The fall/winter 2024/2025 fashion season had a normcore hum to it. There were a few thrilling shows: Dilara Findikoglu’s Femme Vortex collection memorably layered corsetry and athletic pieces; GCDS did horror with a hauntingly beautiful collection; Vetements introduced an extreme teddy-bear cape; Miu Miu served up nurse dresses in Klein Blue; and Andreas Kronthaler’s Vivienne Westwood takeover featured unforgettable pagan platform boots. But the no-longer-novel motifs of recent seasons—sheer dresses, big shoulders, block colours and office siren suits—were visible almost everywhere.

Does it seem like fashion is flatlining because everything after Margiela’s spring 2024 haute couture collection—with which the haunting beauty and emotional power of dressing for mood was reborn with a drama that made audience members cry—feels bland by comparison? Did our mainstream love of beige and quiet luxury drain fashion of its fabulousness? Or did prêt-à-porter mirror culture by slipping effortlessly into the opposite of couture exclusivity with a collective sameness that mimics the results of an algorithm?

Whichever way we look at it, the takeaway this season is that technology’s accelerationism has landed in our wardrobes. For better or for worse, algorithmic-driven normcore fashion is here in the form of gender-fluid, unpretentious, average-looking clothing that blends together the most popular trends in a way that signals belonging by not standing out.

Kyle Chayka, author of Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture, has been tracking the advance of algorithmic dominion over fashion and culture for a while. He first noticed “AirSpace”—a term he coined to classify the aesthetic indistinguishability of cafés, malls, airports and other public spaces across the planet—in 2016. According to Chayka, it reflects a globalism that has more to do with the universal use of apps than any geographical or cultural reality.

“And as the most ephemeral of the arts, fashion design can change with the speed of memes. Shipping times are [virtually] instantaneous now, so we can consume clothing at the same velocity and [with the same] fervour as [we do] content, which on TikTok changes every week.”

Today, AirSpace has given way to “Filterworld,” a new reality in which our cultural tastes are dictated by algorithms. In fashion, this means that machines are curating our clothing choices through algorithmic amplification of mainstream trends. Chayka notes that algorithms feed on fast fashion, which makes the changing room a perfect AirSpace. “Production schedules have met the trend cycles of social media,” he says. “And as the most ephemeral of the arts, fashion design can change with the speed of memes. Shipping times are [virtually] instantaneous now, so we can consume clothing at the same velocity and [with the same] fervour as [we do] content, which on TikTok changes every week.” If fashion choices are tied to identity and identity is being shaped by whatever widely held opinion an algorithm serves up, could individuality be giving way to conformity with the latest TikTok craze?

In the past, fashion editors articulated trends and dictated which styles would make us fashionable, but it’s a role that is increasingly being taken over by computer analytics. To some, this outsourcing of style leadership to the masses through the harvesting and recycling of our data might seem more democratic. We judge things by how popular they are—by how many likes and shares they get. User behaviour directs the algorithms that produce the content we all consume and are influenced by. But do these data waves reflect how we personally feel and how we actually want to express ourselves? “One of the most powerful things we can do on the internet is take the shape of whatever we need to be to distribute ourselves and accrue attention,” says Chayka. “It’s powerful to not have a fixed identity. But what meaning do we find after that?”

In a rare interview—and her first since launching her own greatly anticipated label—earlier this year, Phoebe Philo told the New York Times that her approach to dropping collections would defy strict show seasons. She would release “edits” on her own schedule, making each one part of an endless collection. “I don’t know why there has to be such a beginning and an end in our industry,” she said. “I don’t know why it can’t just be continuous.” At a time when we are navigating the transition from well-thought-out fashion curation to algorithm-prescribed style, her statement feels prophetic. By not adhering to the trend seasons and being both everlasting and nondescript, are her well crafted classics echoing the algo? Has Philo rejoined the industry on the side of mass data with the promise of algorithmic chic?

“Developing and indulging taste means constructing a firmer sense of self.”

“Taste is a fundamental part of the self,” says Chayka. “Developing and indulging taste means constructing a firmer sense of self.” This organic process gets diluted online, where the net average dictates a collective attitude that reduces all original thought and feeling to a digital normcore wave. The word “normcore” first appeared as a glimpse of the future when former trend-forecasting group K-Hole used it in its 2013 “Youth Mode” report to reference a fashion attitude that stands for “finding liberation in being nothing special.” Normcore is back in a deeper way now, with technology upgrades grooming us for the next phase of erased difference. There is something humbling in this—in how it transforms fashion from a marker of VIP status to a symbol of egalitarian togetherness.

“We don’t exist in an offline world anymore—there is nothing that isn’t touched by the internet,” says Chayka. “I’m very tempted to just embrace the flatness of algorithm intelligence. I also keep it in check by logging off and wearing a couture piece with totally functional horse-farm gear, [like] black leather boots from Ariat.” It’s a feeling of conflict many of us surely share, which is why the assured, iconic looks of Zendaya’s Dune: Part 2 and Challengers press tours may be what we remember most in recent fashion. If algorithmic chic is an inevitable by-product of our extremely online era, maybe the way to unite our URL and IRL selves is to do what Chayka does and never leave home in our normcore uniforms without a splash of uniqueness.

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