Democratized fashion access made dressing as if clothing doesn’t matter the ultimate status signal

Evidence

Normcore embodied the logical progression of fashion democratization. As blogs and e-commerce made designer goods widely accessible, the ultimate countersignal was to dress as if clothing didn’t matter. However, this approach had its limits: As fashion journalist Lauren Sherman noted, normcore made women look less “hip or chic” and more like “a mom.” And despite its aspirations toward futurism, normcore was another iteration of retromania. As writer Fiona Duncan pointed out, “The contemporary normcore styles I’ve seen have their clear aesthetic precedent in the nineties.” Unlike other decades, however, 1990s athletic fashion never devolved into kitschy nostalgia. Its drabness ensured that even its revival felt deliberately understated. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 407

Categorization

• XREF: This is Marx’s countersignal mechanism — the core causal machinery of his omnivore monoculture thesis, exactly what the reader needs to trace and rebut. — connects to: Seemingly superficial fashions fundamentally organize identity and social life — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 18