The Most is Yet to Come
15 ways fashion will build upon itself to glorious and ridiculous ends in 2024.
Hello! I wrote a tiny bit about accelerationism as a potential pathway for philosophical engagement with fashion, ultimately arguing that, in the case I was describing, it failed to politically potentiate itself due to a lack of actual aesthetic value—basically, the piece in question and its process of genesis did not successfully propose that societal progress can be expedited by straining existing systems to their limits or breaking points by, say, pushing visual boundaries. More, more, more.
Since writing that, I’ve come across a host (15, to be exact) of progressing/emerging/potential trends that feel more along these lines—they bear down upon what we’ve already been seeing in 2023, expand the erogenous zones of the body, metamorphose familiar shapes into new visual tools, pile on superfluous visuals until it’s almost too much, and more. From giving up on a modesty layer when wearing tights to coating ribbons, themselves signifiers, with even more signifiers to tubes and armor as essential components of outfits, 2024 will be about sartorial extension and hyperbolization.
In The Passion According to G.H., Clarice Lispector writes, “Beauty would be an accretion, and now I shall have to dispense with it. The world does not have the intention of beauty, and that once would have shocked me: in the world no aesthetic plane exists, not even the aesthetic plane of goodness, and that once would have shocked me.” Accretion is the accumulation of things or concepts—is our ever more rapid search for beauty in accretion a sign that we’re moving closer to the collapse of our conception of the aesthetic plane, the supernova-like death of beauty? That, in my mind, would be the endgame of fashion accelerationism.
Lispector writes, “I do not want beauty, I want identity.” I love fashion, but it is fascinating to watch the cycle spin faster and faster, wondering when the centrifugal force will start peeling us off, or at least loosening our grip.
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Tights as pants
I contributed a quote to this piece about how to style colorful tights for fall, but now I’m wondering if I should have just said wear ‘em straight with a shirt tucked in or patterned underwear. Maybe even layered. The natural progression that began with Miu Miu FW23, which featured tights pulled up too high under basically-underwear “hot pants” and slip skirts plus sheer fits that made underwear the centerpiece, is to treat tights as pants. We wore sheer dresses all summer, this is just the FW equivalent. I especially like the button-down tucked into tights look.

Superfluous Keys
As I noticed in my fall trend prediction post back in July, keys seemed to be brewing as an accessory to rival the typical charm a la Chopova Lowena. I even, creepily, said “This would be even better as a DIY with all the keys you’ve never given back to old flames’ places. Useful in case of urgent breaking-and-entering needs, too. You’ll never raise suspicion, there are just too many keys to find the one that fits your ex’s lock…”
Imagine the feeling of validation when, catalyzed by a look from Chopova Lowena’s new season, the voice at the fashion frontier of our generation,I <3 Mess, confirmed this brewing conception in a recent paid newsletter (no other newsletter, including mine, is as worthy of a paid sub), writing “I’ve noticed that keys and keychains are quickly becoming the new must-have accessory… Given the enthusiasm we’ve seen thus far for belts and watches being applied everywhere they don’t belong, I see this sort of latchkey kid look only gaining steam in 2024 as well.”
Why not let them trail to the ground like a frontal tail?

Printed ribbons
Every Monday at 5 PM ET, @candy.mntn sells handmade/printed goods like the bows below, printed with various statues like the Venus of Willendorf. I like this textbook-y take on the unrelenting ribbon trend, and think it would be really cool to make ribbons out of strips of cloth map or the like.
Fucked-up pinstripes
Whether simply worn in a louche, Jacob-Elordi-in-Saltburn type of way, say, in boxy shorts with a carabiner, deconstructed architecturally, or worn in the style of shants (another fall trend I predicted), these pinstripes combine the chaos of a Wolf of Wall Street vibe with even more chaos of a completely different caliber.

