Into something familiar,
Turn the unknown through proportion and structure

Combine a short outer layer with long bottoms to create a shape larger than usual in just one place—somewhere among the sleeves, hem, or collar. Finally, if you pull everything together with a black bag or shoes, you can recreate the same way of thinking even with clothes you already have.

HOW TO BUILD

First, create a vertical base with the striped shirt and wide pants. Choose pants so wide that you can’t really read the shape of the legs, keeping your distance from typical trousers.

On top of that, layer a short denim jacket to make the waist position look higher. The shirt cuffs extend long from the sleeve openings, and the outline of the top is shifted away from the standard.

Finally, unify the bag, eyewear, and shoes in black. Instead of freely shifting the colors and shapes of the clothing, you leave a clear common thread across the accessories.

1In the 1990s, Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, and others presented silhouettes in Paris that emphasized oversized forms, layering, asymmetry, and shapes that do not flatter or emphasize the body. Vogue summarizes that they treated clothes as a concept and upended the conventions of the time.

In 1988, Martin Margiela established his own maison in Paris. The Museum at FIT presents him as a designer who challenged the very premise of what clothing is.

This look isn’t a reproduction of a specific collection. By changing the length and purpose of everyday denim, shirts, and pants, you present familiar items in a new form. Through that approach, it connects to Paris’s spirit of innovation.

Now the base this time is a vintage blue-and-white striped shirt and an ivory wide pant.

The pants are clearly divided at the waist with a belt, and they flare dramatically toward the hem. From the front, they can look like a long skirt, but when you walk, the left and right legs and the slit reveal themselves.

On top of that, a denim jacket with faded coloring is layered. The jacket’s short hem emphasizes the pants’ length, making the upper body look light while giving the lower body a larger presence.

In this look, the most important factor is the proportion between top and bottom, rather than color. The jacket ends around the waist, while the pants extend all the way to the floor. In addition, the cuff of the striped shirt is pulled out longer than the jacket’s sleeve opening, creating a line on the arm that is longer than usual. When these differing proportions—short torso, long sleeves, and wide pants—overlap, the classic denim styling is transformed into a different silhouette.

The color scheme is a high-brightness composition centered on ivory, featuring pale blue, vivid blue, and white stripes. Rather than keeping everything in the same light tones, you make the shirt’s stripes stand out strongly, creating a rhythm of visual movement across the upper body. The black lettering on Dior’s scarf forms a small boundary at the neckline.

Place a Ferragamo bag, CHANEL sunglasses, and Maison Margiela tabi boots in black there. You connect the three points—face, hands, and feet—in black to prevent lighter outfits from blurring.

Dior’s scarf isn’t wrapped to show typical drape; instead, it’s tied short at the shirt’s collar area. By revealing only part of the pattern, the text functions like graphic elements. The Ferragamo bag is characterized by glossy black and a folded, three-dimensional shape. It’s a large bag, but because the color is limited to black, it doesn’t compete with wide-leg pants and keeps the overall weight balanced lower.

The Tabi boots appear intermittently from the pants’ slits. Rather than showing the entire shoe, you hold it back to the point where the difference in shape becomes noticeable only when you walk—leaving behind a quiet sense of unease.

By shifting the boundary slightly away from the standard shapes, everyday wear and innovation come into harmony. The approach can be organized into three methods.

Because familiar pieces like a denim jacket and a striped shirt serve as the entry point, adding wide-leg pants or sculptural accessories doesn’t make it look costume-like.

Instead of adding more decoration, create change through a shorter hem length, longer cuffs, wider hems, and slits. Express avant-garde through the structure of your clothing.

Clothing is set to be bright and light, while accessories are heavy in black. Because black acts as an outer frame, the overall look stays balanced even when using multiple shapes and colors.

A piece that stabilizes and harmonizes different proportions, providing a strong boundary line that can stand up to ambiguous volume.

Keep the gap between a shorter upper body and a larger lower body, introduce one structural change in a single place, and anchor the whole look with black accessories.

A denim jacket can be swapped for a cropped tailored jacket, and a striped shirt for a long-cuff solid shirt. Wide-leg pants can be replaced with hakama-style pants or long skirts. Keep one element: slits, pleats, or an opening when you walk.

If vivid colors, asymmetrical shapes, patterns, and bold accessories all compete at the same time, your eyes lose their destination. Concentrate the transformation on the pants and sleeves, and coordinate bags, glasses, and shoes in black. To express avant-garde, you don’t have to make every item outrageous.