Fashion Trends of 2017 in Words of Classics

Transparency + Embroidery

Besides, Minerva, to secure her care, Diffus’d around a veil of thicken’d air

The Odyssey of Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

(Circus-themed embroidery on a non-transparent fabric, Schiaparelli suit)

This trend was used at Valentino, Roberto Cavalli, Marchesa, Elie Saab Couture, Alexander McQueen, Zuhair Murad, Luisa Beccaria catwalks

Renaissance

She was strangely attired in a dress of silver cloth, white and crimson, or silver ‘gauze’, as they call it. This dress had slashed sleeves lined with red taffeta, and was girt about with other little sleeves that hung down to the ground, which she was for ever twisting and untwisting. She kept the front of her dress open, and one could see the whole of her bosom, and passing low, and often she would open the front of this robe with her hands as if she was too hot. The collar of the robe was very high, and the lining of the inner part all adorned with little pendants of rubies and pearls, very many, but quite small. She had also a chain of rubies and pearls about her neck. On her head she wore a garland of the same material and beneath it a great reddish-colored wig, with a great number of spangles of gold and silver, and hanging down over her forehead some pearls, but of no great worth.

Andre Hurault-Sieur de Maisse, the French ambassador to Elizabeth’s court, report of the audience with the Queen ELizabeth I

(Elizabethan/Renaissance attire, Valentino)

Firmly connected to the previous trend, as transparent/gauze fabrics were all the rage during the Renaissance (as much as velvet).

However, full-on interpretation of the age is in: layered fabrics with cuts in top ones that are exposing underlying transparent layers, Elizabethan brocades, starched ruffed collars (ruffs) of all kinds, including cartwheels, cuff details, shoulder wings etc. The hairstyles were resembling early Renaissance ones.

Next year we should probably expect more playing with the Tudor theme.

This trend was employed at the Etro, Valentino, Gucci, Tommy Hilfiger, Balmain, Ralph Lauren

Velvet

Calling my officers about me, in my branched velvet 
gown; having come from a day-bed, where I have left 
Olivia sleeping, —

Malvolio in “Twelfth Night, Or What You Will”, William Shakespeare

(Velvet dress of a robe type, Luisa Beccaria)

Velvet as a key trend for late 2016-early 2017 was mentioned everywhere, but to reiterate: another nod to Renaissance era, often combined with flowy relaxed boudoir robe styles — the silk robe dress is so 2015.

Seen at Fendi, Luisa Beccaria, Ralph Lauren, Valentino

Nile Waters (light teal color)

A paean for this poetically renowned colour by French writer Émile Zola in his “The Ladies’ Paradise”:

First, pale satins and soft silks were gushing out: royal satins and renaissance satins, with the pearly shades of spring water; light silks as transparent as crystal — Nile green, turquoise, blossom pink, Danube blue. Next came the thicker fabrics, the marvellous satins and the duchess silks, in warm shades, rolling in great waves. And at the bottom, as if in a fountain-basin, the heavy materials, the damasks, the brocades, the silver and gold silks, were sleeping on a deep bed of velvets… their shimmering flecks forming a still lake in which reflections of the sky and of the countryside seemed to dance.

Used at Fendi, Valentino, Lanvin