Maybe you’re tired of me starting every fashion post with a speech about the return of the 2000s, but it’s not my fault that the anxiety caused by the lack of future prospects in the face of the ecological emergency aggravated by the pandemic makes nostalgia a safe haven.
The comeback of a phenomenon born in prison
Except that by looking to the retro to dress up the present, we also begin to rehabilitate gimmicks from the more complicated story. Low rise jeans with Y2K sauce as such, are fun. Except that its contemporary comeback can also be accompanied today by a glamor of yielding.
This English term referring to the idea of sagging designates the fact of letting the pants go down voluntarily or not on the hips to the point of revealing the underwear.
In 1990s United States, this phenomenon was seen a lot among African Americans formerly incarcerated, or in a nod to what we can see in prison where the trousers of the imposed uniform were then one size fits all and without a belt, which therefore could largely uncover the underpants.
Inevitably, mostly seen on Black and Latino men who can get out of jail, the yielding it quickly got such a bad reputation that most American and French schools began to have it prohibit and penalize protruding underpants on the butt of the boys.
If it was difficult to make this practice illegal in the public space (it is not for lack of having tried it in several states in Uncle Sam’s country), in the name of freedom of expression, it nevertheless became a pretext for excessive police repression against men racialized. So much so that the New York Times titled Aug. 30, 2007: “ Are your jeans falling down? Go straight to the prison box. »
Almost thirty years after the emergence of this clothing detail, the fashion industry is trying to rehabilitate it with more or less sensitivity or opportunism.
On the catwalks, the boxers that protrude from the trousers give back their image
Founded by a couple in the city and in the studio, consisting of Lisi Herrebrugh, Dutch, and Rushemy Botter, born in Curaçao (a small island that is an autonomous state of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located off Venezuela) before landing in Europe at 2 years, the mark Botter presented a version that takes into account the political charge of this criminalized act against racialized men, the co-founder also worried.
Different trousers were worn with boxers that stand out, among the silhouettes of the Botter autumn-winter 2021-2022 collection full of references to the sea, diving and corals (they have just created a coral nursery under the sailors off the coast of Curaçao, and a percentage of the profits from the sales of their collections go to the conservation of these essential elements for biodiversity).
In this choice of styling skilfully performed by Botter to bring out the boxer shorts of the well-cut suit pants, the founder of Black Fashion Fair (a sort of online encyclopedia of Afro-descendant stylists) Bibby Gregory sees a form of stigma inversionas he tweeted on January 23, 2021:
It has even been criminalized. Botter embraces our cultural nuances and, by placing boxers over tailored trousers, makes a powerful statement about black respectability
Same celebratory gesture on the catwalks for the young Latin American designer Willy Chavarria for his spring-summer 2022 collection just presented at New York Fashion Week. Worked like puffy ballroom skirts with a volume worthy of haute couture, with a high waist that reaches up to the solar plexus, the trousers that opened the show still offered to see the underpants, as a gesture as poetic as it is political.
However, other brands are trying the same trick without showing as much sincerity. We think of the placid Simon Porte Jacquemus, from his first men’s collection for spring-summer 2019 called Gadjo (in Roma culture, a gadjo is a person who does not have a Romanipen, therefore does not belong to the Roma community), which borders on the caricature of the streetwear worn by certain men in Marseille, which particularly involves silhouettes with yielding. Rebelote for its summer 2020, autumn-winter 2020-2021 and autumn-winter 2021-2022 collections.
The built-in sagging of this Balenciaga suit doesn’t do well on the nets, but it’s sure to sell
But what’s stirring Twitter’s fashion critics right now is a run yielding complemented by a luxury maison: the “trompe l’oeil sweatpants” by Balenciaga, sold for €975 on the brand’s website. And it is well known, anything more than 5 retweets on Twitter leads some buzz-seeking media outlets to exaggerate and talk about allegations of cultural appropriation without citing the sources of so-called lawsuits, since internet users rather deplore the bad taste of ‘approach that begs for attention.
Or always the same scheme from which Demna Gvasalia, artistic director of the Balenciaga house, emerges as the winner every time, accustomed to the fact that she then offers free advertising, on networks, in newspapers, and improves her SEO as a bonus.
His recipe? Reinterpreting the codes of popular and marginalized youth to project them in a ready-to-slum version on the catwalks, intended for a wealthy clientele in need of great emotions who just need to pick up this type of ready-made like we could buy a street credit (or parboil it). And wait for the buzz to promote Balenciaga. While the pants are falling, his sales are therefore far from declining.
Front page photo credit: © Courtesy of Willy Chavarria
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Source: Madmoizelle
Mary Crossley is an author at “The Fashion Vibes”. She is a seasoned journalist who is dedicated to delivering the latest news to her readers. With a keen sense of what’s important, Mary covers a wide range of topics, from politics to lifestyle and everything in between.
