Bella Hadid’s return to the catwalk became the image of the season during the last Paris Fashion Week. The model wore an Anthony Vaccarello suit in the collection that paid homage to the classic Le Smoking, the women’s tuxedo created by couturier Yves Saint Laurent in 1966 with which he redefined clothing. Structured suits, trench coats, ties and large glasses follow one another, setting the trend for a corporate style with an air of sophistication that draws on the nostalgia of the era. look at office from another era. And it has already reached the streets and networks, where videos identify it under nomenclatures such as corporate core, mermaid office And core business to highlight his inspiration in this imagery.
The origin: an emancipatory interpretation
In the late 1960s, Yves Saint Laurent took inspiration from men’s clothing and the influence of Chanel to create a style that accompanied the popular feeling of the new times. In the midst of the second feminist wave, the civil rights movement and the fight for the rights of the LGTBIQ+ collective, fashion has reinvented itself to meet the needs demanded by society. The effective incorporation of women into liberal professions, historically exercised by men, has made the process a synonym for emancipation and powerful dressing (power clothing). “The normal thing is that women tried to look like people of power, who were always men, so efforts to achieve equality involved imitating their behaviors and reproducing their clothes,” explains Ana Velasco Molpeceres, professor , at elDiario.es. Complutense University of Madrid specializing in fashion and social change studies.
It’s normal for women to try to look like people in power, who are always men. Efforts to achieve equality therefore involved imitating their behaviors and reproducing their clothing.
Ana Velasco Molpeceres
— professor at UCM specializing in fashion studies
The questioning of gender roles has given meaning to the use of costume also in circles weird and intellectuals. “In the case of the LGTBIQ+ group, the costume is not used to integrate into masculinized environments, but on the contrary: they appropriate something very masculine, not to integrate, but to transgress,” explains Elizabeth Duval, writer and current secretary. of communications by Sumar, who usually wears jackets, suit pants and vests during his public appearances. From this perspective, we can read the uniforms of writers and artists like Susan Sontag, Fran Lebowitz and Patti Smith, or the costumes of Diane Keaton in Annie Hall (1977), which represented the new archetype of the woman of the 70s and 80s.
A conservative shift in fashion
There remains the model which dominated the trends of the last decade with sportswear or athleticswhich transformed tracksuits and casual street fashion, with sneakers and sweatshirts, into luxury items and new status symbols. The paradigm shift is seen on the catwalks, series and windows of fast fashion chains, which opt for basics and neutral colors with straight cuts.
In times of crisis, fashion tends to veer towards the conservative: “It is not new, nor a secret, that in times of uncertainty, resorting to classic clothing considered socially appropriate is an insurance: they place us in the group that we do not want to abandon, it gives us security at a very primary and visceral level,” María José Pérez Méndez, fashion journalist and co-founder of the Dmoda.io platform, told this media. Thus, at a time when the credibility of democratic institutions is diminishing, where far-right proclamations are multiplying and where people are suffering the consequences of the loss of purchasing power, we are witnessing the return of one elegance from another time: more classic, Western and bourgeois.
His goal is to fill an ambitious role that seeks to emulate the style of the elites. As the French philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky already announced in his work The ephemeral empire of the ephemeral: fashion and its destiny in modern societies (Anagram, 1990), “[…] Fashion decrees manage to spread thanks to the desire of individuals to resemble those who are judged superior, those who radiate prestige and rank.
The paradigm shift is seen on the catwalks, series and windows of fast fashion chains, which opt for basics and neutral colors with straight cuts.
As teleworking becomes more widespread, social networks are full of images of young women dressed as if they worked for a company in the financial district of a big city. “The girls we see in these campaigns don’t look like they’re their own bosses. They run from place to place through a financial district, some carrying diaries, pens, coffees between their fingers and taking notes as they go. It’s the desire for work in a company, within an office and for a time before the extension of remote work,” explains Alba Correa, journalist specializing in fashion. In addition to fueling nostalgia, digital environments encourage the desire to blend in with the content we consume: we want to be like those working girl who convey success and we do it by dressing like them.
Culture of effort vs. desacralization of work
The proliferation on the Internet of a community of users who defend the culture of effort and want to imitate the lifestyle of brokers and investors from their bedrooms, gives wings to mass market invite us to dress like white-collar workers; even if our lives have nothing to do with the profile of these workers. “There are people who cannot dress the way they want. [en el trabajo] because they work in a bakery, drive a bus or look after minors. It is incongruous that we suggest they dress as if they were going to the office to go to the cinema or go out with friends,” adds Correa.
But this current which exalts the myth of meritocracy coexists with a change of mentality in this regard which particularly affects the younger generations, with the demand for the right to a life beyond productivity. Proposals such as the four-day working day, family conciliation or digital disconnection are beginning to become part of political discourse and are consolidating as a current of thought that is already permeating public opinion. In recent years, work criticism and general fatigue have become part of Internet humor through irony-filled posts, but they also appear in the accounts of millennial and zeta voices in works such as Supersaur (Blackie Books, 2022), Joy (Siruela, 2023) and Something is coming soon (Editorial Sigilo, 2024).
Thus arises the paradox: among these anti-work messages and reflections defended by the most progressive sectors, an aesthetic evocation of the culture of effort sneaks in, and this particularly through the digital environment, where marketing and fashion industry idealize so-called trends core of the body, mermaid office And business core. “Many people who dress as if they were going to the office but work from home benefit from the comforts acquired by the left. They don’t realize that they are imagining a lifestyle that they don’t really share,” explains Velasco Molpeceres.
