Fashion fetishises the new, the outré, the extraordinary, but it’s our own thinking that keeps things feeling fresh. The whims for A/W 2023, namely the longer length of a jumper or the bumpier texture of leather, are just that. In 1973, the French author and artist Georges Perec wrote an essay called The Infra-Ordinary, an ongoing attempt to notice, record and then recall the exact opposite of the extraordinary. ‘What speaks to us, seemingly, is always the big event, the untoward,’ he says, before revelling in the small and unexceptional. It is a meditation not necessarily on simplicity or finding the joy in the everyday, but a succinct reminder that the objects that soak up our attention are often a diversion from an essential truth. We are too easily distracted from recognising – and knowing – what is effortless and sincere.
