Top 5 World Affairs x Fashion Moments: May 14, 2024

It’s Day 19 of my Spring Challenge!

As a reminder, this challenge means that either you get an email in your inbox 5 times per week until May 31st (which means I get a set of luxurious, vintage jammies) OR I have to donate $5 to a charity I hate for every week that I miss the goal.

Series #3: Top 5 World Affairs x Fashion Moments

Today’s pick: Hustle Culture X ReceptionistCore

Disclaimer: This post is based on my particular hypothesis. So far, I have not been able to find other research papers on this topic or unearth data other than my own analysis. So, before you read this, you should know that either I am wrong or I am a genius that the fashion academia world has yet to recognize.

Now, onto the post!

If you ever went clubbing between 2011 to 2016, there was one trend you saw everywhere: pencil skirts. Notoriously hard to walk or to dance in, there really was no explanation for why those skirts were everywhere.

Pencil skirts, here, are a proxy variable for the office looks and day-to-night looks that were everywhere. Blazers, pencil skirts, and simple button-downs, even for a night on the town, abounded. Most people looked like they were in the office 24/7.

How #girlbossing Gave Us Pencil Skirts

After the Great Recession, millennials were still recovering from the blow to their projected career tracks. To help them along, experts touted a bunch of advice.

However, none of the advice was as prevalent as the advice to “hustle” and “grind”. For women, advice came in the form of even catchier phrases and books, like “lean in” culture (2013) or “being a girlboss” (2014).

Working hard has long been glorified in America’s workforce. We’ve seen a dramatic rise in the term “crazy schedules” since the 1960s. “Greed is good”, a motto of the 1980s followed.

After that, the early 2000s gave rise to the creed of “having it all”, especially for women in the postfeminist movement, where it was possible to juggle motherhood, the self, and busy careers (which, even in 2024, is utter poppycock).

The 2010s is when hustle culture really went mainstream, however. The Great Recession is when tech companies gained major success. Airbnb was founded in 2008 and Uber in 2014. The rise of the gig and sharing economy had begun.

The access to tech also meant that bloggers and Youtubers, more relatable to the general public than brand models and traditional ad campaigns, were on the up-and-up. People found more ways to make the money they’d lost in the recession.

And now, thanks to the campaigns by tech, hustling was seen as good and a measure of your personal worth.

So what then?

As usual, with all things fashion, several parts of the puzzle collided to give us our trends.

Fashion’s traditional 30-year cycle already meant that the power dressing of the 1980s would give some inspiration to the wardrobes of the 2010s. Hustle culture only added fuel to the fire, with people showing off their work ethic via their clothes.

Designers, seeing which way the wind was blowing, picked on the pencil skirt to usher in the new decade, with Elie Saab leading the way in Fall 2011.

Searches for pencil skirts saw an uptick of 44% between 2011-2015 and pencil skirts entered the mainstream. Fun fact: 2011 also saw more mermaid silhouettes in wedding gowns - the wedding industry’s version of the pencil skirt!

Luckily, pencil skirts reached their peak in 2015, with a steady decline every year after. And as someone who enjoys being able to walk, I can only say thank goodness.

Note: This series does not aim to give a comprehensive view of any one garment and its history, only an overview.

However, if there’s interest, I’m happy to write out a whole series just based on one garment (whether it’s Regency muslin dresses, jeans, or something else). So email me and let me know!

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xoxo,

Simran