The sheer skirt is already a top trend of 2024

The sheer skirt spotted on the Fall/Winter 2024-2025 catwalks

The Fall/Winter 2024-2025 Fashion Week isn’t over, yet the sheer skirt is already establishing itself as a top fashion trend for the season.

Last week in New York, American designer Tory Burch and French designer Ludovic de Saint Sernin revealed their lingerie-inspired silhouettes, made of a transparent tulle pencil skirt finely ornamented and paired with a bodysuit or a bra.

On Michael Kors’ catwalk, discreetly sexy lace skirts gain in elegance when associated with turtleneck sweaters, while Thom Browne goes for a gothic-glam total look featuring a transparent silk skirt and a blouse.

On Saturday 17th of February in London, Irish designer Simone Rocha unveiled a show inspired by Queen Victoria’s mourning dresses, which also included long sheer skirts - some were embroidered with rhinestones - that she paired with casual tops worn under corsets.

A few hours later, Georgian designer David Koma made a bold statement with his geometric macramé skirts, embellished with crystals for a sophisticated and graphic gypsy look. The evening ended with a bang at British-Turkish designer Dilara Findikoglu’s show, where she orchestrated the meeting between her gothic aesthetic and the office wear style - the petticoat-inspired tulle skirts were paired with tailored jackets and corsets.

The sheer skirt made its debuts in 2023

If it’s safe to say that the sheer skirt will be the star of the year, it’s because this versatile piece has made a discreet, yet noticeable debut at the beginning of 2023.

More affordable than the highly fashionable sheer dress and the overly sexy No pants trend, the sheer skirt can easily be softened when worn with a less revealing, more casual top. Among others, actress Florence Pugh sported a sheer skirt with a gray sweater by Valentino, while actress Sydney Sweeney made an appearance in a Giorgio Armani look.

Conversely, singer Rita Ora played along the lingerie inspiration in a Dolce & Gabbana Spring/Summer 2023 lace ensemble that the house reworked for its Spring/Summer 2024 runway show.

On the catwalks of the Spring/Summer 2024 shows, unveiled in September and October 2023, we can’t help but notice that both Alaïa and Coperni offer an outstandingly bourgeois and sensual version of the sheer skirt made of latex and paired with a classic or silk shirt worn under a revealing beige sweater.

Fatale and elegant at Givenchy, romantic and rock’n’roll at Ann Demeulemeester, or downright trashy at Diesel by Glenn Martens, the sheer skirt has become the new playground for fashion designers, who don’t hesitate to get to grips with the trend. For her first Carven show, Louise Trotteur even introduced a sober, minimalist version.

How transparency has become a lasting trend

In 2024, the literature around fashion trends still remains limited and often misunderstood. However, thanks to the contributions of philosophers and sociologists such as Walter Benjamin, Georg Simmel, Edward Sapir and Frederic Godart, we now know that fashion trends are cyclical phenomena that reflect a specific time.

Although trends come and go at a frenetic pace nowadays, because of a growing desire for novelty and an increasing need for individuality that stem from social media, the transparency trend still obeys that old pattern.

According to Tagwalk, the search engine which specializes in fashion, transparency has become a substantial trend that initially started with the Spring/Summer 2021 collections unveiled in 2020. Against all odds, the trend has eventually endured and evolved each season.

While it was impossible to predict the commercial success of these see-through pieces at the time, we now know that the end of the lockdowns due to the Covid-19 pandemic, combined with the growing influence of the body positive movement advocating self-acceptance, have played a decisive role.

Over the past three years, leading luxury houses and emerging fashion designers have been exploring all the possibilities offered by transparent fabrics, drawing their inspiration from Yves Saint Laurent’s sultry bourgeois fashion of the late 1960s, the grunge aesthetic of the 1990s and the Y2k’s bling looks.

Even more surprisingly, transparency has taken over the very discreet and subtle quiet luxury wardrobe, as this article published in the French newspaper Le Monde points out, and it has also left its mark on the men's wardrobe, as the Fall/Winter 2024-2025 men’s collections show.

Traduction Emma Naroumbo