Fashion is evolving at hyper speed. Mainly because Internet culture is warping the cycle, acting as a liaison and allowing us to voice our style and creating echoes within shared communities. The boom of hyper-feminine looks and micro trends all over TikTok and Instagram is fuelling this change, which is then picked up by brands and designers themselves. Inspiration truly is everywhere, and everything is coming full circle.
Social media has changed the game, establishing these platforms as major players in the world of fashion. Not just from brands, no, but mainly from fashion freethinkers and creators who are harnessing innovative ideas when it comes to dressing and how to showcase feminine power through garments.
From the proliferation of ‘cores’ and super-specific aesthetics, a change has become apparent when it comes to how women (of all ages) are dressing and presenting themselves to the world. Online and IRL. Welcome to the new reality.
I’m a Barbie Girl
In the past three years, fashion has been dominated by balletcore, barbiecore, cottagecore, , and a collection of other ultra-feminine styles — including the potentially cringe lobotomycore — we’ll get to that one shortly. Not to mention the proliferation of bows literally showing up everywhere. Even on food for a cute girl dinner.
Where designers might have once talked about feminism (Dior’s spring 2017 collection comes to mind, which seems like eons ago), the conversation now focuses on true femininity. That said, the two often go hand in hand. Many of these hyperfeminine trends began as a way to unapologetically reclaim feminine aesthetics, which were previously looked down on or used as a reason to not take femininity seriously (“she looks like a bimbo”). While this was once radical, it is now commonplace. Barbie was the highest-grossing film of 2023, taking $1.44 bn, with eight Oscar nominations. Nothing to make fun of.
Can we say we’ve finally reached the era of true pussy power, an idea that was nascent in the early 90s? After all, feminist fashion comes from a place of authenticity. It’s rooted in personal experience and just happens to challenge society’s preconceived notions of gender, beauty and fantasy.
Cue in corsets and bondage-inspired dressing as a tool of liberation.
Stripped from the constructs of patriarchy, corsets have become part of the fashion vocabulary as a frivolous accessory meant to enhance and/or minimize whatever part of the body we choose to. Not what the masses or a fashion elite dictate.
Montreal-based model Camila, who can regularly be seen wearing corsets on her social media channels, believes that embodying feminine personas that are both strong and seductive is one of the cornerstones of feminism 3.0.
“It’s a way to showcase your personality and your style. And it’s liberating. I can be totally dressed up in a pin-up look but I’m in control and that’s what gives me strength. When I dress up like that, I’m doing it for myself. Because I have the choice, nobody is telling me what to wear, how to wear it, or why.”
She also slips into the conversation that corsets are excellent for posture. And, yes, contrary to what most would believe, they do force the wearer to sit up straight. So much about the item of clothing being bad.
The Body in Pieces
It’s interesting to see how dressing up for fun during lockdown became part of a new fashion lexicon once stringent pandemic rules were abandoned. So out to the streets went with a vengeance the corsets, the lacings and the gloves; all usual accoutrements of the boudoir games and erotic fashion paraphernalia. That and the naked dresses that are still super hot for red carpet events.
To the point corsets have become almost mainstream, appearing in all sorts of ultra-democratic fabrics, including fleece, denim and even pinstripe suiting. Of course, the poetic pastel variety of corsets still is riding a powerful crest of popularity. But there are almost infinite versions of corsets, depending on your style. Just do a search for #corset on Instagram or TikTok, and tens of thousands of looks will be served.
London-based designer and model Michaela Stark is one of the newest names in corsetry. But she does things differently, playing with the proportion-shifting properties of the corset, manipulating the body in ways traditional beauty standards have never done, with exposed bulges and flesh ripples exposed from tight ribbons and sculpted boning. Her colour palette is all 18th century rococo pastels, aligned with the coquette aesthetic of the moment.
In 2023, Michaela was part of the revamped Victoria’s Secret fashion show, the brand that once was the bastion of bone-thin supermodels, that is now feeling the need to engage with a more diversified audience.
Michaela’s interest in corsetry shows she’s in control. And instead of her body conforming to an ideal of beauty, she says she’s no longer fighting the way it wants to be. “Instead, I’m pushing it further in that direction,” she says in an interview in Document Journal.
But corsetry, bondage and BDSM-inspired fashion is only part of a more profound transformation taking place when it comes to feminist creativity.
For example, Greek designer Dimitra Petsa’s designs are body-conscious in another sense: They consider what’s happening inside the human body as much as they dress the silhouette. Petsa’s most well-known contribution to fashion is her “wet look,” a method of draping, stitching, and combining sheer fabrics to make garments that seem to be drenched with water.
“This is really the outcome of very long-term research for me because I’ve always been very interested in bodily fluids, the idea of wetness, and how in Western society we are really taught to hide our wetness,” she tells Vogue US.
Female wetness has almost always been controversial — most people who like to think of themselves as sophisticated and evolved eschew the topic, while looking away with disgust. Breastfeeding, crying, periods, and sexual arousal are to be kept under wraps, quite literally. It’s refreshing to see a generational shift in regards to being more accepting of female moistness, overall.
Lobotomycore
Well, here is a strange ultra-niche aesthetic that is quietly making rounds on social media at the moment.
If duckface was the facial expression we learned to master and showcase again and again in the last decade for every selfie, the dissociative pout is the current symbol of detached feminism, meta-irony and nihilism. When times are tough, chaotic and fear-ridden — like now, in a post-pandemic world riddled with conflict and loss of leadership — nihilism suddenly seems like the only viable option when it comes to self-expression.
What sets apart lobotomycore from other online feminine aesthetics is the focus on apathy and “not caring” as a means of being powerful and attractive. You give up. But instead of showing yourself as the girl boss or, at the other end of the spectrum, as being feminine, delicate and soft, the lobotomy chic aesthetic doesn’t practice either. You are as undefined as possible.
The term, which was coined by writer Rayne Fisher-Quann in her article “The cult of the dissociative pout,” is a combination of heroin chic, which glamourizes an unhealthy but glam lifestyle, at times combined with Americana fashion elements via Lana Del Rey or indie sleaze from Y2K.
But why the reference to lobotomy, a barbaric medical procedure that became popular in Western countries during the 50s and 60s to treat patients with mental health problems who were diagnosed as bipolar or anxious? After the surgery, which basically butchered parts of their brain, most of them were left in a perpetual state of apathy, acting mentally detached and out of place.
Maybe because when life is unbearable detachment is the only way to cope. While wearing a fabulous ballgown and staying at Château Marmont, spilling your soul out like a torch songstress…
