"Normcore: Fashion for Those Who Realize They’re One in 7 Billion"

[Phuel]

I think the only people that are making a statement of this are, as you've pointed out Scott, hipsters that are desperate for an "insider" style and editors that are lapping up anything to be in the know. It's all so superficial and as much fashion-victim to me as blindly and mindlessly latching onto the latest high fashion trend.

Truth is, there's nothing new about adopting a sensible, practical, and utilitarian dress. As ellastica's digging has shown, it's been around, and written about, since the 90s as a "style". And the reality of it is, some people that can afford very expensive high fashions, and some people working in the industry, have more or less always worn sensible clothes when doing their jobs. I remember my very well-off Persian friends would wear Fila, sweatpants and New Balance when shopping; they never dressed up to go to Vuitton when I was younger-- and this was way before the sweatpants and a Vuitton bag trend of the 2000s. Now, designer and photographers friends dress as utilitarian as possible for work-- Phoebe dressing down is more about her work and lifestyle than making a fashion statement to me.

When your work is to be as creative as possible, you don't need to express that in your dress, because it shows in your work.

 

[ssgghh]

^I have to agree with you, a lot of fashion designers have always dressed in a normcore way. But the fact that it has a name today and we are talking about it as a trend definitely supports the fact that it is a sign of times, times of changing fashion and new trends on a monthly basis, times when you see a trend online and get bored of it before you can even buy any of it in the stores and ultimatively times when the fast pace of buying and designing is just not even remotely sustainable. I think normcore is an appropriate reaction to it and a statement maybe, but also an expression of a need to buy a piece of clothing that will not be outdated in a couple of weeks, a genuine need for fashion to slow down?

 

[ellastica]

so it's always been intrinsically present. so to see this suddenly as some sort of specific movement is kind of comical in a way.

As Scott pointed out this bland if not functional and practical side of fashion has always been present but these 90s references also points out as far as trends go "norm core" does indeed have roots, even if those blindly jumping on the bandwagon are blithely unaware of this!

Another great late 90s example of "norm core" courtesy Bazaar/Tonne Goodman: Shady Pines in Bazaar April 1999. and in case you were wondering the last image from that post is actually my scan (pre TFS membership). Which come to think of it, this was the first time this editorial was specifically singled out on the wonderful world wide web. I posted this on either my flickr or now defunct blog, asking who shot that editorial (Mikeal Jansson).

I've already spotted a couple of "norm core" induced editorials rearing it's high fashion/ avant bland alter egos in recent magazines.

What made fashion magazines and street trends so fascinating pre-internet age was the the grass roots nature of it. And to use another music analogy, if you think about all of the great "alternative' musical movements and cities/regions from which they originated Seattle, DC, NYC, Chapel Hill etc etc is that these "trends" were a unique reflection of that cities culture and originally happened in isolation. But with relentless touring (not tweeting, instragraming), and nurturing some of those bands became big, on a national or if they were truly dedicated on an International level.

Today there is no isolation, slow nurturing, and build-up. It's Instant Gratification of Everything. Insta this, Insta that and that and that and that...

Which I believe is very harmful to Art, Literature, Music, Fashion, Design. Creation is a wonderful, intrinsic, primal, human PROCESS. Be patient. Convenience is killing culture.

That cool new band you saw at your favorite club, well you truly discovered them because you put the thought, time and energy in seeking and tracking down their latest LP in the local record shop, newspaper or fanzine.( The decline of the record shop kills me. I even considered accepting job offers from a local record shop before they become extinct).

Discovery wasn't this passive point and click motion. People physically had to go out and find this stuff. That trend, came about because fans put themselves out there and interacted on a with other fans and the artists, on a human, eye to eye, face to face level. Trends in music and fashion were so much more interactive.

Following a trend meant you lived it and breathed it, not simply clicked "Follow". For me what bothers me about this "normcore" trend is that it's not genuine, from the heart. Those 90s fashion references are treated with this condescending undertone, as if they were novelties.

As someone whose formative teenage years did not involve the internet, this is really off-putting. All of those fashion and music trends i experimented with in high school I loved and owned them; immersed and educated myself over a period of many many years. My love of fashion magazines started when I was 5 thanks to my brothers discard VOGUEs from the library. In the case of my musical passions, older sibling of friends introduced me to the joys of alternative rock or whatever current new thing my brain could absorb. I learned and appreciated the context of past trends. And I'm sure this is situation the other commenters and long-time members of TFS can relate to!

People seem to be simply latching onto things on a whim and out of amusement ha ha Seinfeld, 90s Anna Wintour, adidas slides. It's not funny, it was my Youth and those things meant something to me.

To me this trend is simply reactive, and empty. I'm not sensing a real message from those making those garment choices, taking part in this norm core " movement."

How is normcore actually taking a stand against fast fashion?

HINT: Buying designer Birkenstocks is NOT the answer!

 

[fashionista-ta]

Doesn't this 'normcore' term describe how the vast majority of men have dressed my entire life? Not sure what has changed ...

A lot of designers wear a uniform, but I'm not at all sure that's the same as normcore. It's usually a very specific, particular look ...

 

[MulletProof]

All my earliest fashion memories come from the 90s, and yet I don't feel that protective of it. Maybe I remember them all distorted but they were vapid as hell too. I think the stability that reigned in a lot of countries combined with the clashing of the children of the hippies and of the babyboomers created a lot of tendencies (not necessarily talking about fashion here) where everything that was embraced came with a pride of being smarter (result of higher academic opportunities I assume) or just more thoughtful or meaningful... when the consumerism was up the roof, probably even worse than now because there were not enough platforms to make fun or criticize the status and the solemnity that came with it.

Even the "simplicity" in the second half feels so conceited, it's more my time than something like grunge (I was too small for that) and I know it was a response to the excess but somehow even the strictness of it, this encounter of functionality with cosmopolitan sophistication also came as part of a generation that behaved almost puritanically.

There was this ideal of democracy that no one was really experiencing as close as we can now and you could find it in aspects like music. I'm sure it wasn't very different for a lot of generations and people my age but I for one knew that guy a few years older than I was that was like the dealer, he had all the music nobody knew (found god knows where), he had already attended shows by the time you heard these bands, wear things you'd find only in very specific stores.... in LA lol. The terms these fountains of "cool" would spread their knowledge was up to them. You could catch up on your own, but it was more costly. Of course you lived the trend, because there was room to create a whole cult and lifestyle around something that relied a lot on word of mouth and was not being documented vastly and no one could easily access mostly due to conditioning (being introduced to that cool guy through the cousin of your friend? conditioning; fashion at home? conditioning too). I for one am very glad the internet killed a good chunk of that. It was rooted on classicism just like fashion at the height of haute couture. I don't think the amount of people having access interferes with their ability to process and assimilate art and its expressions.

It's been a while since we've been readapting trends from previous decades so I don't see this particularly different. They're fun and short-lived and then their time's up. Others channel the 60s and no 75 year old accuses them of stealing his memories. It's impossible for a trend inspired in a decade to replace or replicate it in any way, because you cannot replicate a socioeconomic state, let alone events.. you just take what embellished it then and that selection is a statement in itself about our times. A shy one but still.

The sado in me will always enjoy someone diving into a fashion victim costume (the halter top and nike logos and chokers and knowing it'll have to go in less than a year) but one thing I get from some of the elements being reworked now is that it speaks discomfort not just towards the speed of fashion (which I agree with) but also with the way fashion's been democratized, and I think that's unfortunate.. I don't think anyone really wants to go back to that side of the 90s where snobbery was a serious occupation. Nor I see self-expression as being more restricted by the availability and disposability of fashion nowadays, it's this idea that you must earn permission to play with clothes or a certain type of clothes (seen in this trend and the resistance to this trend too) what we should be abandoning...

 

[Not Plain Jane]

great discussion!

ellastica, it's interesting how you equated punk and grunge style with music, because of course music and fashion have often gone hand-in-hand (cf. also hip hop, new wave/romantics, goth synth etc).

is there normcore musical alliance? methinks not. unless it's all the bland stuff i'm hearing on the radio. ha ha.

 

[eizhowa]

^Normcore just means being "hardcore normal" though, doesn't it? So listening to any commercial pop music should do it, really...

 

[Les_Sucettes]

^Normcore just means being "hardcore normal" though, doesn't it? So listening to any commercial pop music should do it, really...

LOL.

I do not think the "normcore" people would approve. But that's basically it, non...

 

[ssgghh]

How is normcore actually taking a stand against fast fashion?

HINT: Buying designer Birkenstocks is NOT the answer!

In the most basic way: If you buy something that does not necessarily stand out, you are more likely to wear it for more than a couple of times for more than a couple of months. And you might start thinking of buying less but quality instead of more but rubbish. That being if the trend grew to be more of a lifestyle for people and not just a 3-monthly fad.

 

[softgrey]

normcore is boring and lazy...

but if it means that people who are really bad at fashion will stop infecting the visual landscape with the horrors they create, then i am all for it...

 

[eizhowa]

^They are still infecing it with "normcore" looks

 

[softgrey]

^which is the same as being invisible, so i am ok with that...

 

[Melisande]

From ArtReview October issue :

No More Normcore
by Sam Jacob

Luckily for us, just as we’ve apparently lost the organic ability to generate trends and movements ourselves, there are trend forecasters more than willing to do it for us. Such is the case with ‘normcore’, a word coined by the self-styled ‘trend forecasting group’ K-Hole in late 2013 that has gone on to feature in columns like this one ever since. It’s a word that, though it may not actually describe a real phenomenon, does suggest a semblance of zeitgeisty sensibility. ‘Normcore doesn’t want the freedom to become someone,’ K-Hole wrote in the ‘Youth Mode’ report that introduced the idea: ‘Normcore moves away from a coolness that relies on difference to a postauthenticity that opts into sameness.’ In other words, it’s postavant- garde, an imaginary trend that declares itself exhausted by the stylistic revolutions that have traditionally characterised youth culture. It suggests that only by rejecting the trappings of stylistic expression can we find a new authentic form of expression; normality as something uncompromising, ordinariness being as in-your-face as the aural assaults or fleshy provocation that ‘-core’ usually denotes.

The irony being, of course, that the world normcore wants to escape from is the very world co-opted by trend forecasters and their ilk, a world where everything we own is imagined to be a prop, where our clothes are costumes and the places we live are stage sets. In other words, any authentic cultural expression has been rendered impossible by the kind of industry that K-Hole represents. Normcore is the sound of that world collapsing from the inside even as it smirks.

The idea of the normal-as-radical is, of course, nothing new. Back in 2005, designers Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa coined the term ‘supernormal’ as a way to describe objects of design ‘with the design left out’. Morrison wrote, ‘I have been feeling more and more uncomfortable with the increasing presence of design in everyday situations and in products lined up on the shelves of everyday shops… Design, which is supposed to be responsible for the man-made environment we all inhabit, seems to be polluting it instead.’ For Morrison and Fukasawa, the agents of design culture – magazines, blogs, marketing – have distorted the real role of design (and designers). If, they say, contemporary ‘design makes things seem special’, then ‘who wants normal if they can have special?’ Their collection of supernormal objects included the Rex vegetable peeler, the simple plastic bag as well as design classics like Marcel Breuer’s tubular steel side table and Dieter Ram’s 606 shelving system.

Reclaiming ‘normal’ was, for Morrison and Fukasawa, an idealistic project that attempted to reclaim authenticity, a heartfelt plea from designers caught in the cycles of production that industry demands. Unsurprisingly, they were struck by the idea in the midst of the Salone del Mobile, the gigantic Milan trade fair that annually debuts a vast slick of new and entirely unnecessary designer objects.

Both supernormal and normcore are tactics that attempt to construct an escape from the contemporary world of design, an escape we all sympathise with. But beware the idea of normality in design, because ‘normal’ itself is just as artificial a concept as that which it seeks to escape from. What we imagine normal to be is simply a set of established codes and typologies that are subject to exactly the same cultural tides as the most extreme designed gestures.

In other words, there is no escape. If anything, the idea of the normal, through its rejection of the possibility of an avant-garde, denies the possibility that we might design our way out of our current predicament. Instead of showing us a way out, it simply freezes us in an eternal present. The elevation of normality sets design apart from the grand sweep of history and annexes it from the socioeconomic milieu from which design actually emerges. The cult of normality may reject the excesses of designer culture, yet at the same time it only serves to reinforce those very tendencies.