The Subversive Basics Trend is About Rebellion
This trend is all about exposing what you'd normally cover up.
Is it possible for a trend to be both avant-garde and minimalist? Subversive basics seem to have found a balance. These pieces, most often in muted tones, feature daring cutouts, slashes, twists, turns, layers, and straps.
The term "subversive basics" was coined by TikToker @thealgorythm, a former WGSN trend forecaster gone freelance. In her video, she explained that the new style is "all about basics that rebel up to the point of losing their utility." What was a tank top is now an architectural slice of fabric, barely clinging to your shoulders. A little black dress becomes unabashedly revealing with mesh panels and an oversized keyhole cutout.
What's unique about this specific microtrend is just how widespread it's become. Subversive basics were all over the runway this past year. Mugler's popular body-hugging dresses contoured the body with geometric cutouts. The 2021 LVMH Prize winner Nensi Dojaka has made a career of combining mesh and thin straps to contort around the female form. But designers aren't the only ones deconstructing basics. A plethora of teens have taken to TikTok to craft their own subversive pieces out of stockings and old T-shirts.
DIY fashion dominated the early 2000s, and in this era of Y2K revival, it makes sense that kitschy do-it-yourself clothing has made a return. To fashion your own top, teens recommend slicing up several pairs of differently colored tights and layering them into a punk-looking outfit. With subversive basics' easy accessibility, the trend has successfully dominated both high and low fashion.
Subversive basics bring together the threads of numerous, co-existing trends. Foremost, people have gotten sick of staying at home in sweatsuits. Our return to "going-out style" has been chaotic to say the least. It feels as if, in this moment of massive cultural shifting, there are no rules about how fashion must be executed. We're at a point where perhaps wearing chopped-up stockings all over your body could be normal, if not chic. As the rules are rewritten, what classifies as a top, or a dress, is up for debate. One could just as easily wear a sheer mini skirt to dinner as a buttoned-up maxi dress. Who's to say what is appropriate?
The fall of traditional style bylaws (has any Gen Zer ever even considered "no white after Labor Day"?) has coincided with the destruction of the gendered fashion binary. Men wear skirts. Women wear boxy suits. Nonbinary individuals wear whatever they feel like in the morning. Subversive basics, by their subversive nature, know no bounds. Not only can the trend be adapted to both womenswear and menswear, but the very same garments can be passed back and forth across the gender divide. Perhaps a man would like to cover his nipples with a strappy bra? His girlfriend might want to bare hers in a multicolored mesh top.
Also in the mix is the shifting of focus from model-esque figures to "real bodies." What is a real body you might ask? It's whatever you were born with. That includes body hair, stretch marks, rolls, thin thighs, thick thighs, and cellulite. Subversive basics leave nothing to the imagination. If they aren't actively reshaping the body, they are exposing it. What do we make of a shirt that only reveals the stomach, our most sucked-in and covered-up attribute? What about dresses that cover up our collarbones but display our hips?
Consumers no longer want one-size-fits-all, off-the-rack clothing. Subversive basics, in which the body is as much a statement as the garment, offer individualistic styling. Whether you are making your own or paying top dollar for the luxury version, the pieces are anything but basic: a fashion death sentence in the modern age.
Whether subversive basics will survive the ruthless churning of the trend cycle remains to be seen, but their lightning-fast dissemination to the masses signals a broader reality: folks are done covering up.
