Why Aren't Sexy Clothes High Fashion?

It's a given that skin-baring, tight clothes are antithetical to true style. But why?

One of my subscribers recently gave me a really cool idea for how to deal with the huge backlog of fashion articles I have, because fashion tends to be my least popular topic that results in the smallest amount of growth (sometimes, I even lose subscribers. Please don’t leave.)

So I’m starting a tradition (for now, anyway) called Fashion Fridays! This will hopefully help me clear out my fashion backlog, entertain the fashion enthusiasts, and be tolerated by the folks who don’t care about fashion (although remember—it’s a CHH article, so it’s obviously going to devolve into a rant about political and social dynamics.)

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I recently read a piece by

Emilee Russell

about how lately, fashion seems to require dressing ugly on purpose. I felt…heard, especially when she posted about it on Reddit and was dismissed as being too old to “get it.” Any mention of Reddit being an unreasonable dogpile and I am hooked.

I have a unique curse of loving fashion, yet having zero natural intuition for it. Most people don’t care about fashion at all, and therefore don’t notice if my outfits look bad, and that’s great, but because I actually like fashion, I find myself struggling with basically every outfit I put together. I can tell something is wrong and that it displeases me, but not why. Lately, I’ve defaulted to relatively “safe” preppy looks because the worst thing they can be is boring, but they’re almost never bad. Exhibit A:

But the reality is that my idea of a “good” outfit requires the outfit to look pretty and flattering, if not a tiny bit sexy. I am a short-legged pear shape who has historically relied on form-fitting or cropped clothes to highlight my waist. If something completely obscures the shape of my body, or worse—actively makes me look stumpier, boxier or androgynous (no shade to those who want to look that way!) I simply cannot enjoy it. And yet, it seems like wanting to look good, or attractive, is considered uncreative, and therefore not fashionable. Or worse—it’s tacky, dated, and aging (never believe that 2025 fashion isn’t ageist because wacky old ladies in lime green ponchos are occasionally platformed. It’s cool to be 85 or 25, but nothing in between.)

I regularly ask Twitter for fashion advice (and I even welcome the mean comments, because what is fashion, if not a bit catty? I asked for honesty, after all!) and one thing comes up time and time again: it’s not that tight or body-conscious clothes are temporarily out of style, but they’ve apparently become inherently antithetical to fashion, because fashion requires a certain antagonistic attitude toward sex appeal. It doesn’t matter if my clothes make my body look good, because if I want to be stylish I have to give up the desire to make my body look good. These two things—looking nice and being fashionable—always felt inextricably tied, and for the better. But now, I’m hearing that they are actually diametrically opposed.