Size does matter, especially in this season of oversized everything
In 2023, everything will be massive, judging from how Gen-Z has categorically dumped the skinny jean into the closet of oblivion (for now). It’s all big now, from blazers to T-shirts. Oversized has been a trend since it caught fire on TikTok, but experts say it’s bound to get only bigger. Florals for spring, groundbreaking, as Miranda Priestly put it, eyebrow raised, but spring and summer 2023 are no season for Lilliputian flowers—They’re bold and bright and overlarge in keeping with next year’s big statement. Meanwhile, are you ready to get into flared bottoms and superwide-leg jeans?
Everything, if I haven’t stressed it enough, is going to be big. Think exaggerated zippers at Louis Vuitton or the extra-large floral appliqués at Loewe or the baggy denim trousers at Bottega Veneta or the supersized blazer at Coach.
But if anything needs to be bigger, it has to be more than fashion. With hope, relying on the oft-quoted statement from fashion legend Diana Vreeland—“Fashion is part of the daily air and it changes all the time, with all the events. You can even see the approaching of a revolution in clothes”—the oversize trend is only a metaphor for our big dreams. May these dreams be large enough to encompass the whole wide planet, particularly in areas where they are belittled! More important, may they all come true.
But dreams, no matter how big, are never enough, unless they come with actions as big and bold as needed. Emerging from three years of off-and-on lockdowns, we find, though we are still on a holiday high, still hung over, thanks to the all Champagne you could drink on New Year’s Eve, that, in fact, the only “new normal” we have been predicting since Covid-19 turned the world upside down and inside out is unpredictability and uncertainty.
With hope, we are as big as we think we are, though the turn of events is making us realize more and more how small we are in the scheme of things.
We’re up against mammoth challenges that no amount of Happy New Year greetings can wish away just like that. New Year’s resolutions never stick and, unless we push hard enough as individuals and as a collective, there’s no way we can just leave behind the intensifying rivalries between big powers—Hell-oh, US! Hell-oh, China! Oh, and hell-oh, Russia!—and just turn the page to world peace.
The China-India conflict, fanned by the US-China rivalry, is stirring up trouble on the Indian Ocean, South Asia, and beyond. It’s the same everywhere else, where domestic stirrings give ammunition to either side of the superpower tug-of-war—the civil protests in Iran, ethnic violence in Ethiopia, jihadist insurgency in The Sahel in North Africa, banditry and separatist rebellion in Nigeria, sectarian divisions in Lebanon, warfare between armed groups and state forces in Colombia, the military junta in Myanmar, and—closer to home—the territorial pissings over the West Philippine Sea, called on the other side of the coin, and also historically, as South China Sea. There’s also Sudan. There’s Haiti. There’s Yemen. And, of course, there’s Ukraine.
More than a buzz phrase, climate adaptability in a world like this, at a time like now is probably a prayer for a miracle. Extreme weather, though not exactly new, has become as normal as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.
Recall the record-breaking monsoon in June last year, which killed thousands of people and displaced millions in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. Think of the heatwaves in South and Central Asia, in China, and in Europe, particularly in France, Greece, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain. Consider the flooding, the supertyphoons, or the hurricanes in Malaysia, the Philippines, the US, and West Africa. There was also drought in China and the Horn of Africa.
The long tail of Covid-19 is still something to worry about, not to mention the havocs it has wreaked on all fronts—political, economic, social. Prices of daily commodities are going through the roof. Mental illness is threatening to be as common as the common cold. We are in the precipice of another Great Depression. Nerves are raw, tempers are flaring, and never has nuclear doomsday been as possible as now since the Cold War.
Yes, there may be giants up ahead, but we’re not exactly Davids. We are the center of the universe, or so we thought, but we did make a tool of nature, we landed on the moon, we have reached the sky. We are big enough to do something drastic—and effective. With hope, we are as big as we think we are, though the turn of events is making us realize more and more how small we are in the scheme of things.
So right, supersize your dreams. Carry it in a massive croc-embossed lambskin tote by Peter Do or a larger-than-life hobo bag like the Hèrmes Arcon.
Make your dreams as big as the women’s oversized sneaker at Alexander McQueen, a white smooth calf leather laceup, in which, as size does matter, you can walk the talk.
And make a difference.
Hello, 2023! Please do not be hell.