Trying on the Hulking New Shapes of Fashion Week’s Best Collections

Fuzzier, rounder, puffier, and poufier—it’s time to give up the filmy, naked, and sheer garments.

As internet lore tells us, they don’t build statues of critics . . . but they should build one of Charli XCX. In the wake of her new album, Brat, out this summer, and new album cover teases from Beyoncé and Dua Lipa that edge into the nonfigurative, Charli tweeted, “I think the constant demand for access to women’s bodies and faces in our album artwork is misogynistic and boring.”

You could say the same about fashion shows.Across fashion’s four major capitals in New York, London, Milan, and Paris, clothing got skimpier, sheerer, and jersey-er than ever before. One prominent brand had an almost entirely sheer collection that divided critics and shoppers. Most others still flirted with sheerness or nudity, but often on thin, white, cisgendered bodies. Body positivity and inclusivity, on the rise through the early 2020s, fell out of fashion this season with Vogue Business reporting decreases in plus- and mid-size models across the 8,800 runway looks it tracked.Glance at the world of celebrity, and it seems like everyone is prouder to be thinner—and their garms flimsier—than ever. The grand total of nipples in the news at the Oscars afterparty and Lenny Kravitz’s Hollywood Star ceremony could make you think nudity has never been more popular but less provocative.So what is actually interesting in fashion?The most inspired Fall/Winter 2024 womenswear collections propose new relationships with the female body. Gigantic faux-fur capes at Simone Rocha and heaving bustles and panniers at Comme des Garçons were only the beginning of the hulking, pumped up, and textural silhouettes that lumbered down the catwalks. Collina Strada offered female bodybuilders in New York, their tulle shoulders cut into biceps, and Rick Owens gave his muses giant Brâncuși clompers and bulbous jackets made of recycled bicycle tires.These aren’t the ingenues of girl dinner nor are they the prim and primped housewives of tradwife-Tok. These are the wild heroines of folk tales, horror, and science fiction: the baobhan sith, the Bene Gesserit, the succubus, the witch—a supernatural woman whose dimensions, proportions, and ideas are out of this world. She appeared first in January, haunting the couture week at John Galliano’s resplendent Maison Margiela Artisanal show: the curvaceous, frozen-faced queen of the underworld, resurrected from Brassaï photographs or Toulouse-Lautrec sketches. A woman so hot and in command of her destiny, she should scare you.“Protecting the body and the inner self was an important theme this season,” says SSENSE VP of womenswear Brigitte Chartrand, who chose some of her favorite looks for this editorial. “We saw sculptural pieces at Junya Watanabe, JW Anderson, and Acne Studios, including the molded leather coat featured in the editorial. There was layering from Thom Browne; all sorts of shapes from Yohji Yamamoto—and it’s all about protection.”That protection took on a militant edge at Miu Miu, where Miuccia Prada exaggerated shoulders and skirts, and a more bohemian flair at Chloé, where Chemena Kamali’s fantastic debut proposed strange new proportion plays, like wafty dresses stuffed into boots or voluminous capes paired with doughnut-esque headbands.Muted colors also expressed anti-girlish style. “The season was a lot more toned down,” says Chartrand. “Valentino did an all-black show, which surprised a lot of people. Rei [Kawakubo] had a full-black show, except for the last look, which was white. But that look wasn’t even in the showroom—the collection was called ‘Anger.’”It’s easy to be filled with rage at the moment. The world is an increasingly cold, dark place and the 90% modal jersey pale-pink minidress with matching turban surely won’t be the armor to confront it. The bravest women this fall will be going full Braveheart. Here: a guide shot on the rebellious streets of Paris. I hope you encounter them there.

For those just starting their journey to puffed up silhouettes, let Simone Rocha, Acne Studios, and Rick Owens show the way. The combination of hard crystal details—like in Rocha’s collection—with tight but furry shapes at Acne and Rick offer the right introduction to rugged femininity.

Graduates of the “feral girl autumn” school of bodysuiting can attempt such advanced moves as the faux-furs from Balenciaga, Chopova Lowena, and the upstart ABRA. None are what they seem: Balenciaga’s leopard coat is coated in a fake grease, Chopova Lowena’s has rugged metal studs and flowers embedded in its cuff and collar, and ABRA’s is a two-faced trench—polished at front and perverse at back.

Why go furry when you could go formal? Giant cocoons and cinched waists go hand in hand at JW Anderson, Thom Browne, and Jil Sander. These gorgeous and gigantic proportion plays are equally elegant and evocative.

Circles are the easiest shape to adapt to the body. But have you tried squares? Triangles!? Yamamoto and Watanabe took a cubist approach to silhouette, while Acne Studios put the Stockman form into its leather coat, placing a body atop the wearer’s body.

An advanced student of creature-core knows when to add color back into the mix. The eclectic styling and layering of Miu Miu and Rabanne has the toughness (metal tights at Rabanne! Chemical-waste-site green at Miu Miu!) that can bring levity and surprise to a sea of browns, caramels, blacks, and greens. According to Chartrand, green is the color of the season.

The return of boho isn’t all Serena van der Woodsen, as it seems. On the Chloé runway, the free spirits weren’t those of teens evading an ex, however pleasant that nostalgia narrative might be. They were older, wiser, more potent Chloé women—not girls. Channel your inner Jessica Miller or Liu Wen; no wool pulled over your eyes, just knit into a knit bodysuit worn with a chunky-heeled boot and cape.