Saturday, November 23, 2024

How fruit and veg became fashion’s most modest muse

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Fashion muses exude a chicness most of us can only ever hope to hold. Yet, while Kate Moss has routinely flourished in fashion circles, Jane Birkin is the name behind the eponymous bag, and Grace Jones will long be heralded as a great source of designer inspiration; this season saw a new shining star boost the creativity of multiple collections. And we’re all likely to be very familiar with this face, or more accurately, skin, as the creative directors dug into the fruit and veg patch to inspire their designs for the Autumn/Winter 2024 runways.

At Chloé, Chemena Kamali created tiny gold-tone pineapples to hang on necklaces, while a limited-edition banana-shaped shoulder bag stood out as the shining accessory star of the season. Olivier Rousteing gave grapes a shot at the spotlight, creating earrings, necklaces and bags in the shape of the fruit alongside printed dresses, skirts and embellished tops depicting pears and apples. And at Loewe, Jonathan Anderson leant into the autumnal allotment aesthetic, adding radishes and ginger to silk woven sets while also creating beaded bag charms of asparagus, mushroom and peas, painting the image that the harvest festival is most definitely in fashion.

Explaining the fruity phenomenon, Dr Carolyn Mair, a cognitive psychologist, fashion business consultant and author of The Psychology Of Fashion, shares, “in times of economic uncertainty or social upheaval, there is a tendency to return to the basics, to celebrate the simple joys and essentials of life, such as fruit and veg”.

Balmain : Runway – Paris Fashion Week – Womenswear Fall/Winter 2024-2025

(Image credit: Getty Images)

“From Loewe’s asparagus charm to Balmain’s grapevine printed dress, this is about giving consumers ‘Glimmers’ – aka small moments of joy – as a much-needed distraction amid the poly-crisis,” seconds Hannah Watkins, head of prints and graphics at trend forecaster WGSN. This idea of ‘fun’ fashion being used to inject joy into a continually worrying world is also being boosted by the Spring/Summer 2025 collections. Although why fruits and vegetables are being used over bright colours, sparkles or perhaps even childhood famous faces to do this, as we’re starting to see come through in next year’s collections (hello Coperni x Disney), is still the key question for this autumn season, and there are a handful of possible answers.

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