Killer Sleeves: The Silent Champion of Fall 2015
Amidst all the over-the-top trends that emerged during fashion month— think bejeweled headphones, face jewelry, and Looney Tunes characters— a quieter change was taking place on an often overlooked part of the body often in fashion: the arms.
While hems rise and fall like empires, and pant legs go from flared to skinny to jeggings to culottes, sleeves have generally stayed the same. Since the ‘90s we have more or less favored a straight sleeve, and whether it’s short, elbow-length, or long. The sleeve has stayed the course. Until now.
We first noticed a sea change in sleeves in New York, when designers like Delpozo and Donna Karan sent looks down the runway in a modernized version of the mutton sleeve. This was popular in Victorian times, characterized by a voluminous detail near the shoulder, which tapers down into the wrist—you know, it looks like a leg of mutton, and if you don’t know what a mutton means, it’s a lamb! The mutton continued to make an appearance on runways in London, at Simone Rocha, in Milan at Marni and Jil Sander, and in Paris at Miu Miu and Louis Vuitton, but it’s not the only shape that designers have in mind for us next season. The extra-long sleeve, one that’s four to five inches longer than your finger tips, the one that makes you feel the coziest when you hide your arms inside it, and maybe you pretend you are a ghost with the sleeves hanging limply over your hands, was also a major contender this season, showing up in the collections of everyone from The Row, to Giorgio Armani, to Stella McCartney.
Elsewhere, we saw designers experiment with the balloon sleeve (Chloe), with the bell sleeve (Celine), and the overtly-embellished sleeve (Chanel).
But why sleeves and why now? It seems like the two opposing movements in fashion – the minimalists and the maximalists – have both been slowly moving towards the same direction in an attempt to further define their aesthetics. A minimalist like The Row, might seem to elongate a sleeve as a way to add a special element to an otherwise classic sweater shape, while someone like J.W. Anderson – in his search to make a more decadent collection – added an exaggerated sleeve shape in order to have his woman cause a stir when she walks into a room. There is something about a statement sleeve that is more dramatic than say, a pair of super wide-leg trousers or a very short skirt, perhaps because it’s so unusual.
Here are our favorite sleeves from the fall 2015 collections.
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