For years fashion has been an extrovert and outlandish realm, it’s always been about turning those heated bulbs of the spotlights and making sure they focus on you. If you look back to my very first blog post, I mention that at my first fashion week I witnessed one girl standing in the middle of the entrance to Somerset House, in the most ridiculous outfit she could clearly pull from designers whilst wearing shoes with platforms so big you could start building the foundations to a small house with them... but all eyes were on her. It was a battle of the bloggers to get her picture, with brawls and riots taking place to get to her. So I just stood back and merged into the background, in my charity shop bought shirt and wax jacket, kind of hoping that if I tried hard enough I’d eventually merge with the bricks behind me. Having never been one for show (I used to make my mum park round the corner from my school when she dropped me off, as our car was a red that was so vibrant animals actually ran away from it) yet having always been interested in fashion, I have often wondered where I can buy this jarred self-confidence from. However, little did I know then when I was trying to become half girl, half wall that I could soon count myself as part of a new fashion movement slowly taking over known as ‘normcore’.
I’ve googled extensively where the name ‘normcore’ actually came from for this emerging trend. Is it a combination of normal and encore? Or a way of expressing being normal from your very core? Nobody actually knows, and It’s a pretty shit word. I find it hard to take a motion seriously when the name sounds like it’s been put together by people just shouting words at each other and hoping for the best. However, the idea of ‘normcore’ is the idea of blending in. It’s about the rejection of the exhibition that fashion can lead us to and becoming a ‘blank canvas’..... It’s so uncool, it’s cool. It’s function over fashion, it’s choosing to not make a statement so much so that you are making one…. make any sense?
What is it that makes ‘normcore’ what it is then? Think your Dad dressed for doing house jobs on a Saturday. It’s about the non descript, the completely ordinary, the un obvious and the practical. For example of this idea slowly seeping it’s way into fashion; heels are a out this season, and there is nothing more fashionable than keeping your foot horizontal. As Stella McCartney delicately puts “there is something about having the confidence to wear a shoe that is not 10 inches tall that sends a message” and that sums up normcore, it’s having the confidence to not have to be extravagant and far out in an industry that relies on being so, and it’s that that proves just how fashionable you actually are.
With fashion being a pretty fickle industry, where majority it’s not what you know it’s who you know and what you wear, it’s somewhat refreshing for a movement to be going forward that focuses on substance over style rather than the other way round. In an age where the idea of ‘fashion’ has become overwhelmingly popular, where we are drowning in celebrity endorsements and trends, style has become what I like to call ‘photocopy fashion'... we just reproduce it rather than discover it.
However the movement of normcore opposes this. It’s the same as how minimalism came about as a reaction to abstract expressionism, just because you don’t paint the most intricate picture doesn’t mean you appreciate the subject any less. It’s more than a fashion trend, it’s a remark on the idea of fashion itself, and sewing the seeds that perhaps you don’t need to be obviously fashionable to actually appreciate it.
Birkenstock is footwear brand of the year, Veronika Heilbrunner regularly wears running tops and nike socks, and Steve Jobs is a normcore icon. It may have a uninspiring title, but the concept itself is the total opposite, and turns the idea of fashion on top of itself. Making me wonder not am I fashionable enough to be in this industry.... but am I normal enough to prove my worth?
So move over Lady Gaga in your carcass adorned dress and shift aside that peachy bum Kimmy K and your Louboutin dressed feet; and hello Adidas socks, hello black polo necks, hello comfortable footwear.... and welcome to fashion.
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