Is today’s fashion mirroring the current political climate?

As Boris Johnson wades into the door of number 10, putting on the shackles of being the Prime Minister tasked with seeing Brexit through, how does this dilute down into the streets of London and its’ culture? Amidst a very turbulent time that is making unprecedented ripples throughout 21st century British politics, one has to step back and consider the wider implications of this. For a storm does not just rain but it floods, ruins, and decays everything in sight.  

                              

                                It’s the first of August 2019, the end of summer looms closer and these are the fashion images that appear before me on my Pinterest feed:     

A step back into traditional silhouettes and fabrics - boxy blazers, timeless shirts, but with a twist. Typically masculine suits have been crafted into something sweeter, with feminine necklines, statement accessories, and sleek hairdos. As a new political day dawns, the sunrise of modern fashion is focused on reinventing and updating the past, rather than unearthing everything as we know it. It seeks not to be radical or offensive, but interrogates the styles that have overarched British fashion for decades, timeless styles that underwrite exactly what it means to be quintessentially British. After Theresa May was constantly stripped of her feminine identity by the British media, repeatedly capturing her at unflattering angles, or degrading her based on her choice of shoes or purse, today’s fashion movement is standing up against this misogyny. Even now as May relaxes on holiday in Italy, she is being attacked for buying jewellery, playing into this polemic of women being belittled, often using fashion as the launchpad.

                            But what I find inspiring is female retaliation through the means of not only re-styling masculine areas of fashion, but being simultaneously traditional and innovative. Instead of veering away from the past, and completely trying to detach from traditions that have been well-loved for years, fashion today is embracing those styles and tweaking them for the modern consumer’s demands. Creating a fresh look, but paying homage to the traditions that laid the foundations to make it possible. Perhaps a lesson Johnson himself could take when negotiating Brexit…