Keyboard jackets and garden ornament bags: Welcome to the new maximalism movement

Maximalist fashion is staging a loud return. Popularized on social media, the style is more extreme and theatrical than ever — and is bringing the look to a whole new demographic.

Coco Chanel, possibly apocryphally, once said: “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off,” establishing the idea that, in her eyes, to be overdressed was a fashion faux pas. It’s a commandment that has informed many fashion houses for decades; take the monochromatic styling of Issey Miyake, or the clean leatherwork of Hermès. Muted, neutral tones, simple silhouettes and chic fabrics have previously found favor in the fashion world thanks to the “quiet luxury” aesthetic, made even more visible by shows like HBO’s boardroom drama “Succession.” (HBO and CNN are owned by the same parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.) Yet recent runway shows by the likes of Valentino, Prada and Ashish indicate maximalist fashion — a style with roots as far back as 17th century Rome — might be staging a loud return. The economic timing certainly feels right too, as maximalism movements often bubble up around times of sustained economic hardship, such as the one gripping much of the post-Covid-19 world right now. In an interview with CNN, Melissa Marra-Alvarez, curator of the 2019 exhibition “Minimalism/Maximalism” at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York explained it thus: “In the broadest terms, if we look back at fashion history, we can see alternating periods of minimalist and maximalist aesthetics in fashion. It is the back-and-forth nature of these two opposing aesthetics that propels fashion forward. “Every time an aesthetic re-appears it is not only expressing the social and political climate of the moment — it is also reacting to what came before it,” Marra-Alvarez added. “For this reason, it’s never the same iteration of minimalist or maximalist expression. It evolves every time.” Indeed the current maximalist movement, popularized on social media, is more extreme and theatrical than ever before. It also brings the look to a whole new demographic that may not have previously experienced earlier iterations of the style.