The Body Politic

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At some point in the distant future, it will be difficult to identify the precise moment when we began to even contemplate the prospect of a post-pandemic life. But the Spring 2022 runways may offer a clue. Offering a bold new wave of body consciousness, the shows were a radical departure from the oversize layers that have dominated the high-fashion conversation in the decade since Phoebe Philo’s Céline made it cool to be covered up.

There were bras everywhere: dainty triangle ones at Fendi worn under tailored blazers and cropped bombers, sporty ones at Dior paired with silk boxing shorts, boob tape as tops at Vaquera and Missoni. For Miuccia Prada, bras seemed to be an idée fixe; she paired push-ups with low-riding skirts at Miu Miu and inserted underwires into colorful knit tops for her Prada collection, cocreated with Raf Simons. And then there was just … So. Much. Skin. At Chanel, a bouclé miniskirt barely concealed a matching bikini bottom; Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing marked his 10th anniversary at the French house by sending out an array of hybrid garments that melded sharp- shouldered tailoring with bra cups and thong straps; Loewe offered funny little windows on the knees—a referendum on what makes a body part a so-called erogenous zone; and New York– and L.A.-based duo Eckhaus Latta produced a range of transformable garments, like a T-shirt that unsnaps around the waist to create a corset or a crop top and a jumpsuit with removable thigh panels. “It could be really conservative or really slutty depending on your mood,” jokes codesigner Mike Eckhaus.

The question of what’s sexy—and what sexy even looks like now—loomed over the entire proceedings like a tantalizing question mark. To be fair, we’ve spent much of the past two years in something of a sweatpants chrysalis as the pandemic—and all of the self-preservational fear and masking that have come with it—has radically reoriented our lives. But there is something about fashion’s current preoccupation with the body that feels undeniably different. It seems to be driven less by designers reasserting old codes of sexiness and what body type is deemed ideal or desirable and more by a greater cultural shift in how we relate to those ideas in a post-#MeToo, post-Covid-19, post-gender world. The Victoria’s Secret Angels hung up their wings for good last year amid a backlash against the kind of outmoded commodification and exploitation of women’s bodies that the brand’s vaunted “fashion” shows had come to represent. We now routinely see models who identify as men and nonbinary walk in what have traditionally been billed as womenswear shows. Just as so many of the old ideas about who gets to wear what when and how have begun to fall away, the notion of defining and owning your own sexuality—whether that means being swathed in layers of fabric or very little at all—has started to gain currency and momentum.

It’s far too early to tell if what we’re witnessing is a reaction to a prolonged period of homeboundedness, followed by the halting resumption of our lives, or if it represents the first signs of a more profound sea change in how we think about sex, sexuality, and fashion. There may also be an element of wish fulfillment involved. It’s been a frequent fashion trope over the past couple of years, as designers have worked to gather optimism around some celebratory vision of a post-pandemic life in which our bodies and physical intimacy are no longer bound up with the idea of viral loads and communicability—even as the pandemic itself continues to rage on. But there was a decidedly more personal—and frequently more empowering—tenor to the way they approached both clothing and revealing the body this season.

Simone Rocha, who recently gave birth to her second child, included nursing bras in her Spring 2022 collection, incorporating flip-down cups with crystal details in the bodices of her dresses. “I wanted to look at the nursing bra as a beautiful thing and celebrate it, as it is a functional thing to bring milk to a new baby, so it represents nurturing, loving, security, and also challenges,” she says. “I wanted to work it into the structure of garments and then highlight it with embellishment, celebrating the breasts.”

If Rocha’s bejeweled flaps reminded us that breasts are so much more than just sexual signifiers, elsewhere a cohort of young designers went further by questioning why we think bras are just for women anyway. Siying Qu and Haoran Li, the New York– and Shanghai-based duo behind Private Policy, showed genderless bra tops with removable sleeves. And lingerie has long been something of an obsession for New York’s deconstructionist wunderkinds Vaquera; see their bullet bras and teddy tees. “We’ve always been interested in innerwear as outerwear,” says founder Patric DiCaprio. “Lingerie is so beautiful and complex. It seems sad to us to wear it only in the bedroom.” For Spring 2022, DiCaprio and his codesigner, Bryn Taubensee, trotted out lacy and studded bras and trompe l’oeil masking-tape tops for people of all genders. “Sexy is about feeling confident,” adds Taubensee. “Everyone feels confident in a different type of clothing: covered, naked, formal, casual, chaotic. We like to show a wide variety of looks that could all be considered sexy depending on your personal definition of what that means.”

Even if what we’re seeing now sometimes looks familiar, the context is dramatically different. Before the fashion community embraced bras as tops this season, the style was already trending among vintage-obsessed TikTok teens. The Gen Z obsession with all things Y2K, the freedom of Britney (Spears) and the reclamation of Paris (Hilton), and the emergence of TikTok as both an influential platform for fashion and a body-image battleground have offered some insight into the relationship that many teens and twentysomethings today have with outer beauty, objectification, and self- expression. To them, clothes that reveal are not necessarily about what’s sexy; they can be tools to explore identity, gender, and sex and body positivity.

Dolce & Gabbana showed lacy lingerie that recalled the label’s archive designs from two decades ago, and for creative directors Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, that was the point. “With the women’s Spring 2022 collection, we have explored and reinterpreted in a contemporary way the aesthetic that characterized us in 2000 and to which the youngest today look with admired curiosity,” say the designers. Their collection’s title, #DGLight, is even a ready-made hashtag. But, Dolce and Gabbana insist, with comfy logo waistband briefs peeking out from oversize denim and low-rise cargo pants, the lineup is more than a sexy nostalgia trip, instead proposing “a new sensuality, very feminine, light, and free.” Coach creative director Stuart Vevers also looked to youth culture, sending out soft bralettes with oversize anoraks and skater shorts that wouldn’t look out of place on Betty, the HBO series about a female skate crew. “The pairing was inspired by the relaxed feel I wanted for the collection,” says Vevers. “Spring 2022 instinctively felt like the right moment for a fresh start and a new vocabulary. I was thinking about the time we had all just spent at home, wrapped in layers, and I had this sense that people were craving a feeling of freedom.”

While fashion has been making much-needed strides toward greater inclusivity in recent seasons, models of size are still often given more demure looks in runway shows, like coats or full-coverage dresses. So it was great to see Paloma Elsesser wearing bra tops at Maryam Nassir Zadeh and Michael Kors Collection, where she and Kendall Jenner both flaunted demi-bra-and-skirt combos. “This collection is very much a celebration of women’s bodies and feeling confident, so you definitely get a sense of curviness and defined waists,” says Kors. “The slice of skin at the midriff puts an emphasis on the waist in a fresh, modern way. I’ve always celebrated women of different shapes, and I think now more than ever, fashion is about making people feel like their best selves.”

The 2021 LVMH Prize winner Nensi Dojaka’s ’90s-inspired going-out tops and dresses with asymmetric cuts feature delicate strap details that look like feats of structural engineering. “Despite the skin-baring, there is always something light and feminine about the pieces that softens everything and almost steers away the male gaze,” says the London-based designer, a favorite of Rihanna, Dua Lipa, and Bella Hadid. “I think showing off your femininity can be the most empowering thing.”

For Neiman Marcus fashion and lifestyle director Lisa Aiken, the ease and versatility of a piece like a bra top is one of its key selling points. “You can really style it any way: under an open shirt or open blazer or just by itself,” she says. “And for the woman who isn’t ready to brave the full trend yet, there is always the option of wearing a crochet bra layered in a fun way.” The department store bought from a wide range of bra-top innovators, including Erdem Moralioglu and Carolina Herrera’s Wes Gordon, who each used them as a way to modernize the idea of ladylike occasion dressing, and Jonathan Simkhai, who styled knit versions as layering pieces with cutout dresses.

Lianne Wiggins, the head of womenswear for Matchesfashion, says she could envision Dojaka’s or Vaquera’s bralettes worn with strong tailoring or pieces that in some cases offer additional coverage. “We see them being styled under great sheer blouses and dresses or with coordinating fabrics and colors,” Wiggins says. “These styles feel inclusive. Fabrics are carefully used alongside incredible pattern-cutting techniques to really enhance the female form and make women feel empowered.”

The old cliché is that sex sells, but the proposition put forth this season seemed to offer much more than that: the ludic possibility of feeling comfortable in your own skin, whoever you are.

London-based Harris Reed has notably made a point of breaking away entirely from gendered binaries ever since he began dressing Harry Styles while studying at Central Saint Martins, questioning the very precepts of what we’ve traditionally considered to be masculine or feminine forms. For his salon-style London Fashion Week show, Reed used upcycled bridal lace to highlight skin across the torso, chest, and arms. “Rather than bringing sexy back, I’d like to bring back this idea of owning who you are,” says Reed. “It’s not about looking sexy for someone else. Sexy is how you feel.”

This article originally appeared in the February 2022 issue of Harper's BAZAAR, available on newsstands February 1.

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