Cozycore gets fresh swagger for a brand new decade
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Fashion |OPINION
This is the season to explore the comforts of covering up, nestling into layers and cozy textures as temperatures drop. With the sunset coinciding with our late-afternoon coffee, dressing for work presents challenges as tights, skirts, heels suddenly seem less inspiring than the feeling of being swaddled all day, replicating the experience of being under the duvet. But does it mean we are going cold on fashion or are we being warmed up for a new and overdue look?
For a decade, tight has been the only right answer to every style question. Red carpet best-ofs boast a bombardment of body-con bandage dresses and bra-and-cycling short combos wrap the loins of Kim Kardashian, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, and Lady Gaga, when she wasn’t attired in meat. Women have been leading with their femininity, our contours emphasized by pouring ourselves into second skins with just enough room between epidermis and elastane to squeeze a pair of Spanx. Be gone any sign of muffin top, welcome extreme hourglass.
But singer Billy Eilish who, according to Google, is the most-searched-for celebrity style icon of 2019, is not a member of the spandex sorority. In her figure-obscuring matching oversized T-shirt and shorts, she cuts a striking fashion alternative, recently quipping, “If I was pregnant, nobody would know.”
Billy Eilish's cozycore is fashion-forward elevated casual
And the result is more swagger than sweats, more peppy than sloppy. Accessorizing with cat-eye sunglasses, Gucci messenger bag, rare high-end sneakers with blinged-out laces, crystal-studded face mask, logo-laden bucket hat or teal-colored tresses in twin buns with matching acrylic nails, her look is vibrant, fresh but most of all iconoclastic. She scorns those who comment that she would be much hotter if she didn’t dress the way she does. And 2019 saw her win six Grammys and two AMAs, perform for Chanel and become courted by the luxury fashion industry.
Eilish, who turns eighteen today, with her 45.1 million Instagram followers leads a new band of emotionally intelligent, gender-ambivalent style-seekers, oozing authenticity and defying a society which hyper-sexualizes women, and in particular teenagers. A feminist voice cloaked in strident neon green and graffiti-covered, or bundled into a vast puffy parka emblazoned with doubles Cs, Fs or Gs thrown over basketball separates, she represents Gen Z female empowerment while borrowing from the layered-up elevated casual wardrobe male artists have always enjoyed, formerly considered unmarketable for women. In a campaign for Calvin Klein, she describes her intention to be appreciated for more than womanly wiles: “That’s why I wear baggy clothes. Nobody can have an opinion because they haven’t seen what’s underneath. Nobody can be like, ‘she’s slim-thick,’ ‘she’s not slim-thick’…No one can say any of that because they don’t know.”
Marching in tandem with the emergence of this new style army is our current eco-awareness to fashion's crimes against climate, which further vilifies our skinny jeans and yoga leggings. Is market dominance of the fiber spandex, an anagram of the words “expands,” about to contract? It is non-biodegradable like polyester and the process of making spandex requires petrochemicals, consumes copious energy and releases microplastics into waterways. In 2010, 80 perent of clothing sold in the US contained spandex, according to an NPR report, but as we enter 2020, we have globally committed to the same new year's resolution. 250 brands have now joined the Fashion Pact, the coalition launched during the 2019 G7 summit, to tackle a common core of three key environmental goals: stopping global warming, restoring biodiversity and protecting the oceans. So, if tight is no longer right, and comfy is what’s left, the future looks decidedly cozycore.
Fashion editor Jackie Mallon is also an educator and author of Silk for the Feed Dogs, a novel set in the international fashion industry.
Header image from Wikimedia Commons entitled Pug Snugged in a Blanket by Matthew Henry matthewhenry - http://unsplash.com/photos/U5rMrSI7Pn4 Image at the Wayback Machine (archived on 25 April 2017) Gallery at the Wayback Machine (archived on 12 March 2016)