Fashion trends for Spring Summer 2021: not just for one season

This is not only a guide to the garments and accessories that will be hot for Spring Summer estate 2021, but also a reflection on the way the fashion system has revised its style codes and adjusted them to our new everyday needs. Creativity shows new ways to mirror contemporary times between reflections and deviations, understated minimalism and chaotic cross-breeding, fully representing the contradictions of the times we are living in. Understanding the context helps comprehending fashion, to truly own a garment and not just to wear it.

Like it has happened in the past, after the distress (and today’s global crisis, that especially affects fragile categories) we expect a revolution, a radical change to markedly distinguish “before” and “after”. We are discovering a new way of life, at home and with our jobs. With new shopping experiences and trends that include knitted or crocheted ensembles, socks to wear with shoes indoors and outdoors, bags to carry our phones and sustainable or antibacterial fabrics.

The new challenge of fashion

After WW2 came the New Look conceived by Christian Dior, considered at the time the rising star of Parisian couture. The Bar suit (corolla skirt plus fitted jacket) became the post-war manifesto, a flower blossomed from the ashes of the global conflict. Too avant-garde, and thus not too flattering, the 1971 collection created by Yves Saint Laurent was a blend of styles, colors and materials (also humble fabrics), that suggested the necessity to mix everything people have in their wardrobes. The key word here is, precisely, necessity, because due to the meager finances, people frantically browse through second hand markets and even in chests found in attics, to define one’s individual style. The image that Yves had in mind was that of Paloma Picasso: knee-length skirts, squared shoulders and platform shoes, a remembrance of the war’s hard times. This goes to show that from a crisis, from a deep change, something new has to come, something different, something good.

The Spring Summer 2021 collections were the first to be created and promoted in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis and convey decidedly a different feel with respect to previous offerings. So, we are asking ourselves: will fashion still make us dream?

Fashion is starting a new conversation with culture, moving away from the logics of consumerism and embracing the many incarnations of sustainability. “Recession has focused our attention on waste – noted Lucy Siegle in her book To Die For: is Fashion Wearing out the World? (2011) – many women confess they only wear a small part of their wardrobe, generally around 20 per cent. If this is the situation, it’s preferable to buy less clothes, and to improve their quality, so that they last longer, in line with a sustainable approach”. The direction taken with special projects - Scrap-less by Gucci, to reduce waste, and water, energy and resource consumption; the Fashion Pact to save the planet endorsed by top brands such as Armani, Chanel, Hermès and Prada, or Sustainable Thinking from Ferragamo -, meets with heritage, a nonstop source of inspiration. The Renaissance looked to classicism, while Christian Dior used to create his sketches looking at artworks in museums. Today designers study, rework and revisit vintage fashion. Creating new stories, starting from their own history. The aim is also that of raising the awareness of consumers with long-lasting garments and accessories that will used and loved, and then passed on to the new generations.

Archival or iconic pieces, ethical or recycled yarns, dead stock fabrics, made to order, handmade, second hand and custom-made items are the trends we have also detected in Speing Summer 2021 collections and that we will definitely keep embracing, and not for just one season. It’s Giorgio Armani’s “necessary luxury”, the call to “buy less” from Vivienne Westwood, it’s the “beauty of diversity” seen at Valentino. A “new” fashion, a new way to dream.