The 10 Autumn/Winter 2021 Trends To Know Now - British Vogue

“Beginning of all kinds. Pliability, an unfreezing, a wakening. Wild sudden growth. Release. Energy. Hope. Lifeforce. Threshold.” That’s Ali Smith, writing about spring. But she might as well have been writing about the autumn/winter 2021 trends.

These are the sentiments that designers described and attempted to convey in the collections they unveiled in February and early March, and which will start trickling into stores in August. After a year of lockdown, another season of digital-only shows, but with a vaccination-led route out currently being tested, the sense of coiled energy in the fashion industry is palpable.

Can you feel it too? That urge to fling open the wardrobe doors and yank out a dancing dress and shove on some eyeliner and run out the door into the night? The pandemic may have taught us to add “face mask, hand sanitiser” to the mental checklist of “keys, credit card, lipstick”. But, on the evidence of the autumn/winter 2021 collections, it hasn’t dampened fashion’s enthusiasm for heading “out out”. As Raf Simons put it, in conversation with Miuccia Prada after the unveiling of their joint effort for Prada: “Here is a feeling we all have about wanting to be in the world again. We are in the mood for fashion. We are in the mood for sharing with other people.”

What will you choose for your re-emergence? A second-skin, printed bodysuit? (Hey there, yoga devotees. Your time is now.) A miniscule excuse for a mini dress? A retina-scorching dose of colour? A puffer jacket the size of a zorbing ball, with the cocooning powers to match? Mrs Prada cautioned against letting all hell break loose, sartorially speaking. “Something is mounting. Some desire, some excitement. I personally would like to control it because it’s probably not correct, but it’s there.” Then again, she did send sherbet-yellow overcoats and maxi handbags covered in sequins on steroids down her purple furry catwalk. At this point, all we can do is shrug, and intone, for the millionth time, “unprecedented times”. Possibly as a precursor to clicking “add to basket”.

Female power was another big theme of the autumn/winter 2021 season. All too aware that women have borne the brunt of the pandemic – economically, socially, mentally – designers wanted to bolster them up. Lucie Meier, at Jil Sander, said: “It’s a time of change for everybody. To be able to achieve change you need to feel empowered to do so.” Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski, at Hermès, said: “It’s urgent now to live again. The message to the world is that I have this conviction of designing clothes for a confident woman. Each of them has a way of expressing female power.” Pierpaolo Piccioli, at Valentino, said: “It’s the radical act of having the strength to be who you are; that’s what I mean by romanticism today. It’s a subjective, almost anarchic gesture, assertive of one’s own identity – exactly like punk.” Their ideas manifested variously in trends for boy-meets-girl styling (a short skirt with a boyish blazer), crisp, dark-wash denim, and sheer romanticism.

It’s easy to project economic theories onto hemlines, to read the runes of a ruinous year in the short skirts and cuddly jumpers that cropped up in collection after collection. Ultimately, however, even the sagest catwalk gazers agree that autumn appears to be a season of madness. Not sure a shocking pink cropped Chanel bouclé-wool jacket goes with the carefully cultivated vision of minimalism you’ve been honing over the last few years? So what. Time to throw caution to the wind. Buy the sequin dress and wear it with a cosy blanket. Try the canary-yellow tutu with a leather bomber jacket. Wear the purple satin platforms with the purple tights and the purple mini dress. Life is for living.

Here, the autumn/winter 2021 fashion trends you need to know about now.

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