We’re tired. Tired of beige-on-beige. Tired of the hush and calm of “quiet luxury,” of flawless skin and even more flawless lifestyles. We crave something… strange. And if we’re being honest - a little unhinged. Surrealism, that visual psychoanalysis, arrives right on time.
Why everyone is looking back to the absurd
Fashion mirrors the psyche of the moment - a kind of collective subconscious in fabric. Look at the state of the world today, and it becomes obvious why surrealism is seeping into visual culture - and especially into fashion.
Visual fatigue meets the desire to play. In a world where Instagram pulses with a new trend every five seconds, minimalism is exhausting. The soul craves either silence - or dramatic shoulders and swan-shaped shoes.
AI as the new Salvador Dalí. CGI, AR, deepfakes, the metaverse - we already live in a world where reality is optional. Fashion is merely catching up. The fantastic feels more real than the real.
Post-irony as a lifestyle. Everyone gets the joke. And everyone’s tired of everyone getting it. So you wear a dress that mimics a naked body and go have coffee. Now. No explanation needed.
Escaping trauma. From pandemics to wars, the world is steeped in collective trauma. People long for escape into alternate realities - fantastic, magical, surreal. It's a form of visual therapy. Images of women with blurred-out faces, garments shaped like body fragments - they’re direct metaphors for censorship, violence, pressure. This isn’t about aesthetics. It’s about survival through imagination.
Posthumanism. The human body is no longer sacred. Fashion explores mutation, transformation, cybernetic evolution. Once again, surrealism becomes a tool to deconstruct the human form.
Surrealism as new cultural capital
When everyone became fashionable, fashion became more complex. Not more expensive - just harder to decode. Money is no longer the gatekeeper. Understanding is.
Loewe makes bags that look like tomatoes. Their balloon and doll heels - they’re not for wearing, but for decoding.
Schiaparelli under Daniel Roseberry creates looks that resemble dream fragments or beautiful nightmares. Busts, eyes, ears, breasts - everything is exposed, like an archaeological memory of the body.
Maison Margiela with Galliano is an opera of its own. The body is merely a starting point. Then it distorts, flips, disintegrates. And that’s where the beauty lies.
Balenciaga speaks grotesque. Their pieces aren’t meant to be worn. They’re meant to be discussed. Or memed. Or therapeutically processed.
Why this isn’t just fashion
Democratization of fashion. Fast fashion, online platforms, social media - fashion is accessible now. Trends are copied instantly. Style is increasingly uniform. Being “fashionable” no longer signals status.
Surrealism pushes back - not with wealth, but with cultural currency. Understanding is the new elite code. If you recognize a dress as an allusion to Freud’s Dream of Love, you're in. If not - you scroll past.
Surrealism has become a filter. Intellectual. Emotional. Visual. It requires knowledge - of art history, fashion theory, the psychology of imagery. Once again, fashion becomes a marker of the “in-crowd.”
It’s a response to massification, a reclaiming of fashion as art and intellectual expression. We’ll likely see more conceptual collections that demand emotional and intellectual engagement.
The result? Fashion becomes less “universally readable” but more “culturally rarefied.” We live in a meta-aesthetic era. Everything’s been done. Everything’s been seen. That’s why fashion turns again toward dreams, the subconscious, the unsaid. To preserve the mystery.
Because reality? That’s already last season.
