When you say “The Dress,” you mean that one piece of garment fashion historians will look back on and say, “Now, that’s a piece that caused hysteria.” In 2000, it was that green Versace dress worn by Jennifer Lopez to the Grammys. It has its own Wikipedia page, btw. There was the unfortunate “What color is the dress?” incident of 2015. In 2017, that blue chambray dress from Zara was documented around the world via Tumblr.
This 2020, it’s #strawberrydress.
Click the hashtag on Instagram, and you’ll see the Lirika Matoshi Strawberry Midi Dress not just in quarantine #ootd photos but also in illustrations on different characters. I didn’t know it was possible to cross fan art culture and fashion like this. Then again, 2020 has proven so many assumptions wrong.
The dress made a red carpet appearance via Tess Holiday earlier this year when she wore it to the Grammy Awards. Tess noted how it’s downright wrong that the dress of the year first got a lot of hate, calling out fashion’s fatphobia.
To sum it up: our society hates fat people, especially when we are winning.
— Tess H🍒lliday (@Tess_Holliday) August 17, 2020
Trust that “The Dress” on any given year will be with some controversy attached. (Side note: Body shaming isn’t cool. Never will be.)
On TikTok, it’s a subject of memes and 7.4M views, confronting how we’re coping with the sh*tshow of our times via retail therapy.
@theangelhuang Someone pls help me buy this dress ❤️🍓❤️ #lirikamatoshi #strawberrydress #dress #funny #fyp #foryou #SummerWorkout #ootdinspo #facebuilder
@deaddaygal My strawberry dress fail… #helpmeplease #strawberrydress #cottagecore
Vogue, New York Post, Insider, Bustle, and InStyle , among other media outlets, released their analysis on it. Of course, every “The Dress” is subject to a think piece that relates to some deeper meaning, like looking for the beauty of life or fashion’s ability to instill beauty in the middle of chaos.
Insider notes how the strawberry dress is perhaps the epitome of cottagecore.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CD8QqxinYXm/
What is that you ask? Cottagecore is an aesthetic romanticizing being at home marked by bucolic imagery, DIY projects rooted in natural ingredients, and frolicking in your backyard in a billowy dress. Here’s a primer on it. It’s another rabbit hole I just found out about now as I was researching the #strawberrydress. I’ll get back to you. I hope.
A big takeaway about the dress’s popularity is how it comes in a vast array of sizes from S to XXXL. Imagine people will ignore a 490 USD (approx. 23.782,40 PHP) price tag for a single dress just as long as it fits them properly? Shocker.
WATCH: Jennifer Lopez talks about “The Dress” 20 years later
