Anyone watching the shows this season would be forgiven for thinking fashion had teleported back in time to Woodstock ‘69. Yep, Planet Mode has the hots for hippies, confirming, once again, that boho chic is back. This time, though, it’s more than a raffia Loewe bucket bag and kaftan you’ll be needing to nail the look. From Roberto Cavalli to Masha Popova and Ralph Lauren, dressing like a dropout is the ultimate flex.
Sure, fashion might be run by the proverbial Man, but it’s the far-out designers that grease its wheels. As such, conglomerate-owned megabrands and indie labels alike are citing countercultural figures, tasseling and patchworking their way through the schedule.
Of course, looking hip has always been hip, not least for some of the biggest brands. Missoni’s Fiammato zigzags and Etro’s easy-breezy prairie dresses have long held court among monied Italians switching off for the summer. In fact, it’s not uncommon for the latter designer’s show notes to namecheck crusty clubnights (see SS22, based on Veronica Etro’s old stomping ground, ‘Whirl-Y-Gig’) and countercultural figures like William Burroughs et al. (see AW10). Heck, even Dior has been tuning in and dropping out, with Kim Jones bringing the very words of Beat novelist Jack Kerouac to his AW22 runway and Maria Grazia Chiuri reviving May ‘68’s quilted kaftans for AW18.
However, for SS24, hippy fare was even bigger, especially at Fausto Puglisi’s Roberto Cavalli offering, which came replete with creamy, fringed satchels and laced suede chaps that completely enveloped the boots below. Alongside aviators, natural locks, macramé bras and snake-print trews, this felt more like the wardrobe of Janis Joplin than it did your typical sciura.
But why? Perhaps, it’s something in the air. Festivals are back in full swing post-Covid and young people are out protesting daily. On the other hand, hippies have had their name dragged through the mud recently, no thanks to the guitar-wielding fauxhemians now present at any musical event. In many ways, Etro was a welcome reminder of what being a hippy once meant: jamming out to Jimi Hendrix, touring festivals on the cheap and banning the bomb.
For further style cues, look to Marco de Vincenzo’s latest from Etro, a smorgasbord of Cambodian textiles – serving as bodycons and throws – as well as patchworked denim skirts, splayed at the legs for an East-meets-West look that’s less gap year and more mid-life sabbatical.
Once you’ve tried that, stop by your old friend Missoni, which – rather than opting for its traditional travelled sartorialism – delivered its trippiest collection yet. We’re talking knotted dresses that unfurl into psychedelic kaleidoscopes, raffia pyjama pants and sheer geometric bodysuits that look fresh from an acid trip. Creative director Filippo Grazioli, as it goes, had simply been studying Ottavio Missoni’s archival book of patterns, Kaleidoscope of Dreams, but the hallucinogenic allure was lost on no one.
And quite right, too. We needed an excuse to dream, especially when elsewhere, the runway has been haunted with ghostly tropes, perhaps symptomatic of what Jacques Derrida and later Mark Fisher called hauntology – a cultural malaise confirming capitalism’s deep and real entrenchment.
Maybe, then, this free-wheeling bohemianism that jars against the spectral notes of SS24 is a brighter taste of Fisher’s final semi-formulated theory, acid communism. That is, by embracing the ethos of 1960’s counterculture, minus the misogynistic sleaze, we can let loose from what we know, step away from the baseline and dream of some utopia as yet unimaginable. At least, that’s one way to make sense of all the buffalo check ponchos and jumbo-tasselled handbags at Stefan Cooke, not to mention the technicolour, druidic robe and fishing-net bags peppered through Gabriela Hearst’s otherwise sober collection.
We might ask, though, whether all this points to the hippy movement’s intrinsically middle-class beginnings. Indeed, it was students and naughty rich kids, if you remember correctly, making all that fuss in the sixties, so it’s no shock that fashion, as one of the leisure class’s favourite pastimes, might tap into those utopian ideals the well-heeled have since forgotten.
Certainly, Ralph Lauren’s return to the runway chimes with this thinking, moving from preppy, sorority-style suits into Mystic Meg getups replete with fishing tackle beads, taped satin aladdin pants, lamé leather chaps and cropped-sleeve denim kimonos. Meanwhile, sarongs and knotted golden capes served as perfect corporate-lawyer-turned-yogi garb. She’s rich, but as long as that OOO is running, she’ll be reading Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, hoping the revolution that never was has a second wind.
Likewise, Giorgio Arrmani was giving landed lady at large, with beaded cardigans, healing crystal rings and orb-like bangles. Alongside the Little Mermaid palette, knotty necklaces and, you guessed it, yet more fringing, it became apparent that even the highest members of society need to kick out at something.
Nonetheless, if you’re after more than a boho weekend, Masha Popova, queen of the crusty fashionistas has your back. This time, it was bog-died swirls, raw hems and haphazardly patched flower-power jeans, a must for anyone keen to impress their squat mates.
All jokes aside, this could be the third summer of love in the works, so embrace it. You only get one shot at changing the world, and it’s usually limited to your twenties. After that, you succumb to the nine-to-five, pay your taxes and resign yourself to a far staler wardrobe. That is, unless, you heed the hippy designers of today, stay trippy and reject the concept of money altogether – except to buy your Ralph Lauren and Masha Popova look first. Once that’s sorted, pack it in a satchel and drive straight to a commune. Peace out, maaaaaaan.
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Images courtesy of Spotlight