“The trouble with simple living is that, though it can be joyful, rich, and creative, it isn’t simple.”
– Doris Janzen Longacre
Text: Iliana Deligiorgi
From Dior’s New Look to Hussein Chalayan’s technological minimalism, looks that worship the ‘less is more’ phrase are always there in the history of fashion. For us, it was probably Coco Chanel and her ‘Little Black Dress’ that established a new era in fashion, when Gabrielle decided to strip away any unnecessary garments from the evening dress. However, Paul Poiret did also appreciate some plainness a few years before Coco. Since then, you will find many fashion designers of modern and contemporary time that not only ‘don’t buy’ the notion that fashion has to be elaborated to be beautiful or artistic, but continuously prove that personal style and elegance have nothing to be jealous of.
Since the days of Christobal Balenciaga and until Yves Saint Laurent brought back the trend in the 70’s, less and less fashion designers decide to tone down their collection and we come across some really complicated and elaborated masterpieces or some truly unnecessary heavy couture dresses, which stick to the dressing style of the Victorian era. After 2010, however, fashion is turning back to minimalism, with young designers ready to rediscover the beauty of less, such as Alexander Wang, Raf Simons, Jil Sander, Phoebe Philo and many others among them.
Mixing the past with the present, here are some of the best odes to minimalism in fashion:
