Gen Z Chaos Hits the Runway

There’s a phrase my editors and I love to use to talk about the way many young people dress: “Gen Z chaos.” (We mean it as a compliment.) How better to sum up that generation’s giddy way of spackling together outfits?

The uncertainty that afflicts others about how to dress for one’s age, one’s job or even the weather doesn’t seem to unsettle this cohort. They pull on their thrifted cowboy boots, wool blazer and a tattered rugby and keep it moving.

I’ve been waiting for a designer to capture this “oh, whatever” attitude. Someone who embraces a way of assembling outfits without prosaic rules of good taste, but who could also give a touch of order to that chaos.

Enter Meryll Rogge of Marni.

“We do enjoy to play with juxtapositions but also contradictions within the garment,” Rogge said backstage at her runway show on Thursday, grinning in a burgundy skirt and a sea foam top. “Things that don’t really make sense.”

And so you get a guy in flip-flops, grid-checked tan shorts with scrunched black leggings underneath, a fair isle vest over a suit and tie, and a parka thrown over all of it. He’s dressed for a day that begins with a walk on the boardwalk, flows into an office Christmas party and culminates in a ski trip.

Or a woman in brown sandals, taupe socks with a lime green border, leather capris and a short-sleeve windbreaker with a swath of deco print straight out of a 1950s kitchen. And some windshield sunglasses and big picture-frame earrings to finish it off. Phew.

It may sound like a mess, but there is nothing fumbling or slapdash about these looks, which were styled by Tamara Rothstein. Each garment is crisp, juxtaposed by a deliberate hand. The experimentation has happened somewhere offscreen. What we get to see are the imagination-expanding results.

Rogge understands it’s passé to be polite with your clothes now. There’s so much good taste in the marketplace that to see a chaste navy sweater is to be reminded of how many clones of that garment already exist.

But Rogge also seems to get what Gen Z senses intuitively: Through all that chaos, you can eventually arrive at something brilliant. Irregular wooden buttons on silken tops? A canny way to zhuzh up something we’ve seen so often. Purplish-gray pants and an orange top do go nicely together, it turns out. And for the men, there is a way to wear a cardigan under a blazer without looking like a substitute teacher … so long as the tie is brown and the sweater is eye-popping blueberry.

We could all stand to be as intrepid as Rogge. We’d be better for it.

Like all brands owned by Renzo Rosso’s OTB Group, though, Marni is pricey. $2,700 for a dress, $1,195 for some heels, $975 for a belt. It’s a shame. It feels as if it’s missing a chance to be worn by the generation it’s speaking to most directly. If it could wrest down those prices, it wouldn’t just be channeling Gen Z, it might be dressing them, too.

Cynical shopper

Demna’s Gucci man is starting to take shape. At Friday’s runway show, he was a swirl of 1980s Euro aristocrat and mall-goth schlump. It was “The Shards” meets “The Lost Boys.” Some haute bourgeois, and some hot mess.

He wore white jeans, black loafers without socks and quilted field coats that bespeak good breeding and deep pockets — but also ripply jeans, off-the-shoulder flight jackets and thick horsebit belts. (Demna’s Gucci woman is still a murkier proposition, though I was smitten by a section late in the show depicting punky Sloane Rangers in tartan maxi skirts and “don’t bother me” bombers.)

Demna called it the “Store Show,” and it took place inside a mock megastore. Bags and shoes on shelves. Coats and dresses on racks. It seemed like a cynical response to what has been the loudest complaint about Gucci under Demna so far: that it lacks product. That critique has become an existential problem for Gucci’s parent company, Kering, as its stock price has continued to slide.

Much of what Demna showed would look great on anyone — rugby shirts, washed-in denim, plaid-lined Harrington jackets. But this was product to sell more than to stir. (In her review, my colleague Vanessa Friedman said it had a “whiff of McKinsey” to it. Read her here.)

Other things worth knowing about:

For their first Moschino show, the designers Loris Messina and Simone Rizzo sent about 400 people in their street clothes marching against the tide of their models. It was arresting, if distracting. (Some of the randos were dressed cooler than the models, sorry!) Still, the whole spectacle was a clever way to contextualize the clothes for their eventual destination: real life. Vanessa explains further in her full review.
Of all the gilded artifacts in the Prada museum atop the brand’s new Milan Galleria megashop, my favorite was a pair of America’s Cup sneakers marred by scuff marks all over the toes. I wish more museums would show clothes this bruised and tattered. It’s satisfying to see how people actually wore this stuff.
The chief artificial intelligence officer of Meta, Alexandr Wang, wore a camo T-shirt and Crocs to the company’s A.I. keynote this week. He looked unruly and unbothered. If there were any notion that Silicon Valley execs might take the public’s concerns about the threat of A.I. a bit more seriously, Wang’s Jibbitz sure put that to rest. (For more on tech overlord style, read Vanessa’s masterful piece on Mark Zuckerberg.)
News from home: Tome, the vintage designer shop that posts well-priced drops of brands like Helmut Lang, Agnès B. and Alaïa opened a storefront on Eldridge Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
It’s never too soon to start anticipating a new Sheila Heti book: This one, slated for May, is about a group of schoolgirls adrift on a ship on the high seas.

What we’re reading and watching:

The article that, rightly, broke the internet this week. Woke 1.0 is alive and well in Western Massachusetts.
I would like to teleport to a future where I can see this movie as soon as possible.
Apartment fiction by Claire-Louise Bennett.
The Italian press roasted Vogue World in Milan.
OK, fine, here’s the A.I. Prada x Raf Simons rap video. Now please stop sending it to me.

Ask Vanessa

I’m in my mid-20s, and now that I’m moving into more professional roles and have a better sense of my own personal taste, I’m looking to update my wardrobe with long-lasting core pieces. What is the best way to suss out quality? — Paige, Washington, D.C.For decades there was an implicit assumption among most shoppers — an unstated bargain, if you will — that luxury brands were markers of quality, that part of what you were paying for was, in fact, exactly that. … Read more.