If you’re interested in clothes shopping – by which I mean: going to shops and lightly stroking clothes you absolutely cannot afford in a sort of murderer-y way – you’ll have noticed a recent high street trend: the oversized dress.
Exemplified by this summer’s infamous Zara dress, the oversized dress can be described as a shapeless, mid-length to long garment that envelopes the wearer’s body like a fabric cocoon. From Monki to COS, the British high street is overrun with this kind of thing, presumably because it’s what shoppers keep buying.
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I can certainly see why. I’m a huge fan of oversized dresses, and own a couple. I identify as “extremely lazy”, so enjoy the fact that you can basically throw one on and look like you’ve put some thought into your outfit, instead of the reality, which is closer to: “woke up really just laughably late and had to pull on the most low-effort garment I own as I ran out of the door with a piece of toast in my mouth, like a dog”. Equally, oversized dresses – and tops, which are similarly popular at the moment – also have an rare quality in the world of women’s fashion: they are extremely comfortable.
As someone who has been consuming high street womenswear for the best part of 15 years, I have lived through many great conflicts: The Battle of the Waist Belts, The Low Rise Skirmish, The Great Bodycon War (this one, mercilessly, is still ongoing). It’s no surprise that after years of terrible trends which made everyone look shit and feel uncomfortable, a comfortable garment, usually decorated with cool patterns, has come along to atone for those years of strife.
The oversized top and dress trend hasn’t come from nowhere. These items fit into the category of modest fashion – that is, fashion that pays special attention to covering up the body, usually for religious reasons in faiths like Islam and Judaism – which has been enjoying growing mainstream attention for some time now, thanks to designers such as Hana Tajima, who has collaborated with Uniqlo, and department store-style sites like The Modist, which was launched two years ago.
Writing on the effect of modest fashion on Western trends for the Guardian, Nosheen Iqbal comments that “the prevailing silhouette of the decade has been voluminous sleeves and cocooned silhouettes”.
Other high street trends have also influenced the current oversized dress boom, with many different threads feeding into what we’re now seeing in stores from Topshop to M&S, and everything in between. On one side, there was summer, 2019’s “prairie” trend. To my extremely Trained Eye, this seemed to be about chiffon, square necklines, lace-up details and generally looking like a hot milkmaid. It had parallels with the mid-2000s “boho chic” style championed by figures like Sienna Miller and Kate Moss, who’d traipse along the King’s Road in wide-brimmed fedoras and slouchy florals and cottons (and also, crucially, clutching Starbucks cups, deeply chic) as if it were 1970s LA.
Another influence on the high street’s oversized dress trend is the Scandi-native, architectural shapes of upmarket high street stores like COS and, more recently, Arket (both chains, as well as Monki, are owned by the Swedish H&M group), which emphasise oversizing, clean shapes and straight lines in their recognisably boxy output. And along with the clear influence of streetwear, designers like Molly Goddard – who often takes the concept of “oversizing” and, well, oversizes it – and Batsheva Hay, whose feminine collections full of tiers and ruffles are inspired by Laura Ashley and the modest, religious dress of Amish women, have also shown that bigger is certainly better.
All of these fashion factors have coalesced at a time when shoppers seem ready for a change. Suggestions that the Zara dress was in any manner “feminist” felt silly, considering troubling reports about Zara’s manufacturing processes, but they did point to something more overarching. Namely: as feminism proliferates, women have less desire to dress “flatteringly” – at least, in the stilettos-and-pencil-skirt sense. This can certainly be seen in the popularity of the oversized dress, but also the decidedly unladylike Puffa jackets and workwear you’ve no doubt seen on your more fashun-conscious friends in recent months.
And as the mainstream gets wiser to concepts like gender fluidity and neutrality, items fitting the “oversized” description can only become more popular. Being roomy by definition, these garments can be comfortably worn by people with varying body types and builds, without necessarily drawing attention to gendered physical features (high street stores would do well to expand their size ranges in order to be as inclusive as possible – many only manufacture garments up to a size 20, and many more have an even smaller size range). Indeed, ASOS and H&M are just two brands that have launched unisex or gender neutral collections in recent years.
Camay Abraham, of the Fashion Psychology department at London College of Fashion, tells me that we tend to be motivated to buy clothing for two main reasons: “Price point and if [the item] aligns with the shopper’s beliefs, values and lifestyle.”
I ask Abraham why she feels oversized clothing is so popular right now, and she points to a number of factors: “Shoppers are attracted to oversized clothing due to streetwear being at an all-time high, as a backlash from the bodycon trend, and – for female shoppers – to avoid the male gaze and being objectified,” she explains. “Billie Eilish may have something to do with the rise in oversized clothing as well, which also pertains to the promotion of obliterating the male gaze. The rising interest in modest clothing lies in expanding options for female clothing, and redefining what is the attractive ‘female’ silhouette’.”
As we move into winter, when oversizing is generally more common, we may see a little less of the oversized dress as a standout trend. But the view of widely available fashion it provides is certainly a positive one, and one whose values – inclusivity, comfort – should always be front and centre when designing clothes on a large scale.
I hope, along with a focus on sustainability, they’re principles we’ll be seeing a lot more of.
