Normcore: Fashion for those who are tired of fashion
Look like a man from the subway - A new HYIP, and carelessness - a new black. For a long time, we solved the issue of identity with the help of clothes and fashion, trying to stand out from the crowd. Fashion, in turn, happily created samples of the style we were guided by. But what if the time of the samples has already ended, and “merging with the crowd” is not so bad? We tell why it is important for many now to be ordinary.
New York Magazine published an article in which he outlined a new style that emerged among young and independent New Yorkers, the normcore. The essence of normcor is to stand out without standing out. New cool - in simplicity, in a calm attitude to yourself and self-irony. You finally admit the existence of the crowd and accept it. Dressing like millions of people, you are no longer afraid to be like everyone else, because in reality no one is like everyone else. You dress without thinking. Spending neither time nor money. You’ll rather sleep a little longer than you spend three hours figuring out how to get out of the house.
The simplest blanks come to the fore. At the same time, it doesn’t matter where you got it from: bought it at Auchan, or just left in someone’s sweatshirt with a random home afterparty. All sports, careless, street. Inspire simple things familiar from childhood: leggings, crop tops, baseball caps, sneakers, sneakers, inconspicuous windbreakers, turtlenecks, athletic socks, flip flops, slippers, hoodie with zippers, sweatpants, fan baseball caps, travel shirts, nameless jeans. Everything that is past the generation of "YM", which the normcore invented with an eye on the 90s. In short, what's the difference in what to go for a walk or jump in the garages - it will definitely be something that is not a pity to throw away and what will be convenient.
In an era of instability and crises, the emergence of the normcor looks logical. The fashion industry stamps trends at lightning speeds, fashion too much lately. Normkor also offers freedom from it and advocates for reasonable consumption and savings. Normcore - about a normal healthy attitude towards yourself, others and to clothes. This is the fashion for the absence of fashion, when you no longer need to prove anything. Normkor suggests that everything that used to be taboo (sandals with socks, sweatpants) is no longer taboo. You decide for yourself what is taboo and what is not. And not Anna Wintour.
One of the first normcors was to use the London-based stylist Alice Goddard, who collaborated with i-D, Clash and Hot & Cool magazines. She first showed how, using a minimum of funds, to do the maximum. She uses simple, cheap T-shirts, jackets from the Portobello Market, plain skirts, and panama shirts. Thereby proving: cheap does not mean bad. However, Alice went even further: for Hot & Cool magazine, instead of street-shooting, she collected screenshots of American streets from Google Maps with ordinary people, whose style (or rather, his absence) inspires her.
Of course, the fashion industry quickly responded to the new trend. We see cozy pajamas, flat shoes, sweatpants in the collections of even such brands as Lanvin, Marni sandals and visors, Prada sandals and knee-highs, fur slippers and ridiculous MSGM mittens and Acne in the new autumn-winter collections of the next season. Today, Chanel responded to the trend in the forehead and staged a show in the supermarket.
So, pure normcore shows the brand Hood by Air, which seems to be completely free from stereotypes. Normcore was shown at New York Fashion Week Marc by Marc Jacobs and Tommy Hilfiger. Elements of the normcore are constantly used by the French designer Simon Port Jacmus, who, by the way, puts on the normore himself. They use white socks, sneakers and baseball caps in every show, showing fashion in an ironic and realistic manner. The Russian normcore successfully sells Gosh Rubchinsky in the West.
In general, the fact that fashion should be comfortable for a long time, has long been called upon by one of the main fashion critics of modernity, Katie Horin, who recently left The New York Times. She writes that the time when comfort should be sacrificed for the sake of beauty has long passed. After all, for the majority of the population of the planet, clothing is just clothing, and comfort is easier to sell than to instill taste and chase after chic. People have learned to save and enjoy simple things, to treat themselves with a bit of irony, not to be afraid of appearing tasteless. From here boom on sneakers, shoes without a heel, soft socks. For the second season, make-up artists show natural hair, a minimum of makeup, everything, as in the 90s, showed Helmut Lang, Jil Sander and Calvin Klein.
Normcore is to some extent the personification of absolute democracy in fashion: fashion should be laid-back, because the world of possibilities today offers you more than a choice of clothes. Today, things must be functional, comfortable, and everything else must be conventions, labels, and a pure matter of taste. Normcore - for those who have already figured it out with taste, appreciates a personal comfort zone, but denies conventions and labels as a relic of the past. Normcore is pure ultraconformism, which is inherent in American and European culture: you yourself are responsible for yourself, follow your own desires. After all, it is better to earn yourself a fresh complexion, go in for sports, learn to do something better than the rest, than create an actual image of the season.
And here we remember Steve Jobs, whose style is the pattern of the normcore: an unchanging set of black turtleneck, New Balance sneakers and original Levi's 501: "It's just the clothes I wear. And that's enough for the rest of my life." And would we have such a kit?
With Russia is more difficult, of course. We love clothes. We love to dress up. Even the notion of “ordinary Russian crowd” does not imply the normcore - “people from the metro” just strive for high fashion, preferring fake “vyuitton” to the nameless backpack, which many still cause rejection and snobbery. Basic noname clothes from a Brooklyn or Berlin flea market will give you a level 10 hipster, and this is no longer the normcore. Perhaps the only role model can still be found in Gosha Rubchinsky. His skaters and guys from the area - the most relaxed real Russian normcore.
This is about style. The next level and the main one is the acceptance of those around you. However, with this we all need to start.