For those looking for a little more sweetness in their lives, a lush collaboration between Haribo and Crocs invites wearers to enjoy gushy, sweet, candy-coloured clogs. Hypebeast dropped these translucent gummy-shoes earlier last month, marking yet another playful pairing between fashion designers and their favourite food brands.
Over the past fifteen years, luxury designers have increasingly transcended their conventional categories to offer items that are both surprising and fresh. In 2012, Jean Paul Gaultier redesigned Coca-Cola bottles and cans, embossing them with his signature Breton stripes and corset designs. Two years later, Moschino’s Fall collection saw Jeremy Scott litter the runway with what appeared to be McDonald’s Happy Meals. The iconic golden arches took the shape of the label’s heart design, while garish strips of the fast-food’s yellow boldly outlined each tailored piece of red. Jump ten years later, and we witness Balenciaga x Lay’s chip clutches, followed by Chopova Lowena bags kitted out with jars of Hellman’s Mayonnaise.
Moschino is one of several luxury brands that mine the pantry for their creative impulse. The brand communicates with consumers through a guise of both fantasy and realism, as a string of foods, ranging from celery to baguettes, pose as accessories in their latest collections. For this year's Fall/Winter 2025 collection, Moschino collaborates with Pepperidge Farm, an American commercial bakery. The final product? A handbag disguised as an oversized packet of cookies, complete with a barcode. Rumoured to cost a modest £695.00, it’s a relative bargain compared to their Sedano ‘celery’ clutch, costing a hefty £3,730.00.
These ‘trompe-l’œil’ pieces nod to a long history of artists and designers who have used illusion and trickery to challenge perceptions of reality. This interplay between deception and fantasy in fashion has come full circle, echoing the Surrealist movement that began influencing fashion nearly a century ago. Salvador Dalí introduced uncanny symbolism into clothing through his collaboration with Elsa Schiaparelli in 1937. One of their most famous creations, a silk dress, was adorned with a large lobster and sprigs of parsley. Had Schiaparelli allowed it, Dalí would have finished the garment with a final embellishment of mayonnaise – reminiscent of Chopova Lowena’s Hellman’s bag from last year.
Surrealism emerged in the 1920’s as a reaction against the rigid rationalism that many believed had led to World War I. French writer and poet André Breton, in his 1924 Surrealist Manifesto, described it as a path to “absolute reality.” Today, we can view the resurgence of Surrealism in fashion as a reflection of contemporary cultural and societal uncertainty, where the absurd has increasingly become the norm. In 2021, WGSN predicted the growth of the Culture of Chaos given growing global unrest, and we have seen this take hold in fashion in the rise of weird aesthetics with trends such as chaotic customisation and clowncore.
While brands adopt these trends in a pursuit of originality, to push boundaries, or simply to generate buzz, their rise also reflects a broader sense of instability in the world at large: talks of Canada becoming the 51st U.S. state, while the Gulf of Mexico is “corrected” as the Gulf of America. The ongoing conflict in the
Middle East led to the dystopian proposal of “Trump Gaza”, where an AI-generated propaganda envisions the president gilded and showered with money. Celebrity entrepreneurs become our political leaders, with Elon Musk joining Trump in the Oval Office, while Kim Kardashian also made her mark last year. Meanwhile, the environment suffers as tens of thousands of acres of the Amazon rainforest are being cleared to make way for the COP30 climate summit – a cruel irony that cannot be ignored.
As the world becomes increasingly fractured, the so-called “logical” appears increasingly “illogical”, fuelling both disillusionment and a desire for make-believe. Clothing, while a means of self-expression, now serves as a tool for psychological resilience. Dopamine dressing, coined by fashion psychologist Dawnn Karen during the 2020 lockdown, refers to wearing clothing that boosts mood and motivation. This idea finds a parallel in the more recent emergence of glimmers - a term to describe small moments of positivity that help counteract negative emotions - predicted to become a vital coping tool by 2026. As people increasingly turn to vibrant colours, playful prints, and exaggerated or fanciful features, much like
we did as children, they look to enter a state of play or momentary escape.
These are themes we have seen surfaced through historical nostalgia, where we reflect on the past through rose-tinted spectacles in attempt to re-capture a sense of innocence, joy and free-thinking. While we regard the Surrealist movement as a period of artistic disruption, creative freedom, and original expression, we often overlook the loss and destruction that both preceded and followed the circumstances that birthed this wealth of creativity. Indulging in these creations may not have altered the course of history; Surrealism was labelled as “degenerative art” and deemed a threat to Nazi ideology, resulting in much of its destruction. Yet, art has a remarkable ability to transcend historical episodes.
As storytelling through the world of luxury grows increasingly dramatized, excessive, and even deranged, the sinister thread that runs through it strengthens. Charging just shy of £1,000.00 for a bag shaped like a baguette isn’t merely playful irony; it’s a symptom of a culture teetering on the edge of its own theatrical excess. Our hedonistic desire to seek pleasure in the things that we can control, as opposed to those things we cannot, drives us to cling to these illusions. However, history shows that greater forces can disrupt the fantasies we escape into. While such creations may provide a temporary shield or distraction, they do not offer long-term solutions. We can continue to drift deeper into these illusions until we are left unsure whether we are in on the joke or simply trapped inside it.
