Congratulations, Your Clothes Fit — Fashion Week Has Declared You a Peasant

By Derek Plunkett | Hemline Herald

For years, the quietly optimistic among us believed that fashion — that grand, perfumed circus of ego and organza — was slowly, cautiously edging toward the human body. Sizes were expanding. Waistbands were softening. There were rumblings, even, of garments designed to accommodate the existence of a torso.

That dream is dead. Fashion Week has spoken, and it has spoken in the language of sleeves that consume the entire arm, trousers with a rise that begins somewhere near the sternum, and jackets so aggressively oversized they constitute a separate dwelling.

Proper fit, sources confirm, is extremely over.

'Comfort Is a Conversation I Refuse to Have'

The Hemline Herald reached out to several of the season's most talked-about designers — all fictional, all magnificent — for comment on the emerging anti-fit movement, and the responses were, as expected, staggeringly committed to the bit.

"When a garment sits correctly on the body, it reveals nothing," explained Thierry Voss-Marchetti, creative director of the Paris-based label Néant, whose runway this season featured models submerged to the shoulder in hand-dyed linen columns. "I am not interested in the body. The body is a suggestion. My work exists despite the body."

Voss-Marchetti's collection, titled The Apology, included a blazer with one sleeve and a trouser leg that ended four inches above the knee on the left side and pooled magnificently on the floor to the right. Buyers reportedly wept. Several placed orders.

Meanwhile, over at the Milan showcase for Brutalismo Dolce, designer Cosima Fehr unveiled what she described as "a meditation on wrongness." Every single look was, by any conventional metric, the incorrect size. Shirts gaped. Hems dragged. A model in a column dress appeared to be wearing something originally constructed for a much taller person who had also, at some point, been considerably wider.

"Proportion," Fehr told assembled press with the gravity of someone announcing a bereavement, "is deeply unchallenging."

The crowd erupted.

The Science of Strategic Ill-Fit

Fashion Week trend analysts — a group of people who are paid actual money to watch this unfold and then write earnest reports about it — have since codified the movement under several competing names. Intentional Disproportion appears to be winning, though Conscious Wrongness and Deliberate Tragedy are still in contention for the more academic end of the market.

What unites the looks, according to Paloma Strickwell of forecasting agency Futura Vague, is a principled rejection of the idea that clothing should, in any meaningful way, correspond to the dimensions of the person wearing it.

"What we're seeing," Strickwell explained at a panel discussion held in a converted cheese warehouse in the Marais, "is a generation of designers asking the question: what if a shirt, but worse? And the answer is absolutely riveting."

Strickwell's own outfit at the panel — a double-breasted coat that fell to her ankles and a pair of trousers so wide they moved independently of her legs — was described by attendees as "brave," "confrontational," and, by one confused journalist from a regional lifestyle supplement, "possibly a costume."

The Buyer's Guide: Intentionally Tragic Pieces for the Discerning Disaster

For those ready to abandon the tyranny of correct sizing, the Hemline Herald has compiled a non-exhaustive guide to this season's most essential wrong-fit investments.

The Architect's Regret Blazer — A double-breasted wool blazer sized four increments above your actual measurement, with shoulders that extend approximately six inches past your own. Ideal for communicating that you are thinking about something more important than this conversation. Retails at €2,800. Available in Fog, Deeper Fog, and What Fog.

The Apology Trouser — High-waisted to a degree that suggests the waistband has aspirations. The leg tapers aggressively until mid-shin, then abruptly widens into what the brand describes as "a moment." Pairs well with footwear that is also, somehow, wrong. €1,450. One size. That size is not yours.

The Deflated Turtleneck — A knit so oversized the neck hole rests on one shoulder while the hem reaches the knee. Described in the press notes as "a garment in mourning." The fabric is reportedly very expensive, though you will not be able to confirm this because it is impossible to locate your own arms while wearing it. €890. Dry clean only. Do not attempt to drive.

The Statement Sock — Not, technically, a statement sock. Just a sock. But worn with the Apology Trouser, it becomes visible for exactly two inches, and those two inches will be described in at least three separate trend reports as "the most important two inches in fashion this season." €45 per sock. Sold individually.

What This Means for the Rest of Us

The practical implications of the anti-fit movement for civilians — those of us who purchase clothing in order to, say, attend a job or collect a child from school — are, admittedly, complex.

Do we abandon the well-cut trouser? Do we donate the blazer that actually buttons? Do we stride into the office Monday morning in a floor-length asymmetric coat and explain to our colleagues that proportion is, as Cosima Fehr has confirmed, deeply unchallenging?

The answer, this correspondent suspects, is no. The answer is that we will watch the runways do their extraordinary, baffling, wonderful thing, and we will read the trend reports with the same fond bewilderment we bring to watching competitive cheese rolling or parliamentary debate. We will admire the audacity. We will marvel at the commitment.

And then we will put on trousers that fit and get on with our lives, secure in the knowledge that somewhere in Milan, a fictional designer is appalled by us, and that this is, ultimately, fine.

Fashion Week will return in six months. It will have opinions about your collar. Start preparing now.

Derek Plunkett is the senior trend correspondent at Hemline Herald and owns three blazers that fit correctly. He is not proud of this.