When the Game Breaks: The Fetish of Hybrid Fashion and the Risk of Structural Superficiality

Alexander McQueen e Nick Knight, “The Bridegroom Stripped Bare” Fashion Film, 2002

Words, Concepts, Ambiguities (Deconstructing ≠ De-structuring)

In the contemporary fashion vocabulary, certain words evoke immediate imagery: deconstruction, de-structuring, hybridization — each one a symbol, an idea, an aesthetic. These are powerful terms, often perceived as synonymous with creative freedom, experimentation, and the breaking of convention. Yet behind their semantic allure lies an ambiguity worth unpacking.

To deconstruct implies theoretical and technical awareness; to de-structure often refers to a morphological alteration, sometimes intuitive, sometimes superficial. These concepts have become part of fashion’s common lexicon, but they are too often used to legitimize garments that seem to have lost all connection with function, form, and — crucially — with the memory of their own making.

Here lies the critical point: we have lost design consciousness.For a garment to make sense, it must emerge from a balanced combination of technical knowledge, cultural intention, and functional purpose. It must have a name, a grammar, a body.

The Gesture of Deconstruction: Knowing Before Breaking

When we speak of deconstruction in fashion, we refer to an act of profound awareness — the breaking of rules only after mastering them. Unfortunately, in the work of many young designers today, that awareness is absent. They play with forms, removing structural elements without understanding what gives a garment its meaning, its symbolic identity.

It is a fascinating game, but an incomplete one — innovation without knowledge.Fashion, because of its apparent superficiality, lends itself easily to such experiments. The contemporary wardrobe — fluid, genderless, performative — as shown by figures like McQueen or Nick Knight, no longer imposes strict limits. Yet if we strip away structure, only the surface remains. And with it, we lose the emotional and cultural attachment to the object itself.

Costume and Fashion: A Turning Point

To navigate this scenario, it helps to distinguish two historical narratives: the history of costume and the history of fashion.

The history of costume explores dress as an expression of roles, belonging, rituals, and social codes. The history of fashion, instead, tells the story of individual desire, of maisons, of designers, and of seasonal collections.

From the late 19th century onward, the designer began to emerge as a creative author. With industrialization and the birth of prêt-à-porter, fashion history gained centrality, gradually overshadowing costume history. The key shift occurred in the 1960s: the bond between clothing and social role broke apart — Courrèges’ X-line cut marked a new era. People no longer dressed to be something, but to express themselves.

It was a liberation — yet also a loss. Clothing ceased to be a collective language and became a subjective fragment.

This transition, however, was not universal. Across many cultures — from Southeast Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa — costume remains woven into daily life, expressing ethnic identity, communal belonging, and ritual continuity.

On today’s global runways, we see spectacular collections drawing from these traditions — visually powerful, symbolically dense — yet often with aesthetics prevailing over structured tailoring. Costume survives, but the grammar of construction weakens.

As Jacques Derrida wrote, “To deconstruct is not to destroy, but to dismantle structures in order to understand them better.” When dismantling is not followed by comprehension and reconstruction, we remain in the realm of simulacra.

From Grammar to Gesture: The Hollowing of Deconstruction

Paris, 1981. Amid the symmetrical elegance of European couture, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto unveiled dark, irregular, frayed silhouettes — garments that appeared unfinished, yet were meticulously thought out. Every “mistake” was intentional.

Yamamoto would later say: “You must know the rules before you can break them with grace.” That is the key. Their deconstruction was not a random rupture but the outcome of deep technical mastery. Margiela would later push this gesture to its extreme — yet always from within the classical grammar of tailoring. Nothing was left to chance: every seam, every cut, every fold was a statement.

In that context, de-structuring was a cultural act.

Today, however, we witness a dangerous shift. The deconstructive gesture has become an aesthetic formula — a look to be replicated, emptied of meaning. The fault does not lie entirely with fashion schools — many still teach with rigor — but with a system that rewards immediacy over process. We skip the stage of construction and rush straight to rupture. Yet if we do not know what we are breaking, we create only emptiness.

De-structuring: The Armani Paradigm

Meanwhile, in a booming Milan of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Giorgio Armani quietly staged another revolution: the de-structured jacket.

Milan was the city of yuppies, career women, and a bourgeoisie seeking both rigor and fluidity. Armani stripped the jacket of its rigid scaffolding, adapting it to both male and female bodies. He rendered it soft, almost liquid.

Here, de-structuring was not absence — it was adaptation. It responded to a social need, an anthropological shift. It was technique serving function — tailoring grammar reinterpreted with finesse.

Hybrid Fashion: When Aesthetics Become Orphaned from Structure

Out of these historical gestures emerged what we might call hybrid fashion: a collage of visual elements, often captivating but internally unstructured. Garments assembled like patchworks, where the idea of juxtaposition overshadows design intent.

This is not a moral critique. Hybrid fashion is stimulating, seemingly free. Yet when it loses structure, it also loses longevity — and this brings us to a crucial issue: sustainability.

To design with awareness, to produce only what has value, to respect the time of thought before the time of publication — these are the revolutionary acts today.

A garment that communicates nothing, that exists only to be photographed, is destined to be forgotten. It becomes fashion as fetish, not as language.

Technique, Memory, Future: Stitching Meaning Back Together

This is not a call to nostalgia, nor a rejection of change. But in our race toward innovation, we have lost knowledge.

We have stopped telling the stories behind a dart, a lining, an oblique seam — yet it is there that fashion takes form. It is there that design becomes body.

We need masters capable of transmitting such knowledge — with generosity, creativity, and rigor. Not to halt innovation, but to give it foundations.

As Walter Benjamin wrote, “Memory is not an act of preservation, but an active force.” In fashion, this means: cutting, sewing, trying, failing, beginning again.

As long as there is someone willing to pass on this invisible grammar, fashion will not be lost. But it is up to us now — to stitch the game back together.And perhaps, make it work again.

Sources:

Jacques Derrida, La scrittura e la differenza (1967) – concetto di decostruzione; Walter Benjamin, Angelus Novus e Tesi di filosofia della storia (1940) – memoria come atto attivo; Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto: interviste e analisi in Fashion and Modernity (Caroline Evans & Minna Thornton); Giorgio Armani: vedi Armani: A Man and His Work (G. Rosenzweig), e Moda. Dalla nascita dell'haute couture a oggi (C. Paulicelli); Martin Margiela: catalogo mostra Margiela / Galliera, 1989–2009; The Fashion System di Roland Barthes; Il costume e la moda di James Laver