Someone once described lace dresses to me as “ughhhh yeah that’s so a bridesmaid thing now *shudder* very 2014” at the office water cooler while waiting in line to use our one tolerable coffee machine. Because DUDE I almost responded out loud about how I own a black lace dress that has been in my closet since 2017 and that I wore twice last month ALONE. Very. 2014. Okay. * I paid nine dollars for mine at the corner boutique that I’ve essentially claimed as my own personal thrift store, and it’s survived two break-ups, a career shift, and at least four trends accusing it of being dead.
The point is I don’t believe that it’s dead, and I don’t believe that when people say it is they’re talking about it in any literal sense.
Lace adapts. Trends can’t.
Let’s talk about why lace never really goes out of style, and no, it’s not because your grandma has one she loves. It’s because of what the fabric *can* do. Lace by its very nature isn’t one texture serving one purpose, it’s a series of patterns comprised of absence. Hole beside hole, lined up in different arrangements to create different textures that all react completely differently based on what’s underneath it, what color it’s overlaying, how much of your skin you let show through the pattern. Layer a slip dress underneath and it goes romantic. Colorblocking behind it make it feel crisp, almost architectural. Skin underneath? Party dress. Those aren’t happy accidents, that’s literally what the fabric is designed to do depending on how you manipulate it. No other material can change character quite like much depending on what you wear it with.
Contrast that to something that *can’t* adapt. Take a print, for example. That paisley or bug-print whatever you happen to love, that’s stuck being that one specific look until it literally rotates far enough in the fashion world to become outdated. Lace isn’t confined to one look. I’ve worn that same Diane dress from the late, (supposedly) great year of 2014 to a funeral** (slip top, black tights, all sombre things) and out for dinner with friends just three weeks ago (no slip, red lipstick, entirely different outfit despite being literally the same dress). If something can do both sombre family function and “fun night out” without altering the base piece, it’s never just a trend thing. It’s you just wearing clothing that works, and I think we lose sight of that while people are busy trying to will things out of existence.
Point two: lace doesn’t *look* worn in the same way a lot of its stuff-in-place-of counterparts did. Say what you want about how “old” lace is, but actual lace, the kind with real openwork and heft to it doesn’t pill like cheap sweater material, and it won’t lose its texture and start looking fuzzy like a lot of “great-for-summer-layering” fabric tried to back in about 2016. Take it from me, I learned that lesson the hard way by purchasing a fifty dollar “lace” skater dress that became a loofah with three washes. True karma, enough to put that dress in the regret pile forever. Real lace wears better and longer than those shortcuts ever will, and that’s half the reason why it refuses to go quietly; It doesn’t have to because it won’t eventually fall apart like some trendy silhouette.
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Is your grandma wearing it? GOOD.
Probably the part nobody likes to talk about where clothing trends and personal style intersect. When you say that something’s not in style what you’re really saying is that you’re not seeing it marketed to you at the moment. Clothing hired to grace every storefront manequin and their boss’ boss’ bosses clothing collection at corporate. That is not the same thing as “this style of clothing no longer has a place in modern fashion.” News flash, once something’s been around long enough to see multiple generations wear it people are going to have differing opinions on what “wearing it well” looks like. They do that with jeans, they do that with oversized shirts, they did it with big hair in the eighties. We’re just doing it with lace now. Having one iteration of a garment fall out of trendy rotation is not asking you to throw out the good pieces you already own. Please learn to separate those two concepts, because otherwise we’ll keep filling landfills based on style shifts that don’t actually affect the original item.
What will change based on who’s wearing it, and when, is how you style it. My mom wore a lace dress to her twenty first birthday with big shoulder pads and a cardigan over it because THAT was fashionable at the time, and don’t you forget it. I wear mine with a leather jacket and boots because that’s what feels fashionable to me now. Are we both wearing lace dresses? Yes. Does either of us care that the other is “taking away” from how ours should look? Of course not. More proof that the damn dresses don’t ever retire, what’s fashionable about them is all that changes.
See, this is the issue I have with asking if something as specific as lace dresses are in style. Are they in style to YOU? Absolutely. Stay mad at me, I’ll stay mad at scarf dresses. It doesn’t matter what someone else says about how to wear something you love, those are opinions about their personal style and you’re allowed to have your own.
The one thing lace can get away with dating itself is if you buy into very specific silhouettes from an era. We touched on the 2014 nude shift dress with scallop hem earlier, any look that’s basically identical no matter where you buy it is going to read as more “of its time” than something that comes in multiple cuts. Thinner spaghetti straps came in on that style, certain rises of necklines, they all give away when you were born based on how you wear that lace. That doesn’t mean you should avoid lace to keep your wardrobe extra seasonless, it just means maybe pay attention to how you outfit it and who you let dress dictate trends to you.
*Literally want to punch her now. But it’s still going to that wedding.
**Don’t worry Mom I paired it with skinny jeans.
