Dressing for Uncertainty ~ video and essay ~ ♡˖⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖

Dressing for Uncertainty: Fashion’s Response to
Politics, Pop Culture, and Sustainability

Humans have an innate ability to transform cultural currents into art, often unconsciously. From social media and television to fashion, the themes that pervade our culture seep into daily life, sometimes so subtly that we hardly notice. In a time marked by the unpredictability of the 2024 Presidential election, complex global issues, and economic uncertainty, a shared sense of confusion and overwhelm emerges. But how does this affect fashion and the clothes we choose to wear? Now that September 2024 Fashion Month has come to a close, we can start to see how these larger uncertainties have found their way into the season’s clothing.

This began with New York Fashion Week, where Anna Wintour and Dr. Jill Biden led a march to promote voting awareness. Top designers like Tory Burch, Jack McCollough, and Lazaro Hernandez joined, all donning Zac Posen's “Fashion for Our Future” T-shirts, illustrating how current events influence various cultural sectors and reach mainstream media. The trend continues in pop music, where artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Charli XCX wear graphic tees with messages that resonate with their audiences, highlighting how global issues permeate and shape pop culture. Social media intensifies this effect, merging digital and real-life spaces into a landscape where politics, art, and entertainment increasingly overlap.

In uncertain times, people are drawn to self-expression and control through their personal style. This climate of unpredictability inspires inventive designs, as seen in Miuccia Prada’s Miu Miu collection. With unzipped dresses, open jackets, and an eclectic mix of athletic wear, nightgowns, and ‘70s details, her designs embrace chaos, reflecting how fashion becomes both an expression and a release in turbulent times.

This mix-and-match approach creates an intentionally “unfinished” look, a theme that echoes the fashion industry’s push for sustainability. Diesel’s runway, built from 14,800 kg of denim scraps, makes a bold statement: there is “beauty in waste.” With circular fashion at its core, the collection aims to reduce waste by maximizing the lifespan of clothing, showing how runway trends can reflect global sustainability efforts. On the streets, we now see raw, pieced-together looks featuring fringe and patchwork, showcasing how the world’s issues, political, economic, environmental, directly influence what we wear.

In the end, today’s fashion isn’t just a reflection of style but a mirror of society, capturing and channeling the anxieties, aspirations, and calls for change shaping our world. Through the clothes we wear, art, activism, and self-expression merge, reminding us that fashion is not just about what looks good but about what it stands for.

---Sorayah