A shortlist of pretty much everything that happened in fashion in 2016
Well, close enough.
2016 has been an interesting year.
We lined our shoes with fur (because #fashun clearly isn’t impractical enough already) and posted flatlays in Tumblr pink.
We became more self-aware as an industry, busting out great body-positive campaigns all over the place – and then the Daily Mail ruined it by posting pap shots of poor Sam Armytage’s “giant” undies.
We saw some iconic fashion magazines close their doors, while others wrote (yet again) about how bloggers are ruining the industry, and ‘influencers’ were dead. Meanwhile, influencer marketing companies popped up all over the place like bloggers at the end-of-night gifting table.
Kanye released a collection that everyone hated, again. Also, Kanye fought with everyone, again. Except (perplexingly) Trump, who he just had a meeting with following a stint in hospital for mental illness issues. (Oh to be a fly on the wall at THAT one.)
It has been the year of the flat shoe (good), the anti-contour (good) and the underboob (bad). And now, Pantone tells us next year is going to be all about finding ways to wear some hideous Kermit-green colour with your current wardrobe, so I guess we have that to look forward to.
Here’s to the year that was…
January
- 2016 opens with the iconic Cleo Magazine closing its doors after 44 years in print. It’s the first, but unfortunately not the last to close this year.
- Gucci’s fur-lined $1,397 Princetown loafers continue to infiltrate the minds of seemingly normal human beings, and start their reign as Shoe of the Year. (I didn’t get it then, and I don’t get it now.)
- The year of ‘Tumblr Pink’ commences. Still better than whatever the fuck this ‘Greenery’ shit is.
February
- Yeezy Season 3 launches along with Kanye’s latest album (and a game about ascending to heaven on a winged horse?) in a concert attended by the entire Kardashian crew dressed in
dead muppets. Balmain. - Instagram FINALLY allows us to switch between accounts without logging in every time, and now I can’t even remember what life even was before this happened.
March
- John Paul Gaultier launches his collection for Target at VAMFF – who transition to the Exhibition Building in an inspired move. Did this collab signal the end of meaningful high/low partnerships? The hideous nude satin jumpsuit with cutouts and a cone-bra says yes.
- Louboutin drops a diverse ‘nude’ shoe collection. People whose skin isn’t some insipid pastel pink (i.e. most people in the world) cheer.
April
- Hedi Slimane exits Saint Laurent. They send a message about how they feel by reinstating the Yves on the press release and deleting all his work from their Instagram account. #burnbook
- Hermès Apple Watch bands officially go on sale, just in case you thought $600 wasn’t yet expensive enough for an Apple Watch.
May
- Réalisation Par’s ‘Diane’ dress is labelled as sexist by Dazed. It becomes the dress that launched a thousand angry feminist columns (and a thousand Tinder dates).
- MBFWA kicks off, having lured Oscar de la Renta to Sydney to humble the fashion crowd. We also realised how decidedly not-glam it is to attend fashion week as a writer. We also overheard a lot of interesting commentary…
- Rihanna’s Fenty creepers begin to take over the world. Still going.
- Magnolia Maymuru becomes the first Indigenous woman to represent NT at the Miss World Australia finals. #winning
June
- RMIT and TAFE Institute of Technology rank among the top fashion schools in the world. Australia is officially killing it, fashion-wise.
July
- ASOS’ social media team goes off-piste, calls model “plus size,” corrects itself by saying “whack.” #someonedefgotfired
- McDonald’s melts your brain in the ultimate contradiction of all time, releases activewear line.
August
- Lena Dunham and Jemima Kirke from Girls slay in the unretouched Lonely underwear campaign. A win for women everywhere.
- Kanye launches another merch pop-up and there are lines for days in the backstreets of Fitzroy.
- MSFW kicks off. We overhear more corkers about vagina bumbags and bags made of mannequin torsos. So lots about weird bags, basically.
- Wang successfully sues counterfeiters for $90 million. So I guess you’d better buy up big on your Luis Voutiin in Bali this Christmas then…
September
- Willow announces it’s closing its doors for good. Sad face.
- The New York Post runs out of ideas for clickbait, posts well-trodden article about how bloggers are ruining the fashion industry… again.
- Gypsy Sport attempts to bring those fugly Chinese slippers back from the dark depths of bad ’00s fashion at NYFW.
- Qantas phases out its iconic grey-on-grey PJs, which I assume all bloggers must have already anyway, according to their frequent Qantas Club flatlays. RIGHT?!
October
- Tim Gunn speaks at an event and confirms that wearing activewear to brunch changes how you act.
- The Mirror in the UK tells us that people are planning their coffin outfits so they can look chic / channel Goldie Hawn in Death Becomes Her.
November
- adidas starts mass-producing recycled shoes made from recovered ocean plastic. Named the UltraBOOST Uncaged Parley, these running shoes are actually on fleek, and thankfully look nothing like ‘fashion Crocs’.
- H&M launches its Kenzo collection to an underwhelming response. See note above about collabs being totes ovah.
- Oxfam puts Gorman back on the naughty list for ethical clothing brands. Gorman is not happy, releases a statement about retaining the privacy of its suppliers.
- American Apparel files for bankruptcy and closes its Australian online store. Does anyone care about this, besides guys looking for soft porn that’s work-computer friendly?
December
- Victoria’s Secret sends a preggers lady down the runway in a trenchcoat – hardly a win for women everywhere…
- Sadly, the year is bookmarked by another iconic magazine closing, Dolly. Please contact me for future Dolly Doctor questions.
Follow Bianca’s confusing fashion journey attempting to introduce ‘greenery’ into her wardrobe in 2017 at @_thesecondrow.