Fashion’s choreographed chaos: how the messy girl aesthetic took over
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Trash-filled runways, decomposing clothes, and Kim Kardashian eating Cheetos on the GQ cover. If you think the fashion industry is descending into chaos, you wouldn’t be wrong. Or so we're meant to believe. This past year has signalled a shift, not just in fashion, but in the wider pop-culture, towards embracing the messy and the chaotic. But with a closer look, it’s not hard to see how this movement is less chaos and more curation.
From clean girl to old money to Barbie core - the perfectly polished post-pandemic aesthetics were certainly not for everyone. Attitudes slowly started to shift towards embracing messy, random and carefree behaviour starting with the popularisation of ‘goblin mode’ in 2022: someone who wants to feel comfortable, do and eat whatever they want without trying to be attractive or please other people. But while the clean girl is honest about what it takes to be her, the so-called messy girl seems to champion a ‘I just rolled out of bed and threw any clothes on’ attitude. What you might not know is that in order to be the messy girl that’s considered trendy, and not just plain dirty, you need to fit some strict criteria.
Just look at Alix Earle and Madeline Argy, two influencers who rode the messy girl wave. They now have over 5 million followers on TikTok, and attended some of the biggest fashion shows in the world. While Earle became known for her party girl, hungover binge eating persona, Argy cultivated a relatable character, making unplanned videos while lying in her messy bed. And it worked: they each have a podcast under the Unwell Network launched by Alexandra Cooper, host of the ‘Call her Daddy’ podcast. Earle is a Hot Mess, Argy’s Pretty Lonesome. If the names are not telling enough, the podcasts are exactly what you’d expect: the ultimate commodification of the messy girl trend.
Seeing Alix Earle messily eat a burger on camera and in the same 60-second video get ready for the Miu Miu show in Paris makes me feel like I am 12 again, watching a Victoria’s Secret model eat a burger backstage before going on in lingerie in front of thousands of people. Having grown up in a beauty-oriented Eastern European society, in which I don’t fit the tall and skinny beauty standard, I’ve been made fun of so many times for eating ‘unhealthy’ food. So why do the same people celebrate it when a model does it? In the same fashion, why is it still those that fit the beauty standards that are rewarded for being messy? It highlights the carefully curated balance that these individuals construct: they are relatable enough to be liked, but aspirational enough to be profitable.
It was no surprise then that Miu Miu invited Earle to their SS24 show: it was that season that saw overflowing bags and visible underwear on the runway. The following season AVAVAV invited guests to throw trash at models, while at NYFW KidSuper skilfully decomposed a sweater live on the runway. The industry is getting faster at adapting to trends and carefully curated chaos seems to be a favourite.
“I just ran out and grabbed my boyfriend’s sweater, threw it on and had to get to work”, said Kim Kardashion about the inspiration for her Met Gala look from just a few days ago. It was also Kim that fronted the cover of GQ’s Man of the Year Issue holding a huge bag of Cheetos in her arm. “While she’s supposedly licking orange dust off her thumb, the rest of her fingers remain clean – an impossible feat, anyone who has eaten the corn-puff snacks will know.” journalist Chloe Mac Donnell writes for The Guardian.
It is almost ironic how we’re left with the complete opposite of how the movement started: what emerged as potential liberation from strict aesthetics is now just a more subtle way to sell the unattainable.