“I know you missed me, but I was busy. I know very well that you missed me, and I am pleased to know that you were so worried about me, ”and finally:“ Thank you for waiting for me. New adventures are waiting for us! And so, while we were about to write down these disparate reflections, Venus Botticelli from “Openness to a Miracle” reappeared on Instagram, the protagonist of an evil virtual campaign that was supposed to resume the holidays in our country, having disappeared from social networks for more than two months and in full tourist season. And it seemed to us that her reappearance almost miraculously coincided with the return of the most canonical and standard beauty in magazines and advertising campaigns of famous brands.
A brief summary for those who have lived on Mars for the past six months: the top models of the eighties and nineties, not even thinking about retirement, reappear in museum form on the covers of British and American Vogue; Daria Verbovayaalready now Celine’s face and soul (when she had an accent and was designed by Phoebe Philo, a kind of best double) is being resurrected in a high jewelery ad Gucci; former filiform Kate Moss“heroin chic” emblem, is a (small) collection of flesh and blood (many) Anthony Vaccarello’s style for Saint Laurent, and her daughter Lila and Kaia Gerber (daughter of Cindy Crawford) are even more reminiscent of the 90s with their famous moms and extremely slim figures; the same conical Kendall Jenner interprets fashion Stella McCartney; Italian thread form Victoria Cheretti – the genetic carnival between Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, the lady of Pollaiolo and the giraffe – is the face of numerous advertisements, from From Balenciaga to Guccifrom Ferragamo to Ray-Ban; Bella Hadid (name, fate) everywhere, with an even more sunken beautiful face that gives plastic surgeons so much new work for women requiring a biectomy, removal of the fatty glands that we all have under the cheekbones. Fear? Oh, to be beautiful, you have to suffer.
In short: it’s like going from a museum room where portraits of Rubensian women hang to another where Egon Schiele’s skeletal figures hang.
Curvy offspring? No, it’s not just that
The demonstration of size on the podium was often symbolic: an hourglass body in a procession of bamboo-thin bodies. Of course, we know this well: sometimes fashion is about clothes, sometimes about the body, but it always reflects social evolution. There noticeable trend at shows this season Slim stomacha necessary condition for the return of the Y2K aesthetic, that is, the early 2000s: thin knitwear, second-skin tracksuits, mini-skirts in the spirit of Britney. Againmany little sheer dresses Lily Rose Depp in a horror series Idol require a negative fat mass index so that the bones, cavities, and iliac crests are clearly visible.
Over the holidays, photos of influencers in bikinis reminded us that the pop culture obsession with slimness runs so deep that they’re the ones who get both the most likes and the most negative comments. Body size is part of a complex diversity debate that spans gender, ethnicity, age, and disability. If the models have become totemic to what they represent, it is because they represent a socio-political narrative that finds its equivalent in another great seasonal trend, the bourgeois wardrobe, the “classicism” of beauty. A little conservative, a little enlightened by new styles: reasonable minimalism, thoughtful simplicity, pleasant and precious linearity.
Kendall Jenner in the Stella McCartney fall-winter 2023-2024 advertising campaign.
There the re-emerging superiority of thinness hides a subconscious message: going forward, you come back. It was then that beauty, as the Greeks and Latins understood it, was the result of golden proportions, which had to algebraically correspond to certain numbers or their combinations. This means not only sophistication, but also protection from the bizarre, from the non-standardfrom deviation from the norm. And it contributescontrolled anatomy, which does not give in to any gaffes, zero gaffes: look at the video epidemic on TikTok, where the pursuit of perfection is intertwined with the trends of “healthy” and “permanent” lifestyle #that girl alarm clocks at five in the morning and breakfasts based on sad green juice. The always astute fashion manager writes to me on this site: “And yet in recent years there has been no shortage of new muses: we thought that expressive power Paloma Elsesser, Jill Kortlev, Adwoa Aboah, Tess Macmillan or Precious Lee pushed the fashion system beyond conformism. This campaign season, at least for now, confirms the need for brands to look to more understandable models, focusing on a broader lever of ambition. Variety and curvaceous forms make it to the headlines, but don’t they sell in the long run? The answer is yes and no.
Virgo Cassel in Sisley’s fall-winter 2023-2024 advertising campaign.
Conservative chic: shall we keep it or not?
fear of one imminent recession prompted luxury brands to give priority to stable, adult buyers and conservatives who value quality over seasonal trends. And we’re moving towards one conservative style that emphasizes wealthas megabrands realize that their main audience is still wealthy adults (most often white) and that the era of performance and viral trends is coming to an end. Luxury houses tried to take into account social issues and sustainability, but did not really make significant changes and instead adopted the model of fast fashion, releasing many collections and collaborations, which led to empty gestures and performative actions. Brands can promote progressive ideas in their campaigns, but when you visit their stores, you often find that the items on display are not available in large sizes and are only produced in limited quantities. At the same time, referring to the great masters of the past, exemplary in this sense is the campaign of Ferragamo, conceived by Maximilian Davis, young, non-Italian and, perhaps for this reason, more sensitive than our compatriots to the Florentine. The charm of the Renaissance is not only a lesson in reactionary style, but also a happy understanding of the specificity and authenticity of what we call “Made in Italy”. Shot by New York-based photographer Tyler Mitchell, the “New Renaissance” campaign pairs models, musicians and artists with eight Renaissance masterpieces housed in the Uffizi: an atmosphere that transcends the founder’s biography and establishes a strong bond between place and brand, of which there are about ten one years ago donation of 600 thousand euros this allowed the restoration, adjustment and redevelopment of eight rooms Third Uffizi corridor, followed by the relocation more than 50 works second half of the fifteenth century.
Advertising campaign Versace fall-winter 2023-24 with Gigi Hadid.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the Renaissance has also returned to inspire stylist collections – Caterina de’ Medici for Maria Grazia Chiuri’s spring/summer 2023 show for Dior, Artemisia Gentileschi for this fall/winter collection for Chloé. And given his latest IG post, who knows Sabato De Sarno doesn’t draw inspiration from the masters of the past: use Google Maps to report on the location where his first fashion show, the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, will presumably be held.
It is a style that includes practical and sensible clothing, but which somehow still signals something classy: like a blue or light brown coat meant to cover up a slender body, or at least corresponding to the pre-established canons of a sinking culture. its roots go back to the BC centuries, reassuring, with facial features defined as “beautiful” or “pleasant”.
In the end, it really comes down to a balancing act between monetary weight and cultural impact. What the fashion system is feared may lack in the first case will be compensated for, at least psychologically, in the second. Provocations are no longer fashionable, and this is normal. But all the talk about human rights, about sexual orientation, about the achievements of women: will they, too, slip away like a mannequin on the catwalk at the end of a fashion show?
Friend © REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED