Pandemic Fashion Moments “You Had to be There” For

The COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing global crisis that has flipped our lives upside down, is about to have its first anniversary.

By mid-March of 2020, world leaders and health experts had declared the virus a pandemic, forcing us into our homes with no end in sight. It was then that Gen Z learned that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

We all had our own way of coping with the mental health detriment of the pandemic, but for many, fashion was a source of light in a world of darkness, and our creativity has left a lasting imprint. The pandemic has made young people revive old, washed-up trends into today’s next big thing.

Perhaps the first and most popular trend has to be the resurgence of the tie-dye phenomenon. Back in the early 2000s, we were young children making tie-dye T-shirts at summer camp for fun. Last spring around this time, everyone had taken on the skill of tie-dyeing their own sweat sets, tanks, and more, and many of us even started tie-dyeing businesses through social media.

TikTok and social media influencers were heavily participating in the trend, and online brands were emerging with tie-dye as their specialty.

The bright colors of tie-dye raised our spirits with hopes of more vibrant days ahead: the upcoming summer, a vaccine, and hopefully the lifting of some restrictions to reward us for months in quarantine, a mindset we needed to take on last spring to get through the pandemic’s first few months.

It wasn’t long after the pandemic began last March that pearls became trendy. If you told VALLEY a year ago that young people would be casually wearing pearl necklaces, we probably wouldn’t believe you.

You’d think in a time like this, fashion would be out with the old and in with the new, but when we’re living in dark times, we revert back to nostalgia from simpler times. Our generation will be remembered for pioneering vintage fashion into 21st-century fashion staples.

Vivienne Westwood’s iconic pearl necklace, the Mini Bas Relief choker, has made its way into everyone’s jewelry collection this past year, bringing back pearl necklaces, an old-fashioned statement of elegance, into trendy, casual fashion in 2021.

Then came autumn, a time when more warm and neutral tones are becoming a staple of everyone’s closet. Warm tones and neutrals have always been at the center of fall fashion, but one particular color became the next big thing: Brown.

Though brown clothing has always been around, it had never seen its moment in fashion until now. Today, everyone is wearing brown coats, boots, leather pants, bags and dresses. Brown nail art had also become the next biggest trend.

With so much uncertainty in the world, a fresh new color palette is just what we needed going into our first winter months of the pandemic. Sporting brown and neutral tones fit the tone of the season – minimal and back to basics, but still elegant and classy to keep us warm. We’ve all matured so fast this past year, so wearing so sophisticated a color as brown perfectly embodies where we’re currently at in our young adult lives.

Times have changed so quickly and so drastically this past year, and we see it reflected in the world of fashion. VALLEY hopes that amid all the uncertainty during this past year, you’ve found fashion as a creative outlet. Go and buy a brown coat, you deserve it.

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