Fashion has never existed in a vacuum—it’s always merely been a symptom of larger global systems at play. For centuries, it has been used as a tool for political dissent, radical self-expression, and a sense of belonging. It’s intrinsically tied to identity, too. Whether or not we like to admit it, the clothing we wear says more about who we are and what we value than we could ever begin to express with words, from the jeans that expose what generation we fall into (looking at you, skinny jean-wearing Millennials) to the way we aim to dress for certain aesthetics to fit in with those who “get it”.
So when we talk about current trends on here, it’s not because our team of editors simply got together to decide what we think is cool enough to buy. Trends move in cycles with certain silhouettes and styles re-emerging like clockwork every 20 to 30 years and others still bubbling up as a response to what’s happening in the broader social political, economic, and cultural sphere. In other words, when you get dressed in the morning, you might be easily fooled into thinking that each decision you make is all your own, but the truth is that when you peel back the surface, there’s an entire web of underlying elements that all wield an influence on what you’re picking out and even how you’re wearing it. Cue the Devil Wears Prada monologue about the origins of Andy Sachs’ cerulean blue sweater.
If you’re an avid Who What Wear reader you’re used to hearing mostly from voices inside the fashion industry in the form of stylists, editors, or influencers, but today we’re tapping experts with two distinct perspectives to lend a different angle to our bread-and-butter trend reporting.
First up is Bernadette Banner, a dress historian and prolific YouTuber with a subscriber base north of 1.6 million. A quick scan of her feed includes everything from critiques on how historically accurate the costumes in popular TV shows are to busting myths around corsets. For Banner, studying the construction, silhouettes, materials and wear on the clothes that people wore throughout history is a way to add more color and detail that goes beyond what’s written in our history books. In other words, her work uses fashion as a tool for deeper understanding of who we are and where we’ve been.
“Fashion has always been linked to the wider context of the period,” Banner insists. “Part of the value in studying dress history is in gaining that more intimate understanding of how the individual connected with the political, social and economic climates of their immediate world.”
It’s not only a tool to understand the past, though. Fashion can bring us a greater understanding of our own internal world—what we choose to wear is a direct reflection of our hopes, dreams, anxieties, and fears—and nobody understands that correlation quite like fashion psychologist Dawnn Karen. As an FIT professor, founder of the Fashion Psychology Institute, and author of titles such as Dress Your Best Life: How to Use Fashion Psychology to Take Your Look—and Your Life—to the Next Level, you could say that Karen is a leading expert on the topic.
As for what a fashion psychologist actually does, well, Karen describes work as “creating an alignment between the internal and the external, or the attitude and the attire.” She studies how color, image, style, shape and beauty affect human behavior, and has written extensively on the topic, so when we spoke about the major influences on spring 2023 style, she had a lot of thoughts.
“If you think about the series of global events that have occurred in the past three years—the pandemic, war, racial tensions, gun violence—there’s a slew of events that are affecting us collectively,” Karen pointed out, and while these are likely to be on your mind reading the morning news, she argues that they’re what define our collective psyche and, therefore, what’s on our minds as we get dressed and move throughout the rest of our day.
Ahead, we’re breaking down the seven major style shifts that not only represent present moment, but that will come to define the entirety of the early 2020s for that matter, too. Think of this as our state of the union—it’s a deep-dive into where fashion currently is, where it’s heading next, and how the world we live in today plays a role in all of it.
“In the pandemic, we were getting dressed at the top, but not so much at the bottom, right? Now, people are wearing puddle pants to give more of that loose-fitting loungewear feel without wearing pajamas,” Karen noted when I brought up the celebrity-adored trend. The ultra-relaxed trousers are the perfect example of 2023 style, in my opinion, because as Karen mentioned, they feel like the soft pants we wore in our home-bound era but actually look quite polished for the office and beyond.
As the name suggests, they’re essentially non-cropped trousers with a few extra inches at the hemlines that allow them to have a pooling effect around your ankles. The main takeaway here is that a bit of slouch goes a long way, so embrace the length and mostly importantly, lose your tailor’s number. You’ll save money on hemming in the end so site back, relax, and enjoy the extra breathing room.
“The idea behind this bag is to be ready for anything and everything. It’s giving me ‘I’m ready for the apocalypse at this point.'”
“Western dress styles were often stuck to a 100-year cycle for a good portion of early modern history onward, with waistlines either raising or lowering dramatically at the beginning or end. I can’t help but be amused to see the return of the early 2000s low-rise jeans not even two decades since they last went out of style.”
“The French Revolution is one of the more outstanding examples of politics directly influencing fashion: Wealthy people were desperately moving away from showing visible wealth through dress and adopting more humble silhouettes.”
“Psychologically, people do not feel the most fashionable or creative when money isn’t flowing. Right now, people are shifting priorities, so the focus is not necessarily on styles that capture a lot of attention.”
“A focal accessory is one that holds psychological value that can be worn repeatedly. The weight of the item is what matters because if you’re feeling anxious, you’re going to want something that grounds you.”
When we looked at the most exciting new shoes to come out of the past year, they all had one thing in common: a skinny heel shape. No matter if it was a pair of slingbacks, mules, strappy sandals, or boots, it’s becoming clear that stiletto heels both high and low are the new go-to’s. As we get our footing back into the previously-forgotten-about tall heels from our pre-pandemic wardrobes, style is winning out over comfort and practicality.
Sure, chunky block heels may never be totally gone and if you look at Loewe and The Attico, they’ve simply morphed into more architectural shapes, but the return of the skinny heels is definitely upon us and it signals a turning point in our priorities from all-out comfort to something more akin to the ’90s minimalism that continues to have such a strong influence.
Next: The Spring 2023 Shopping Guide: Where to Buy the Biggest Trends of the Season