With a few numbers of dystopian movies that have been released since 2021--such as Dune and The Matrix Resurrections, we can see that it somehow impacts the fashion industry. It's not a strange thing anymore if you decide to walk out of the door wearing pieces of clothing that make you look like you just came out of an apocalyptic movie. You may as well come up with an answer that you're trying to pull off the Dystopian-core when someone asks what you're wearing.
This dystopia-core fashion trend is inspired by apocalyptic movies that have been going around making headlines. The dystopian style enhances the concept of "black is the new black". Long black coats, cargo pants, and dark colors which give a disastrous vibe are the main signatures that can embody the Dystopia-core. Balenciaga is one of the luxury brands that embrace this Dystopia-core fashion trend according to its Fall 2021 collection in the videogame Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow.
The recent Balenciaga collection offers futuristic, eerie, and dystopian styles. Not only Balenciaga but A-Cold-Wall* also had partaken in the fashion mainstream of Dystopian-core by dropping its Autumn/Winter 2022 collection. With 'Brittle. Render. Sequenced. Thought', as its tagline, Samuel Ross brought A-Cold-Wall*s AW22 collection by playing with art materials as well as imbuing the collection with a distinct haptic sensibility.
Dystopia-core can be also seen as the next step of grunge and goth revival as it focuses more on dark colors. A trend forecaster, Geraldine Wharry, "Fashion statements often have an element of defiance. In this particular case the defiance is the darkness and dystopian aspect". The rising of Dystopian-core fashion trends is also affected by the current pandemic for the past years.
"In the last two years, we have been constantly thinking about protecting ourselves from outside pathogens so it is not hard to see how clothes can function, at least symbolically, as an extension of this shield that we have been creating around us." - Francesca Granata from Parsons School of Design.
On social media, Dystopian-core is way more often recognized as Avant Apocalypse that the hashtag for #avantapocalypse on TikTok has reached the number of 313,000 views and still counting. The videos tagged for #avantapocalypse on TikTok are all about how to dress up after the apocalypse. Most of them give futuristic look with layered clothes, strings, and tattered fabrics. Wisdom Kaye, a fashion influencer from TikTok has been implementing a dystopian look for his iconic look recreation of fiction characters like Marvel.
(DIP/MEL)