What are the latest fashion trends? Is there even anything different or new in stores…?
Well, I hope I’m not the only one wearing sweatshirts and sweatpants every day, which is an upgrade from my pjs.
With COVID and quarantine, a lot has changed about our sense of fashion and the industry at large. There’s been a huge shift from cute, fancy, and crazy to comfortable and even more comfortable. Goodbye to jeans, goodbye to skirts and dresses, and hello to loungewear. With the inevitable change of social scenery, the fashion industry also had to adapt. The latest trends are comfy t-shirts, oversized sweatshirts, SWEATPANTS, fluffy slippers, and socks… As you can see, it is a long list of comfortable clothes.
You might ask how all those fancy, high-end brands coped with this crisis. Given that they are not going to sell many fancy dresses anytime soon, most fashion brands have shifted towards selling more casualwear. And of course, a new era has begun with matching brand-logo masks and sweats, but I will not be commenting on that.
As casualwear and loungewear become more prominent in our lives, some new brands have had a chance to shine. A brand that I have been seeing a lot these days is called Pangaia, which sells organic, recycled, and environmentally friendly, comfortable casual tracksuit sets and outerwear, compatible with all kinds of weather and body sizes. Honestly, the products are pretty basic and straight-forward but are not very cheap. Their best-selling item is a plain sweatshirt, which is offered in a variety of colors. A year ago, something like this would probably not have been very interesting, but now, considering our daily activities — wake up, turn computer on, go on Zoom, study, see 2-3 friends on a lucky day, cook/order food, watch Netflix, sleep — the concept of simple and comfort-promising clothing is more attractive than ever before.
So, is the comfortable clothing trend not fashionable enough? I don’t know. But, it is the new lifestyle and fashion has to adapt.