Have we reached peak basics?

Sign up to receive the Vogue Business newsletter for the latest luxury news and insights, plus exclusive membership discounts. We’re in the midst of a basics boom. More brands than you can count offer the best button down, a simplified capsule wardrobe or an antithesis to the trend cycle, all in service of making it easier to get dressed in an oversaturated fashion landscape. But have we reached peak basics? According to Google Trends, searches for “capsule wardrobe” increased by 60 per cent in the last 12 months, whereas searches for “uniform” were up 42 per cent. The appeal is clear. Who doesn’t want to put less effort into getting dressed? “You should be able to style basics with other basics really effortlessly,” says Alex Ropes, CEO of fashion community The Basement on the fundamentals of a basic, adding that they look like non-logo, neutral-coloured clothing in classic silhouettes, such as T-shirts, skirts, vests and jumpers. Easy to style but hard to tell where from, they’re marketed to be part of any outfit rotation or capsule wardrobe and, as a result, are distinctively anti-trend. To plug demand, brands across the industry have started selling almost identical clothing. Whether it’s streetwear labels replacing logo-heavy items with blank, elevated essential wear like Cole Buxton, or brands offering the same “quiet luxury” inspired assortment of premium neutral jumpers and trousers, basics are everywhere. For brands who get it right, basics are big business, since they’re a reliable revenue stream outside of trend cycles due to their seasonless nature. Heather McLean, executive vice president of product for Canadian label Aritzia, says top-performing categories include Sweatfleece and Effortless collections, both offering core basics. New entrants including responsible ready-to-wear Ninety Percent, Hungarian brand Aeron and British-founded elevated basics brand Klayd are also jostling for space in the market. Luxury brand Me+Em — which prides itself on “investment pieces” and “building-block outfits” and has been co-signed by The Princess of Wales, Nicole Kidman and Cat Deeley — announced sales of £120 million in January 2024, representing a 46 per cent year-on-year increase. “One of the key pillars of our ‘modern luxury’ proposition is around outfit building, and ensuring that we are offering our customers pieces which will seamlessly work together season after season,” says Claire Horny, founder and CEO of Me+Em. “It’s intrinsic to our business, so it comes across in everything we do, from our design process, to how we style and shoot collections, our store design and visual merchandising, every touchpoint comes back to offering outfit building solutions for our customer.” However, as more brands try to cash in it’s becoming harder for them to set themselves apart. In April, Christina Binkley’s “White Cotton Blouse Index” unearthed the multitude of white blouses available across different retailers. Farfetch alone offers 1,100 white cotton blouse styles, while Nordstorm stocks 787 offerings. This sheer volume is systematic across all basic silhouettes. On Asos there are 1,627 plain white T-shirts available from 157 different brands. While Amazon features over 8,000 results for white tees, with prices starting from as little as £0.09 (plus £8.50 delivery) from TUDUZ, a clothing manufacturer with no social media presence outside its Amazon storefront. Designed to make it easier to get dressed, many extol the virtues of basics, believing they remove choice and reduce unnecessary consumption. But, as the market is inundated with the same nondescript, identical-looking clothing, it’s fast defeating this purpose. “No one needs a million tees in their closet that will fall apart after a few washes or have little integrity to them,” says Jazmine Brown, founder of sustainable lifestyle platform Sustainable Baddie, who fears brands are being launched without any intention beyond profiting off the basics boom. How can brands ethically and effectively compete in this oversaturated market? And, more importantly, does fashion even need any more basics? What’s behind the basics boom? For trend and culture researcher Agustina Panzoni, the fixation on basics is a reaction to micro-trend fatigue. “Consumers were not just purchasing fashion goods for their utility but for the ideas and symbols they represented,” she says of the phenomenon, which resulted in a non-stop churn of niche aesthetics and fashion ‘cores’ centred around fictional lifestyles. Take ballerina flats. “It wasn’t merely about owning a pair of shoes, but embracing the coquette or balletcore aesthetic and the cultural connotations it carried,” she explains of the viral trend. However, as we navigate economic and political uncertainties consumers are shifting their behaviour, Panzoni says. “The focus is moving away from these abstract, symbolic purchases to garments with clear, functional value propositions. In this climate, consumers are prioritising practicality and reliability in their fashion choices, seeking clothing that offers tangible benefits and straightforward utility,” she continues. “Clothes that simply want to be clothes are in.” Danielle Windsor, founder of London-based label Yaitte, believes that this shift is also driven by increasing sustainability efforts. “The temperature of the industry reflects a complete shift in thinking, exposing the damaging effects of over-consumption and encouraging more conscious decision-making in the retail space.” Many of Yaitte’s styles are evergreen, yet, by focusing on travel-specific basics (Yaitte is Spanish for “yacht”), such as linen sets and striped shirts, she’s helped her brand find a niche in this overwhelming market. However, slow fashion stylist and co-host of Sustain This! Podcast Alyssa Beltempo, worries that the idea of curating a capsule wardrobe to be more sustainable can become problematic. “This kind of marketing reinforces the idea that a capsule wardrobe or sustainable closet should look a certain way – full of basics, neutrals, classics,” she says. “And, because sustainability is trending, compelling consumers to buy basics is an easy way for the consumer to participate, whether or not they even like this aesthetic,” she continues, warning that overconsumption has become rampant in the basics sector. According to Gitnux market data, two billion white T-shirts are sold globally each year, which is a huge environmental concern. “The ubiquitous white tee teamed with denim is probably the highest water footprint item in our wardrobe,” says Diana Kakkar, CEO of luxury womenswear manufacturer Maes. “It takes approximately 2,700 litres of water to produce the cotton needed for a single T-shirt and 11,000 litres for a pair of jeans.” With more new entrants courting this market it’s proving difficult for consumers to resist adding unnecessary extra basics to their wardrobes. Paradoxically, this ends up undermining the very notion of a capsule wardrobe — and any of the supposed sustainability benefits with it. “Logomania means that you’ve got to wear something different every day, and if you’ve been seen in a statement piece, then you might not wear that piece ever again. That type of fashion consumption has just gone out of fashion,” says The Basement’s Ropes. That also presents a problem for brands. “You can wear a different logo every day. But, you don’t need a different basic hoodie every day,” he continues. By that metric, surely fashion doesn’t need anymore basics either? Have we reached peak basics? Not all basics are created equally. Certain basics reach mythic status for their cut, like the viral Uniqlo Airism tees. Others for their association and aspiration, such as The Row’s minimalist luxury offering. In fact, for Ropes, the term “basics” does the sector a disservice. “It removes some of the agency of how much care and craft is being put into some of these items. It takes a lot longer to design a core hoodie than to just slap a logo on a blank.” This was something Jake Wilson, the founder of Sweats Collective, had in mind when he first launched his brand in 2021. “To me, it felt like, within the space, ‘design’ had its focus on the graphics and there wasn't enough care being taken around the actual fit of the piece on your body,” he says, adding that growing up he would customise his tops, either by stretching the sleeve or cutting the hem, to perfectly fit his body. It’s a pastime that’s been popularised on TikTok, where creators share how to alter clothing to be in perfect proportion. “Every centimetre of every garment is created by us and makes the fit of all of our pieces unique to the brand,” he continues, highlighting that they source the best quality fabrics from high-level factories in Europe to ensure longevity. It’s a formula that worked. Within three and a half years they’ve grown their Discord channel to just shy of 10,000 members, while their mailing list comprises 50,000 subscribers and their Instagram following has grown to 180,000. Sales are equally growing. Sweats Collective’s Cozy Collection of non-branded hoodies, zip-ups, sweaters, sweatpants, shorts and track jackets in grey and black, sold out 10,000 units, while almost every drop earns six to seven figures within the first hour. Still, even with the right marketing, quality and cut, there’s still the question of whether we’ve hit peak basics. “When a well-known space is given a fresh voice or viewpoint there is always room at the table,” says Wilson, who adds that a blank white tee will never go out of fashion and can be used to create an infinite amount of outfit variations. Others are not so sure. “We are at the top of this trend,” says Kim Cupido, catwalks senior strategist at trend forecasting agency WGSN. “But, for many consumers, these pieces will have long-term viability because they are adaptable to shifting styling directions. For Pre-Summer 2025, classic shirt silhouettes were styled two different ways on the womenswear catwalks, as an integral part of city work uniform aesthetics and as a key piece that could be loosened up for vacation dressing,” she adds, as an example. Slow fashion stylist Beltempo is more pessimistic. “We don't need more basics, even if they are environmentally and socially responsible,” she says, stressing that no one needs eight white T-shirts, and that there were already plenty of options on the market long before the popularisation of capsule wardrobes. “Ultimately, slow and sustainable fashion is a mindset, not an aesthetic, and I would go so far as to say that brands pushing the capsule closet basics rhetoric are already behind while also doing a disservice to sustainability, from an overproduction standpoint.” Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com. More from this author: It’s giving mother: Fashion’s It-girls are redefining maternity style Content or couture? Balenciaga’s 30-minute dress becomes the flashpoint of the season Jewellery's next big opportunity: Divorce

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