Stand down Stacey Solomon; hush, quiet luxury: mess is back, though in this household, and I suspect many others, it never went away. “Messiness in all its aesthetic glory is being celebrated in a meaningful way,” Susie Lau writes in this month’s Elle, highlighting some recent fashion mess – dirty shirt cuffs and frayed embroidery at Prada; battered handbags at Chanel; an “extreme-treated denim” homage to the walk of shame at Diesel. Beauty and homes are on a similar trajectory, apparently, with morning-after makeup and interiors that make a virtue of clutter and imperfection, “from unmade beds to breakfast leftovers”.
The mess revival Lau observes in style has also been gathering momentum in other areas: goblin mode, bed rotting and sloppy, blurred Instagram photo dumps. Now “gen Z is drinking again” (74% of them, up from 66% in 2023 according to a drinks industry study), there seems to be a broader sobriety backlash brewing and cigarettes are, depressingly, back in fashion (deployed as accessories by Kylie Jenner, Dua Lipa, Hailey Bieber and many more).
