The Strawberry Dress

The dress is infamous. From the legions of Instagram posts and viral memes the aptly-termed 'strawberry dress' from Lirika Matoshi has been enjoying wild popularity. As far as trends go, the strawberry dress won't be the first, nor will it be the last item of clothing to generate such a frenzy. Yet, somehow, this strawberry-sequinned, pink tulle dress does feel different to other buzz garments that have briefly taken over the internet and our brains. Trends always come and go, that's just the way fashion works. As the revered Heidi Klum points out, when it comes to fashion "One day, you're in and the next, you're out". But not many trends culminate in the midst of a global pandemic. The general question: 'how do items of clothing skyrocket to such intense levels of fame?' is a difficult one to answer. But add to that the complications of a global pandemic and you have the origin story of the strawberry dress's popularity. 

The pandemic didn't completely halt the fashion industry. Yes, fashion has had to adapt. It's undoubtedly different to how things were before the Coronavirus pandemic, but the show must go on- and this is a sentiment that fashion has adopted, creating new, innovative ways to work under the conditions that 2020 threw at the world. From showcasing new clothing collections digitally to magazines shooting editorial images and lookbooks over Zoom, fashion is not stopping. It's the same for trends. Although the pace of trends has perhaps slowed down (which can only be a good thing in environmental terms), they are still very much thriving. In fact, most trends have centred around the world's current pandemic state. The start of 2020 saw a 49% spike in sales of loungewear, according to FashionUnited UK, in accordance with the fact that lockdown left the majority of people not allowed to leave the house, even to go to work. Working from home suddenly afforded us the opportunity to ditch our more formal 'outside' clothes for more comfy 'indoor' clothes. 

However, the strawberry dress broke this pattern. The dress can most certainly not be considered as loungewear and errs far more on the side of chic sophistication than the casual nature of other lockdown trends. It's more appropriate for parties, or even red carpet events as model Tess Holliday proved at the 2020 Grammys in January. So why did this dress become so popular in a time where the majority of clothes people were buying, and indeed wearing, were primarily concerned with comfort over chicness (sweat pants, hoodies and the like)? There may not be an exact answer, but the likely truth is that the strawberry dress acted as an escape from the gloom reality of the pandemic. There's nothing wrong with loungewear, in fact sometimes leisurewear can be preferred to the effort of other, more 'presentable' outfits, but when loungewear became all we wore, we needed to find a way to escape the boredom and tedium of the monotonous pattern of our days. The strawberry dress offers that. 

The dress also reminds us of a time before Covid where we had reasons (or could, at least, find reasons) to get all dressed up and go to places- a concept which currently feels contrastingly alien. Now, if we want to get dressed up it's usually just for the sake of it and the only events scheduled in our diaries are all either on Zoom or non-existent. Whilst it's sometimes just fun to get dressed up for no inherent reason, there is a certain thrill to make-up and fashion when we know that we have somewhere exciting to go, and this experience has not been afforded during lockdown. The strawberry dress however, is so mesmerisingly fairy-tale and princess-like that it allows the wearer to step outside of the stark reality the world is presently facing and rather creates the illusion of being the kind of dress one would wear to a party, even though that is abundantly not the case at the moment as parties are not currently allowed. Still though, the strawberry dress achieves in manifesting this sense of joy and glee that has been mainly lacking during these unprecedented times, in a way that not many other clothes have managed to do. The elegance and opulence that comes with the dress has provided us a welcome break from wearing lazy tracksuit bottoms and mismatched hoodies all the time. Perhaps this is why the strawberry dress has cemented itself as such a wildly popular garment.   

By Frances Hudson