Though the 2010s aren’t too far behind, a look back reveals how much things have changed—especially in fashion. The single most impactful 2010s fashion development? It came not from Milan, New York, or Paris, but from Silicon Valley. We’re talking about .
For much of history, sartorial innovations have had to do with advancements in textile technology or with new silhouettes that suddenly exaggerated or revealed certain parts of the human form. (With nylon came the faux silk stockings of the ; with spandex came the stretch jeans of the . The brought us conical bras; the brought us miniskirts; the brought us padded shoulders.
) Very few fashion milestones have had nothing to do with fashion—that is, until Instagram was born. Dressing for Instagram—now, everyone has an audience!—meant wearing that photographed well. It also led to a rise in ; those posting about their style needed a variety of trendy pieces for an endless parade of “outfit of the day” shots.
If an ensemble looked good on camera, did it really matter if it wasn’t the highest quality? No one will know! This decade also included the casualification of fashion with athleisure (the word was added to the dictionary in 2015) and streetwear (Louis Vuitton’s collaboration with Supreme cemented the genre’s place in high fashion in 2017), but lest we forget, there were also plenty of ways to dress up in the 2010s. The operative word being of course—sky-high platform pumps were the dominant shoe, and.