Bows, bows, bows.
Pink, white or blue. Out of satin, silk or lace. To wear on your bag, to wear on your face.
This year saw the comeback of at least two little-girl-wardrobe staples, mary-jane flat shoes and bows as accessories for almost anything.
In fashion
This regain in popularity for the bow is mainly due to niche-ish Internet subculture fashion as found on Tiktok such as coquette core, cottagecore or balletcore which have in common palettes of light shades of pink and white, soft and delicate-seeming materials that render an ethereal feminine aesthetic.
The bow made a giant leap from our smartphone screens to high-fashion runways lacing sexy corsets, adorning princess gowns and gracing blushing cheeks. On places where bows belong and places that required some imagination to get them there.
Darling of this year’s collections from houses such as Sandy Liang, Balmain or Simone Rocha, fashion giants cannot seem to run out of imaginative ways to use bows to embellish their garments or fully put it in the limelight as star of the show and unexpected main dish.
Here and there, out on the streets was your sleek bow on a luxury Coach bag, on those Jane Birkin-ified handbags or even ones thrifted from Goodwill.
Girlhood extended
The aforementioned subcultures feature a form of nostalgia that satisfies itself with smoothness and sweetness in textures, colors and attitudes to summon back memories of cherished times — of kinder days.
So the bow finds its rightful place among people who feel the prettiest while wearing long flowy dresses as do little girls, not to place little girls as an ideal of beauty but as another performance of womanhood that chooses to stick to what it knows. “Back to our roots” as the saying goes.
Is the bow a symbol of indulging in childishness, in stuntedness and coping with a sense of inadequacy to the challenges of adulthood?
Gen-Z, the newest generation of young adults has not enjoyed the kindest decade to experience and develop, partly because of formative years lost to the virus™.
This idea of time lost permeating the cultural zeitgeist leads to going back in time. Beyond the regular 20-year trend cycle, fashion trends move at a faster pace, easily consumed and just as quickly discarded. World events and catastrophes both in threat and in actuality disrupting everything that is and might be.
The choice of our generation is between an uncertain future, and the warm embrace of days past. Hence the bows.
In parallel to this widespread cultural phenomenon of nostalgia, there has been a sense of pride and celebration of girlhood, unadulterated by misogynistic stigmas like being “too girly”. The 2000s were brought back only in fashion, glitters and glosses, not in tabloid-body-shaming, generalized fatphobia or major-scale slut-shaming.
So not only do “the girlies” engage in feminism but they also revel in a love of the feminine and its experiences.
As shown with the tremendous commercial success of the Barbie movie this summer and its effect on Internet cultures which translated into real life trends of dressing in Barbie pink to go see the movie, it was about all kinds of people united in the same experience of stereotypical girliness enjoying it to the fullest. Perhaps, there was no better time to be a girl than this year.
Girlhood transcended
But beyond the use of extension, of satisfaction of a sort of nostalgia the bow symbolizes, it might also represent the transcension of the stage of girlhood into womanhood. Is it not a rite of passage to enjoy your favorite shoes before you settle into new ones?
Was this trend a mourning of sorts for some? Or a reclaiming of girlhood memorabilia from one stage to the other? Is it simply enjoying your youth while you still have it?
News of the bow’s falling-out-of-style is already being whispered. No one ever said to listen though.
No matter the reason for this resurgence, it happened. It is here right now and it tells us that growing up and growing old will never mean to give up on the things you love, on the things that make you feel like you. Hang on to the bows, to the pastels, pinks and glitters for as long as you would like.
Besides, you could say this trend really put a bow on this year.
Yafatou Imane Touré