Own Your Monster: The Psychology of Supersize, and What Maximalist Fashion Says About Us

‘I think of what Rei does as ideas given shape,’ said Vanessa Friedman, Fashion Director of The New York Times, in conversation with the curator of the Comme des Garcons exhibition at The Met, Andrew Bolton, and Rei Kawakubo’s husband, Adrian Joffe. Only one of two designers to have been celebrated thus while alive, Rei Kawakubo is certainly revered for her imaginative, avant-garde designs in which human form is exaggerated; the body is exploded into something urgently new, and big. Indeed, the timing of this exhibition coincides with a maximalist trend in fashion more widely. Throughout the Spring/Summer 2017 and Autumn/Winter shows, oversized coats, hoods, trousers and sleeves were ubiquitous on both sides of the Atlantic. Granted, almost all physical objects could be said to be an idea given shape in some form or another. However, this new trend pushes an artistic, non-functional style into the mainstream. A new cultural phenomenon is certainly afoot, but what does pursuit of the supersize mean as a reflection of our contemporary consciousness?

Big things occupy more space. In an age where housing crises are plenty, and green spaces few, the design of clothes that take up more room provides an interesting contrast to problems that ‘millennials’ face in grounding themselves in the world through larger things such as houses, cars and so on. Whether it’s supersize sleeves, as peddled by Portuguese duo Marques’Almeida, wide-leg trousers (the new ‘it’ style of denim as promoted by Christopher Kane, Chloé, Rejina Pyo and many more), platform shoes (Marc Jacobs is offering impossibly high versions) or power hoods – in the style of HÆRVÆRK at Copenhagen Fashion Week – perhaps maximalist dress is a means of laying claim on more of the world when other material desires are not attainable. After all, millennials apparently love experiences over possessions, and dragging your bell sleeves through over-crowded tube carriages, or trying to avoid dipping them in your Instagrammable brunch, or clinging onto your oversized coat, worn Vetements-style off-the-shoulder as you run for the bus, is one of the more adrenaline-filled, uncomfortable and irritating events to live through.
A post shared by Marques Almeida (@marques_almeida) on Jun 1, 2017 at 2:24am PDT

If you look back through the canon of fashion history, supersize has often been a reflection of a dystopian vision of society, and the human beings in it. In the early 90s, Alexander McQueen’s AW collection for Givenchy in 1997 saw the designer adorn models with animal skulls. ‘My idea,’ he told Numero magazine in a 2002 interview, ‘was this mad scientist who cut all these women up and mixed them all back together.’ For his 2001 Vos show, McQueen similarly employed taxidermy animals and extreme silhouettes to re-create a mental asylum. More recently, Gareth Pugh took audiences deep underground to immerse them in a disquieting and gothic show that showed black-eyed models in billowing, oversized black garments walking a concrete promenade to a jarring soundtrack of Trump’s voice and Mary Poppins soundtracks. During his now legendary 1989 show, the famously reclusive Martin Margiela walked models with oversized saddle bags, dressed in huge swathes of plastic and wrapped in layers of material, setting a precedent for the great, disruptive approach to fashion that followed. ‘They looked so angelic and alien,’ noted Raf Simons of the models at the show to Business of Fashion.
A post shared by Maison Margiela (@maisonmargiela) on May 23, 2017 at 5:28am PDT
‘Anything can be considered a space – and in theory fashion exists within most. There are idealised, utopian spaces such as fashion magazines and the cinema screen, which we may then experience within an incidental space such as the cinema or a café,’ notes Clare Green in her essay ‘Re-thinking fashion spaces’. And she flags an interesting dichotomy: as a creation to exist in art, oversized clothes do not feel intrusive or monstrous. They can be seen as experimental or adventurous. However, fashion exists in the everyday, and when you re-locate clothes to real life, the jarring, dystopic element is realised.

In inviting the extreme into the everyday, in inviting wearers to exaggerate and play with shape and style, one might conclude that fashion is inviting us to own our own monsters; to occupy what is frightening, as well as take charge of the space around us. Read in this way, maximalist style becomes empowering – though perhaps only for as long as you stay upright in your 20-inch platforms.