New Year’s resolutions may be a mere journal session away, but revolutions? They’ve already started in the fashion world. Witness the chiffon-clad insanity that was 2021, complete with red-carpet resets, creative director shuffles, trend cycles faster than a Kim Petras beat, and heated debates about who counts as a style icon—and who shouldn’t. Along the way, we found a visual vocab for 2021 fashion that is stranger and truer than any in recent memory, and sets the stage for even more style disruption (the good kind) in 2022. Below, the 17 moments that defined 2021’s absolutely wild year in fashion and what they mean for our closets (and our cocktail chatter) in the coming months.
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TWO BECOME ONE
Why look back in anger when you can do it in Gucci … and Balenciaga … at the same time? That’s the best-selling idea behind The Hacker Project, a wild mash-up of greatest hits from two of the most coveted labels on the planet. The result? Double-G city bags and floral-splashed sneakers that somehow made both brands even more coveted.
But the Batman <3 Superman merger of G+B wasn’t the only collaboration that flooded our Instagram feeds. Fendi also went into partnership mode, releasing a logo-heavy collection for Kim Kardashian’s (very, very good) SKIMS shapewear brand, and a Versace fusion, affectionately called Fendace, an amazingly kept secret until mere hours before debuting at Milan Fashion Week. (Kristen McMenamy opened the show; Naomi Campbell closed it; you could see the scorch marks on the runway from the moon.)
On the streetwear front, New Balance made some cool kicks for Miu Miu, Adidas kept their Luna Rossa sneakers hot for Prada, and Supreme created a fine jewelry collection with Tiffany & Co. because, of course, they did.
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THANK YOU, VIRGIL ABLOH
We can’t mention collaborations without paying tribute to Virgil Abloh, who turned his Off-White brand into a household name partly due to an expansive (and visionary) approach to partnerships. From Byredo to IKEA, Off-White tested the limits of where a fashion brand can belong and helped catapult its creator into a household name in the process.