All of my favorite clothes, the ones that have been with me through thick and thin and feature in all my best stories, are scuffed, torn, and have more sweat stains than I care to admit, but the garments are hotbeds of nostalgia. I have fallen in and out of love while wearing my decade-old Doc Martens, I have made life changing moves in my American Eagle jeans, and I have travelled the world in my favorite Quince cardigan. These pieces have earned their flaws in trials by fire… and water and dirt.
The jewelry I have inherited tells a similar story. The broken clasp on my grandmother’s watch and the added silver chain links to her gold bracelets have her touch ingrained in them. When I wear them, I can feel her with me, emanating from memories trapped in the metal. Just like my own clothing, this jewelry has been marred by lifetimes of loving, thorough use. It’s the fashion life cycle: you purchase something clean, you wear it until it is worn, then you either donate it, risk an exposed toe or knee by keeping it in rotation, or let it live rent-free at the back of your closet. I’m partial to the second.
Recently, however, many luxury brands have skipped vital steps in the life cycle by selling pieces that are already scuffed and stained gray with dirt. Despite backlash, the pieces, often sneakers, continue to be made and purchased by those who can afford them. The biggest question is the most obvious one: why?
Enter the Dirty Fit trend. The Dirty Fit trend is a subsect of streetwear that emphasizes the rips, fades, and stains of worn clothing, intending to relax the pressure of constantly appearing perfect and make fashion more accessible. At the surface, this movement seems like a step toward a more idyllic society where style is for everyone and individuality is not barred by class, everyone is happy and the article ends, right? Not quite.
Like most things that seem to point toward some utopic version of our world, the Dirty Fit trend’s attempt to topple fashion’s classism is largely, if not totally, destroyed by impatience and capitalism. Rather than embracing natural deterioration over time, brands like Gucci, Balenciaga, and Golden Goose are selling “dirty” sneakers for hundreds of dollars, perpetuating brand-name hierarchies and rapid consumption of new goods with the rise of each style du jour. When movements are turned into fads by quick-moving brands, they lose their power. Mountains become mounds, and, despite large followings, the true purpose of a trend is lost.
Moreover, such desire to reap the benefits of fashion trends leads some brands to compromise, if only slightly, their aesthetic. Personally, I don’t believe a brand that sells Italian silk scarves is in any position to claim the relaxed and highly imperfect Dirty Fit style, yet Gucci’s Screener Sneakers remain in stores. The question must be asked: to what extent will brands go to maintain their relevance in an ever-changing market?
I’ve covered how the trend was perpetuated, but that is only part of the answer to the big question of why the pre-dirtied pieces exist. Its origin is vital.
While a single brand has not been credited as the creator of the distressed aesthetic, Golden Goose’s Super-Star sneaker has been largely responsible for popularizing it, initiating a worldwide impact. Golden Goose founders Francesca Rinaldo and Alessandro Gallo designed the shoe to honor the stories that lived-in objects can tell, viewing the wear and tear as tangible evidence of experiences. They wanted their customers to feel empowered to live their lives uniquely and authentically without fear of scuffing a new shoe. While this reason seems wholesome, and I recognize the bias derived from my vapid anti-capitalist fatalism, I cannot help but be put off by the very concept of selling shoes painted with artificial stories.
I know I am responsible for each scuff on my Doc Martens and each paint stain on my formerly white cardigan. I know that I got them while living my life as uniquely and authentically as I possibly could, and I know that I would not be able to claim my clothes as wholly as I do if I could not tell which scuffs were real and which were artificial. In an attempt to permit authenticity, Golden Goose and brands following their lead falsify the effects of human experience. It is entirely counterintuitive, yet the trend continues and the brand meets endless success.
The issue in this is not purchasing items of clothing that are scuffed or torn with use, it is the artificial recreation. Finding unique items of clothing that have actually earned their scars by being worn by others is a great way to join the Dirty Fit trend or feel guilt-free when scuffing shoes without spending hundreds of dollars on hollow imitations of humanity. The same way my grandmother’s DIY mixed-metal chain feels so rich with memory to me despite playing only a small part in my life, used clothing contains multitudes. It comes with experience built in.
The Berlin art gallery Like A Casino (Nichts Und Niemand) is an example of reselling old, broken clothing to new customers who can add their memories to those already ingrained in the clothes. Unlike the Golden Goose Super-Stars and Gucci Screener Sneakers, these pieces’ humanity is evident; their authenticity bleeds through space and time, which makes them, at the very least to me, infinitely more interesting. Different eras, different forms of damage and dirt, and different styles all come out to play with Like A Casino’s pieces. They have personality.
Beyond the Dirty Fit trend, designers have utilized torn and dirty clothing on their runways to tell personal stories. There must then be a place for new clothing, new designer clothing even, that follows the same basic flawed-structure design without feeding completely into the asinine “need” to follow fads.
In Alexander McQueen’s collection entitled Highland Rape, he featured models in torn clothing that exposed their breasts or underwear, in full commitment to rape iconography. The collection was released in 1995, twelve years before the 2007 Golden Goose launch. It’s true that timing does play a role in McQueen’s work not being associated with dirty sneakers, but there is something more at play. Through the collection, McQueen translates visceral experiences from the life he has lived into art. The onus is not on what could be, as it is for Golden Goose, but on what was, is.
No mass-produced and random scuff marks can capture the ever-complex relationship of a man and his homeland, yet Highland Rape is inspired by England’s historic attacks on Scotland. It is human to mourn and be angry and to process that by making something that looks as broken as you feel. Looking at McQueen’s collection is intimate in a way looking at Gucci Screener Sneakers is not.
That the feeling of fashion takes precedence when comparing any two garments, even those with stylistic similarities, is even more clear when discussing AVAVAV’s 2023 show entitled Fake It Till You Break It. Though it does not have the benefit of temporal separation from the Dirty Fit trend, never were the intentionally breaking designs equated in the slightest with clothing made to appear worn, despite some similar rips and tears.
In Fake It Till You Break It, models walk the runway in clothing as it literally falls apart, breaks. For this, designer Beate Karlsson tapped into her own vulnerability by facing the embarrassment of failure and reckoning with what happens when the illusions of self-presentation crack. Aren’t pieces breaking on the runway the nightmare of every designer?
These two runways, Highland Rape and Fake It Till You Break It, behave as a foil to any absolute statement cursing garments designed to appear “broken.” They tell stories and hold personal significance for their creators that goes beyond selling the concept of experiences, just like garments that have been loved half to death. When a person wears something from AVAVAV or McQueen’s shows, they are wearing the story of the designer, their experiences and humanity. To be an artist, you must sell yourself constantly.
AVAVAV and Alexander McQueen, Like A Casino, and my grandmother’s wristwatch all manage to capture human experience in their ripped, sullied, scuffed, burnt, and broken elements because they are imbued with memory. This authenticity makes these rags much richer than the artificially dirtied shoes by brands like Golden Goose, Gucci, and Balenciaga, who want only to emulate the concept of human experience but are too concerned with mass sale to be vulnerable with their consumer. The concept of, or invitation to tell, a story does not a story make; ceci n’est pas une pipe (Magritte). The Dirty Fit trend, as a trend aiming to subvert the pressures of put-upon perfection, inherently requires a bit of individuality, which in turn requires the present impact of an individual. There is no way around it.
To put it simply, fashion is for everyone. The production of soulless, pre-damaged garments is not the way we will overcome preconceptions and classism. Besides, if you are not already prepared to scuff your shoes a bit in pursuit of life, no Golden Goose sneaker will change you.
Credits:
Written by Thylyn Moore @thylynmoore