus existential dread? Not since NASA-wear briefly took over trend circa 2016 has the house race felt this au courant.

There was a time when even the most fashion-literate couldn’t bear to look at a pair of stiff, dull, everyday jeans. The pandemic pushed the once tight and rigid staple out of the way in favor of Gen Z’s baggy, slouchy styles. Many people gave up jeans and wore sweats, or printed pants with elastic waistbands, such as those from Paloma Wool and Saks Potts.

This season, however brought forth entirely new ideas about the American staple cloth, particularly from a Parisian. The Dallas-born Daniel Roseberry, Schiaparelli’s artistic director, injected the house’s surrealist DNA into an unlikely medium: upcycled denim jackets and jeans. Anatomy-inspired embroidery and gold jewelry—there was an ear, a single breast, eyes, and flowers!—adorned much of his fall 2021 couture collection, upending the long-held idea that jeans can’t be considered couture. “We went to the markets in Paris when they reopened, bought a dozen pairs of [’80s] Levi’s, dismembered them, and then reconstructed them,” Roseberry says. “It confirms that any time the really extreme Americanism is mixed with extreme provocativeness, Baroque gold and everything, people respond to it. I wanted to do something that was a surrender to joy, almost to the point of fetishization of the body and of the anatomy of couture itself.”

And who could forget Balenciaga’s bold return to couture, complete with a dash of denim? For creative director Demna Gvasalia’s debut fall 2021 couture collection for the brand, he cut jeans high, long, and rounded, pairing them with hoodies and V-neck sweaters. A jacket that was perched high above the shoulders and had its sides folded forward was another sculptural take on the Canadian tuxedo.

Couture isn’t the only realm rethinking denim. Ready-to wear designers are also looking at the simple pair of jeans with a new perspective. At Chloé, Gabriela Hearst created denim sleeveless tops, trench coats, and mididresses, some of them offset with supple leather detailing, for a look that felt refreshingly brand-new for resort 2022. Hearst also used her innovative sustainably-minded thinking to create deadstock with recycled buttons and fabric treated with lasers in place of metal.

There’s a huge demand for jeans that feel more environmentally conscious, which may be why so many labels are starting from scratch, upcycling, or otherwise reinventing the fabric. Ganni launched a new line in responsible denim this fall. The Jeans Redesign Project, which saw more than half of the collection launched by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and 80 denim experts in 2019, is aimed at reducing waste and increasing recyclability. Ditte Reffstrup, the label’s creative director, says, “Denim has this great ability to make you feel capable of anything when you wear it. I think that’s a mindset that resonates with the American woman.”

It makes sense that designers who are used to wearing ball gowns and high-octane glamour are now giving denim a chance. Carolina Herrera’s resort 2022 collection had dramatic denim in spades, from ruched puff-sleeve blouses to high-waisted wide-legs and A-line minis. Likewise, Etro’s resort 2022 collection drove home the OTT approach, with kaleidoscopic patchwork pieces and the kind of embroidery that might decorate your most well-traveled pair of vintage jeans.

Elza Wandler, the street-style-favorite handbag designer, launched denim for the first time for fall, calling the items “great styling pieces that can easily be dressed up for different occasions, from work to dinner.” Telsha Anderson, the owner of the boutique t.a. New York predicts that directional jeans, such as the pink sets by Diesel, will sell out. “The fabrication, the color choices, and getting out of the box with skirts and dresses that still fall within the denim category” are all part of the novelty, she says. “People are looking for pieces that stand out.”

Many people find the appeal of this new style of fashion denim because they no longer wear jeans. Think about it. When was your last time you wore a striking pair of jeans, an embellished pair of denim or a simple denim skirt that made a bold statement, despite the fact that they are so expensive? “I’m learning that denim is a part of my core style identity—recently revealed by having two kids under two right now, coupled with the pandemic. I realized it had been missing for me for nearly two years,” says Lisa Bühler, founder and CEO of the indie boutique and brand Lisa Says Gah, which introduced its first in-house denim line for fall. “I am happy to be back participating in ‘hard pants’ again.”

This article appears in the December/January 2020 issue of ELLE.