I Can't Get Past The Era of 2018 Fashion

and I like it that way!

Why was 2018 so sartorially formative for me? On the surface, it was the time of Poketo pale pink concept planners nested in Sun Jellies totes. Dark wash jeans and ribbed long-sleeves from Giu Giu. Crisp white structural blouses with paired with lime green MNZ sandals. Matching your Mari Giudicelli black suede mules with a stylish bag from Trademark and a lavender-colored top with some type of organza layer or scrunchie.

More than that, it was essentially my second fashion coming of age. You know when you look at something and you’re just like, “That’s good, I love it” but you can’t quite reduce it down to five adjectives right in that moment to illustrate how good it is? That was my initial response to 2018 fashion and my efforts to emulate it. Every morning when I got dressed up and listened to Phoenix, it felt like a movie, like I had somewhere to be even if was nowhere really in particular at all. I studied shots from small boutiques selling my favorite brands, the Maryam Nassir Zadeh website, and Alexa Chung’s Instagram trying to find similar on eBay and at the thrift. Romanticization aside, what I knew for sure in that moment was that I felt the most comfortable and confident in my style, and I was having fun doing it.

2022 to early 2023 was a strange period in my life, filled (and fraught) with internal agitation. After experiencing loss, the pandemic, and switching jobs two or three times, I needed to find myself again and figured fashion would be the best place to start. The Universe probably had a laughing-crying fit when it heard that. I found myself squeezing into algorithm-pushed nylon bodysuits and boring trousers paired with Stan Smith sneakers so I could keep things minimal while my brain parsed more “real-life” things out. Shopping secondhand was always part of my closet curation, but at this time it wasn’t, as I felt guilty for indulging in the frivolous while my mental health was literally declining right before my very eyes.

It didn’t work. Turns out you do need to insert joy from other areas of life to filter through all the shitty stuff.

Maryam Nassir Zadeh’s 2018 Spring RTW collection serves as the blueprint if you will for this moment. Coincidentally, the Vogue Runway coverage from the show mirrors my feelings about it being hard to define:

“Still, the cult-adored (and much copied) MNZ look is difficult to put into words. It’s vibrant, arty, charming…sort of unsexy-on-purpose...and just a little bit strange. Zadeh calls it ‘odd elegance.’”

Odd elegance. I love that and I agree. The cuts of most of the pieces I loved weren’t necessarily anything novel—puff sleeve dresses, straight-cut pencil skirts, simple slide sandals, and classic coats. What made most of these commonplace items different were the color, pattern, and material choices made by the designers to synthesize them into something more playful, more like eccentric minimalism. A wrap wool coat could be made interesting and sensory by producing it with a heavy weight lavender-toned bouclé instead of a neutral wool. Simple ribbed tops transformed into art by adding chiffon ruffles on the cuffs. Dark wash jeans rendered more lively with exposed large white buttons and contrast stitching.

The more I write this and put in the effort to define what exactly about this time was so captivating to me, I’m beginning to conclude that maybe it wasn’t even the exact pieces or brands, but more so the vibrant, fizzy takes on ready-to-wear that brought somewhat standard silhouettes into a new era. Pieces were wearable and didn’t demand to be saved for a very specific or particular time—they just packed a little more punch stylistically. 2018 represents the joy of dressing and remixing, one I thought lost in the years after it. But writing about it, the year and the feelings lived come so clearly to me now. It never was lost, I just had to bring it back into the future.

So I’ll retrace my steps, look at old photos and past eBay purchases, armed with more tools and thoughts to help me stop denying the things I know that can bring me back to a place of creative enthusiasm in order to navigate life’s intensity.

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Some recommendations for you outside of fashion:

• Not really a rec, but I just have to mention it. The soundtrack on season three of The Bear was so, so good. Cocteau Twins? The Sundays? Yes.

• I plan to watch John Berger’s Ways of Seeing four-part BBC doc from 1972. You can find the first episode here.

• Japanese nail polish made from drying scallop shells and grounding them into powder to create a base for vibrant colors.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one <3