It was a year that felt like a decade: 2017 saw the arrival of a new president (and an at-the-ready resistance movement), the unsealing of long-held silences on abuse and consent, a radically new world order and a terrifying spate of natural and human-made disasters (fire, water, terror).
It was also a year full of stuff. Fashion and commerce don’t grind to a halt even in troubling times, and the designers and retailers of the fashion world responded to turmoil as usual. They invented, rebranded, up-marketed and revitalized. It was a year that gawked at stilettos and embraced ugly sneakers; when an advocacy hat was met with an activism hat; when makeup and a glossy magazine offered a new chance at inclusion; and when luxury looked to the bargain basement.
What a long, strange year it has been. Here are the pieces that defined it: what we wore, we carried, wanted, feared and waited for.
The ‘Pussy Hat’
If the signal political fashion item of 2016 was the Make America Great Again cap – a Republican-red telegraph of support for Donald Trump, more instantly legible than any other accessory of a brutal, knockdown presidential race – it found its opposite in the “pussy hat,” the unofficial headgear of the anti-Trump resistance.