Is the waistline getting lower than ever? What does the new trend tell us about how we perceive our bodies today?

There are trends that conquer a single season. There are other trends, like the return of the dropped waist, that seem like more timid proposals from designers: they are somewhat everywhere, but they are not the main proposal and in general their diffusion is not uniform. The dropped waist proposal was timid until Mathieu Blazy made it the centerpiece of his FW26 collection for Chanel, entirely built on enveloping and vaguely covering shapes, but dominated by a series of midi dresses in which a belt marked an exaggeratedly low waist point, below which a skirt opened up.

They were not separate pieces but a single trompe-l’œil dress, perhaps the most curious silhouette proposed by Blazy so far. To describe the silhouette in question, it would be appropriate to distinguish between “dropped waist” and “low waist”: the waist is “dropped” when it concerns a garment worn on the upper part of the body, it is “low” when it concerns a garment worn on the lower part. In the first case we are talking about more bon-ton and elegant styles, in the second about more everyday and sexy garments.

But the distinction is ultimately partial because the function of lowering the waist always remains that of lengthening the torso and the back by highlighting them. A dropped-waist dress, in reality, can very well be fitted; the only requirement is that its flare starts from the hips, whether a bodice is present or not. But where does this style come from and why have we seen it spread on the runways?

Chanel and the politics of the dropped-waist dress

As many have already pointed out, the work that Blazy is doing at Chanel concerns the exploration of the brand’s aesthetic around the 1920s, the era of Coco Chanel’s great success. The dropped-waist dress became the definitive style of the decade thanks to the women’s liberation movements of the time: the low waist eliminated the corset, both metaphorically and literally a tool of social oppression for women. Even if it’s hard to believe today, the straighter and less “hourglass” silhouette gave an impression of youth and athleticism (the alternative of the era was still clothing in which it was difficult to move) and was connected to the jazz and fox-trot culture since it allowed dancing.

The version proposed by Blazy is very modern: there is today’s taste for “illusory” fashion with the dress simulating the presence of a belt and a miniskirt; the mix of colors and textures for other dresses that have the same line. But the same idea of a dropped waist has been explored a lot during the last fashion month. We saw it at Khaite with a black boat-neck dress that, just above mid-thigh, opens into solid satin rouches; at Marni, Meryl Rogge created a low-waist skirt but with a fake belt marking the waist much lower.

Always a belt marked the dropped waist in a skirt by MM6 Maison Margiela, in a trench by Lacoste, in a striped maxi dress by Missoni. At Niccolò Pasqualetti instead of the belt there was a very low tubular element, at Rabanne instead a skirt featured silver metallic cones at the waist from which red threads emerged that then became a skirt. Conner Ives and Erdem instead used a biparted skirt while at Mugler, Eckhaus Latta, Uma Wang, Ffforme and Roberto Cavalli the lower waist was marked by a draping of fabric or even a simple seam. More original, Diesel and Marco Rambaldi entrusted the fabric conformations with the task of manipulating the proportions.

Same party girl, different era

We said earlier that in the 1920s the dropped waist of dresses was linked, in addition to the political climate of the times, also to the new and more dynamic dances arriving from America, with all the attached lifestyle. Today, strangely, low-waist pants and skirts say, in a different way, the same thing. The return of the low waist in both womenswear and menswear collections corresponds to a call to nightlife. Nicola Brognano built his entire debut at 7 For All Mankind on an Indie Sleaze-era party girl and indeed low-waist jeans were on almost every look. At Gucci there was the same vibe as well as at Di Petsa who made low pants with cut-outs for men.

But there are other examples. The sexiest is obviously Tom Ford where both women and men wore low-waist black pants whose belt was only halfway through the loops while the other half rose on the skin and around the hips creating almost the illusion of a thong or a harness. At McQueen, needless to say, the famous bumster was reproposed as well as at Miu Miu a series of leather jacket and pants sets was made to leave the entire belly area exposed.

Even at Giorgio Armani there was a low-waist pant but without leaving too much skin exposed since a high-neck lace bodysuit fully sheathed the model under her tailored suit. But overall, the brands that included low waists in pants and skirts leaving a suggestive strip of skin emerging just below the navel are about twenty-five. Enough to be able to talk about a return of the low waist but not enough to talk about its total conquest of the zeitgeist. But what is the difference between the use of the low waist and that of the dropped waist?

Cover and uncover

Same lowering of the waist, two different categories of garment to wear, two diametrically opposed uses. As we said, dropped-waist garments are more bon-ton because they tend to conceal the body and remove emphasis from the true waist point. Low-waist bottoms instead expose the body plenty. A division that also greatly reflects the bipartition of the target audience of fashion brands: dropped-waist dresses make imperfections disappear, pants and skirts with low waist instead do not allow them. The former are dedicated to more mature and high-spending audiences while the latter to segments of the public.

There are obviously exceptions: Ann Demeulemeester and Diesel, for example, but also Cavalli, have made dropped-waist dresses that are actually very revealing; just as Burberry, Dries Van Noten and Givenchy have made low-waist skirts and pants but not excessively provocative, as have Dolce&Gabbana. In all these cases, in the fashion month just concluded, these styles coexisted with very high waist points (think of Dior but also Miu Miu itself where the two styles coexisted) showing how there is no clearly dominant proposition.

Perhaps what can be drawn from it is that such a low waist marks the closure by saturation of a cycle, that of the mega-pant with micro-top, and the opening of a new phase where, in light of the Ozempic phenomenon and protein-chic, the body has returned to being a marker of social status more than political and thus must be used and flaunted, and that perhaps it becomes a playground as described by Daniel Roseberry in Vanity Fair who compared Kylie Jenner's look changes to the work of a music producer «raising the bass, lowering the treble, raising the volume at this point, adding distortion at this moment».