Messy is chic again. But is the world ready for my kind of crumpled grubbiness? | Emma Beddington
All my clothes are stained and creased and my house is cluttered, so I should be thrilled by this moment. But it’s naive to think
All my clothes are stained and creased and my house is cluttered, so I should be thrilled by this moment. But it’s naive to think we are about to be tolerant of the real mess of life Stand down Stacey Solomon; hush, quiet luxury mess is back, though in this household, and I suspect many others, it never went away.
“Messiness in all its aesthetic glory is being celebrated in a meaningful way,” Susie Lau writes in this month’s Elle, highlighting some recent fashion mess – dirty shirt cuffs and frayed embroidery at Prada; battered handbags at Chanel; an “extreme-treated denim” homage to the walk of shame at Diesel. Beauty and homes are on a similar trajectory, apparently, with morning-after makeup and interiors that make a virtue of clutter and imperfection, “from unmade beds to breakfast leftovers”.
The mess revival Lau observes in style has also been gathering momentum in other areas goblin mode, bed rotting and sloppy, blurred Instagram photo dumps. Now “ gen Z is drinking again ” (74% of them, up from 66% in 2023 according to a drinks industry study), there seems to be a broader sobriety backlash brewing and cigarettes are, depressingly, back in fashion (deployed as accessories by Kylie Jenner, Dua Lipa, Hailey Bieber and many more).
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