The fashion world's obsession with the ocean isn't just a trend, it's a call to action

TRENDSThe bottom of the sea is, for designers like Riccardo Tisci and Donatella Versace, many things at once: a refuge, an escape route, a source of new resources and a way of facing an uncertain future

By Rosalind Jane

Starfish have no brains, no blood, and have eyes at the ends of their tips. Although there are more than 2,000 different species, they are mostly solitary creatures, who spend their lives crawling on the sea floor, eating what they find along the way. To do this, they can expel their stomach from their body and thus manage to digest clams, mussels, oysters and other animals. Some look like they're made of pearls, some are pointy, some are polka dotted, and some are in lurid colors: baby blue, bubblegum pink, orange, or purple. They are such amazing creatures that it's no wonder the fashion world loves them.

These eye-catching echinoderms starred, along with other marine motifs, at the Versace show for spring-summer 2021. Both printed and in the form of jewels, the starfish decorated the mini-dresses and blazers of the models, who wore hairstyles with an effect wet. It was not the first time that Versace had plunged into the depths of the ocean. In fact, the show was a direct homage to the Trésor de la Mer collection launched by Gianni Versace in 1992, which also featured a series of striking sea creatures.

The treasures of the ocean have always been a source of ideas for designers: shells, fishing nets, sharks, waves, reefs, algae, corals, creatures of all kinds... The aesthetic and symbolic potential of the sea is vast. Sometimes the inspiration is direct and obvious. The folds of a scallop and the transparencies of a jellyfish can be perfectly replicated in fabric patterns and silhouettes to make garments that look and move in a similar way. The sea is immense, inscrutable, volatile, it gives life and takes it away; It is a very attractive setting for myths and stories, and invites us to speculate on what life will be like below the surface.

Their stories and their romantic aesthetics are mixed with more existential themes.

Alexander McQueen's spring-summer 2010 collection, which the designer presented before his untimely death in February 2010, was titled Plato's Atlantis, a reference to the fictional sunken island the Greek philosopher created. The show represented an apocalyptic future in which climate change had melted the polar ice caps, causing sea levels to rise, and McQueen's models embodied the entire process of adaptation: they were dressed as disturbing hybrids between animals and humans, who they slowly transformed into creatures capable of surviving in a liquid future thanks to their gills and scales.

More than a decade later, McQueen's concerns remain. Marine influences have returned to the catwalks, and with them the dichotomy arises between those who see the sea as an imaginative spectacle and those in whom it arouses dystopian concerns. In the first group we could place Simone Rocha, with her particular use of pearls, often surreal, and her continuous references to marine stories (her autumn-winter 2020 collection, inspired by the Aran Islands, spoke of the loss and baptism of the sea).

More recently, in the spring-summer 2021 collections of Rixo and 16Arlington, mermaids were very present: the former used prints of women with tails and the latter, oyster bags that could perfectly be carried by these underwater inhabitants.

Mermaids are another of the marine motifs from which fashion has drunk the most, either with a more cartoonish style or as a representation of lethal seduction. When they appeared at Burberry's spring-summer 2021 show, creative director Riccardo Tisci used them to conjure "the love affair between a mermaid and a shark, set in the ocean and then brought ashore." A palette of ocean blues permeated the baggy shirts, multi-fabric trench coats and towering shiny rubber boots, and we could also see more literal details in the form of fishing nets."Water is a symbol of [...] renewal, freshness and cleanliness", Tisci explained.But the collection's video presentation had more sinister connotations: the models paraded through the forest accompanied by a group of men in suits with sunglasses, whose silent presence symbolized, perhaps, the stalking of a school of sharks.

The darkest marine reimaginings are usually born out of fear. Some of these fears are immediate (the panic of what cannot be seen, of the dangers that await between the waves), while others have more to do with questions about the future of the sea and, therefore, ours.

One of the designers who can best explore these fears is Marine Serre. The French designer's approach is both practical and visionary, attuned to potential environmental devastation. Her aesthetic evokes a futuristic world where the clothes we wear are more like armor, while her creative process prioritizes recycled fabrics and easy-to-find materials, combining them with unexpected objects, such as marine debris. Serre's accessories are made from shells, imitation pearls, and driftwood and soda cans that have been washed ashore.

Can the affinity between fashion and the sea motivate the industry to be cleaner?

Serra is just one of several designers—there are more and more—using fabrics made from plastic bottles recovered from the ocean. Nobody knows exactly how polluted our seas are, but a 2015 study suggests that there are already more than 150 million tons of plastic accumulated in the ocean and estimates that, if drastic measures are not taken, that figure will triple by 2040 .

Since its creation in 2017, menswear brand Botter has made protecting the environment a priority. The autumn-winter 2021 parade of the Dutch duo was accompanied by a manifesto that warned that “without the sea, there can be no human beings”. The long, baggy suits in his collection were adorned with fishing gear, turtlenecks and jackets made from ocean plastic. And reusing these materials in its designs is not the only measure the brand has taken; Botter also announced that she has started a coral nursery on Curacao, an island in the Caribbean.

Even haute couture has jumped on the bandwagon and it has inevitably been the ever-innovative Iris van Herpen who has borne the brunt of the change. Following her Sensory Seas collection last year, in which she explored the relationship between marine organisms and the human nervous system, her most recent couture collection for spring-summer 2021 took inspiration from the ocean in a different way: the designer The Dutch company allied itself with the environmental campaign Parley for the Oceans (in Spanish, "Discussion on the oceans") to launch a dress made with a mosaic of recycled plastic. As Herpen told Vogue, "there is no longer any reason not to use sustainable materials, you just have to change your mindset."

Right now, the sea offers opposite options to designers. It is full of myths and mysteries, buried treasures and biological wonders. It can be a scenario of freedom and fantasy, which is appreciated at the moment, but it also encapsulates the capacity for destruction of the human being and the opportunity we have to innovate. This darker, future-focused approach seems to be spreading, if you look at Matty Bovan's fall-winter 2021 collection, for example. The fashion-forward designer described the sea as a “terrifying and incredible” place during a presentation in which he imagined the chaos caused by a shipwreck and evoked disturbing images of natural disasters.

Like the ocean itself, inconstant and changing, marine-inspired fashion continues to offer us many things at the same time. It is at once a refuge, an escape route, a source of resources and a dystopian inspiration with which to face an uncertain future.

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