Utilitarian fashion sets 2018 on fire

2018 is the year of utilitarian fashion. The outsider crew that advocates anti-fashion has set up a creative system that connects extra-long belts, harnesses, fasteners or pockets to conceptual/architectural garments inspired by neocostumbrism. The sobriety of the design now dialogues in an intense conversation between streetwear and worker aesthetics, and materializes in firms that shine without highlighter, or so they have shown to the system.

The new vision of modernity is transferred to utilitarian fashion, which is based on the hermetic and on a configuration of design based on business class. Uniforms are established as the starting point on which fashion architects begin to create, reinterpreting all those concepts of everyday life and transferring them to a journey of materials, seams and compositions.

The sobriety of the garments is corrupted by a rave of superimpositions and materials, to the rhythm of hard techno. Fashion is now part of something alive, part of a sense of community to which everyone wants to belong, generated by brands such as A Cold Wall, Alyx, Alch, Off White or Heron Preston; the same ones that have managed to elevate utilitarian fashion to another phase.

In this universe, workwear is reinterpreted as a luxury key through industrial belts, fasteners, pockets, zippers, velcro or buckles, which, beyond being aesthetic, are characterized by their functionality. All these elements merge into a sartorial anarchy that connects conventional themes in the same concept of anti-fashion.

The neoconcept arises from the inspiration in the street, the airplanes, the works, the militarism, the industrial and, in general, from the work uniforms now updated in outerwear format. Here, the materials overlap: leather with patent leather, infinite openings are injected through zippers and garments or accessories such as duster coats, sturdy hats, nylon work vests or industrial belts (such as those of Gosha or Samuel Ross) are  into different versions.

Fashion based on utilitarianism also includes an imaginary of infinite straps, closures, rollercoaster belts or extra-long Off White belts, Alyx’s Chest Rigs and Heron Preston’s architectural garments with all the symbolism behind them, because as Virgil Abloh says: ‘clothing is the means to create a new language’, and the utilitarianist has perfectly reflected the social transformation of a new generation‘.