Serf’s Up!

From recession pop to castlecore, join Amy Condren on a journey exploring the fashion cycle that lords over us all.

Hear ye! Hear ye! It has been said that Lady Gaga topping the charts is a universal omen of recession, but have you considered that perhaps there are forces at play harkening us back to far darker times? Forget 2009 — “Abracadabra”, welcome back to the year 1431! Did you know that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for being a witch? Well, I have consulted the stars and they have decreed: there is something so feudal about 2025. 

When the killing blow was struck against the decade-long reign of minimalism, where were you? Ever since the minstrel Charlemagne xcx dropped her ditty “Milady, rather perplexing”, there has been a shirking of pretence, a post plague kind of revel in the flames. I hope you enjoyed brat summer, because already it is time to don your chainmail and ruffled garb for the foreseeable future. That’s right, serf’s up! Winter is coming and the hot girls are already doing “castlecore”. 

All is not as it seems; when we say no more to quiet luxury, what we really mean is fur is back on the runway. The feed will call it "boho-chic" revival, “whimsigoth” resurgence, and the renaissance of Isabel Marant, but we know. The weight of those above presses down upon us keenly. Already, folks are donning the gauzy linen bonnets of the peasantry and calling it an aesthetic. Sir, that is called larping! All the world's a stage: we are merchants, knights, villeins, jesters, fishmongers and fishwives alike, and the rich are cosplaying us all!

With whom do we seek to curry favour? Fashion is a swinging pendulum, oscillating between excess and understatement. Exhuming the old, breathing fresh life into it just to let it die again. Back and forth we go, walking the tightrope between ostentatious parodies of excess and subtle signals of status. Collective expression is a horse-drawn mill, spinning in an endless cycle of public death and rebirth. But who holds our polyester reins? Someone please, raise the hue and cry! Whenever a fashion girlie goes to dinner, there is always a baron poised to pillage her expression for mass consumption. You will find me there too, famished at the table — plate empty and cutlery in hand — a brain rotted vassal of the internet ready to feast.  

Nothing evokes a sense of the dark ages quite like telling the girls what to do, right? The trend cycle lords over us all. Most of us do not have the vocabulary or the inclination to transcend a steady diet of precisely what we are fed. I am duty-bound to perpetuate this tale. My cup runneth over and I am ceaselessly inspired. It is always someone else's ideas that trickle down into my wardrobe; their sentiments about society I smear on my face. I would scarcely do a thing at all if someone else had not already dared, and by the time something revolutionary reaches me it is already dead. So much of my whimsy is borrowed. 

Yet this process of creating culture is spiralling beyond any centralised authority in the cosmos of the internet. I cannot consume any of it fast enough, and I live to scroll. If I were an oracle, I would tell you that when things move too quickly for perception, they blur. What was material becomes a phantasm, and finally you are free to decide how to express yourself without the weight of repetitive stories that are not your own. But I am not an oracle: I used to swear I would never sport a low rise jean. I am but a child of the times, and all that I am I owe to Pinterest. 

Nevertheless, take heart! In the spirit of “fisherman aesthetic”, the world is your single use, synthetic oyster! Recession pop is all about fun, and oligarchy aside, there is much fun to be had. By all means, channel the spirit of the swain — fish out your knee high gumboots and cable knit jumper. The spokes on the wheel of fortune turn ever onward, and when it comes to fashion, we are all but humble servants.