Normcore, the hipster anti-style, has staged a comeback for spring. But, this time, it’s all grown up
WHEN KATE MOSS MADE A SURPRISE APPEARANCE ON BOTTEGA Veneta’s SS23 catwalk, perhaps the biggest shock was what she was wearing. The icon who launched a thousand Pinterest boards had traded her glam It-girl ensembles for simple, oversize jeans and a Kurt Cobain-worthy flannel-print shirt. The moment turned out to be a trend indicator of sorts, as the season hummed with white undershirts, reimagined denim (rendered in leather at Bottega Veneta or comically blown-up at Vaquera) and quirky dad caps on street-style stars. Welcome to the new era of normcore – and all the 2010s nostalgia that comes with it.
We’ve been living in a period of maximalist fashion during the pandemic, and now that more-is-more approach is starting to rub off on even the humblest of garments for spring. Just look at Miu Miu’s layered T-shirts or Peter Do’s, Alaïa’s or Valentino’s scaled-up, reimagined button-downs: the most classic wardrobe staples are coming back into style with a subversive vengeance.
It all goes back to the early 2010s, when normcore was born. Part of the reason for its sudden return now is that, ‘we’re in a neo-yuppie moment’, says Sean Monahan, founder of trendforecasting group 8Ball and co-founder of the now-defunct collective and trend-forecasting group K-Hole, which brought the term ‘normcore’ to the masses in 2013. The new, more upscale normcore wave isn’t exactly what it was 10 years ago. The blandness has transmuted into something slightly more complex, and underlying it is also a hint of preppiness: think less Jerry Seinfeld and more Carolyn Bessette Kennedy or Princess Diana. Both women were idolised for their minimalist aesthetic, and their old-money style is finding a new audience with those who’ve burned out on do
