Dare to be ordinary

Over the past few weeks, a new word crept into the fashion lexicon, prompting thought pieces from several publications. Normcore, used to define a supposedly growing anti-fashion sentiment, was bandied around everywhere. According to Vanity Fair, “It’s about going deep on the ‘90s — about latching onto the things, like Tevas and fleeces, that never had cachet in the first place.” British Vogue, meanwhile, calls it “a palate cleanser after the ubiquity of print … the plainer the better.”

A New York magazine article, published in February, got the conversation going. K-Hole, the trend forecasting collective that coined the term in an October 2013 report, used normcore not to describe a particular look but a general attitude, “embracing sameness deliberately as a new way of being cool, rather than striving for ‘difference.’” The global fashion press has apparently misunderstood it.

‘NOTHING SPECIAL’

To bring the blur back into focus, K-Hole posted an explanation on their Facebook page. The inventors state that normcore has more to do with personalities and has absolutely no connection to clothes: “#Normcore finds liberation in being nothing special, and realizes that adaptability leads to belonging.” As it turns out, it’s not about stonewashed mom jeans and black polo necks.

One can’t blame the media for mixing up such an ambiguous idea with an older K-Hole concept called Acting Basic, which refers to dressing with forced neutrality in order to avoid standing out. As Dazed magazine notes, even Fiona Duncan, the writer behind the feature that started it all, has admitted to the confusion caused by a disproportionate focus on Acting Basic items such as fleeces and comfortable trainers. “The piece went through many, many rounds of drafts, through several editors, each time becoming more and more about fashion.”

COLLECTIVE ABOUT-FACE

It may be too late, however, as normcore has come to articulate our latest collective about-face, fashion-wise. Since contrived, cartoonish eccentricity — epitomized by the likes of Vogue Japan creative consultant Anna Dello Russo — has become the standard, one way to recalibrate is to embrace its opposite and reject anything touched by fashion’s stardust. How else can we explain the growing appeal of high-waisted mom jeans, Birkenstocks with socks, nondescript sweatshirts and drab khakis among the Tumblr set?

Forbes offers this explanation. “For a generation trying to steer free of marketers’ grapple hooks, normcore provides a brash alternative. Millennials have been categorized by brands their entire lives… now they are finding fresh spirit, freedom, rebellion and insulation in a fashion meme that rattles our perceptions of what fashion ‘looks’ might, could or should be.”

DRESSING LIKE A TOURIST

The way I see it, normcore is the ultimate manifestation of a person’s self-confidence. Appropriating an item or idea deemed taboo or passé and making it work, recontextualizing it, is what fashion is all about. When attractive young people cosplay as dowdy American tourists, it is as if to say, “I am so hot that even dressing like a Seinfeld cast member cannot obscure my hotness.” As Jezebel put it, there’s a difference between “being an actual dorky dad and a guy in dork’s clothing whose coolness is so innate that no one would ever mistake him for one.”

Science fiction writer William Gibson first painted a picture of normcore in his 2003 novel Pattern Recognition. In it, logo-phobic protagonist Cayce Pollard was detailed as wearing “a small boy’s black Fruit of the Loom T-shirt, a thin gray V-neck pullover purchased by the half-dozen from a supplier to the New England prep schools, and a new and oversized pair of black 501’s, every trademark carefully removed.” It’s fascinating that 11 years later, this make-believe functional dresser would inspire an aesthetic — or non-aesthetic, more accurately — predicated on the desire to fit in rather than stand out. I’d like to see how this evolves.

Mainstream minimalism

The notion of normcore was noticeable as early as spring/summer 2011, when Arena Homme Plus came out with its “Supernormal” issue. The UK magazine, wrote editor Max Pearmain, “asked people to share their versions of normality” and “turned to brands we have a long-time affection for.”

These days, retailers renowned for function are cashing in on the on-purpose blank-slate trend and cottoning on to the possibility that people may genuinely be tired by the fact that to achieve status one needs to be different from those around him or her. Richard Nicoll, newly appointed creative director of British youth label Jack Wills, calls it The Special Normal and The Perfect Boring.

Gap, in a clever move, was quick to rejoice at their sudden surge of coolness by reminding the public via Twitter: “We’ve been carrying your #normcore staples since 1969.” Gap’s Rebekka Bay illustrates this chic frumpiness on the cover of the latest Bloomberg Businessweek.

Jörgen Andersson, co-global chief marketing officer at Uniqlo, sees nothing wrong with sameness and, in fact, considers their straightforward displays and no-frills offerings a decided plus. He tells The Business of Fashion, “It’s so generic that it is instantly recognizable as Uniqlo.”

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