How Pick ‘N’ Mix Dressing Became The Ultimate Cool-Girl Formula

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How Pick ‘N’ Mix Dressing Became The Ultimate Cool-Girl Formula

I was in Camberwell the other day when I saw someone in knee-high cowboy boots and an Adidas tracksuit. These two items, so incongruous in both aesthetic and vibe, so wrong-sounding written down, somehow worked together IRL. It’s probably because, like Mean Girls’s Regina George in a cut-out boob top, confidence tends to bring together any look. Still, the combo stuck with me because I think it’s indicative of how a lot of people are dressing right now. I like to call it pick ‘n’ mix dressing – as in, picking what you like and then mixing it up. The more imaginative and batshit the better.

Pick ‘n’ mix dressing is nothing new, obviously – the rapid intensification of a million microtrends eating themselves has led to young people especially dressing more mish-mash generally. But I’m not necessarily talking about, like, an 18-year-old pairing a ‘90s choker with a swaggy 2010s trucker cap. I’m talking specifically about the blend of high-brow and low-brow items in ways that are off-kilter and intriguing. I’m talking about Timothée Chalamet in an American football bomber and tiny Chanel purse. I’m talking about the trickle-down of gym leggings and smart brown brogues at Miu Miu’s autumn/winter 2023 show. I’m talking about the fact that everyone’s wearing loafers and tracksuit bottoms to parties, or slouchy Uggs to the office with a smart tailored shirt. This blend of casual and formal is, to me, the backbone and definition of pick ‘n’ mix dressing.

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Again, pick ‘n’ mix dressing isn’t exactly new – fashion lovers have been pairing outwardly incongruous items since time immemorial (let’s not forget that it was Princess Diana who wore cowboy boots and tracksuit first). But there’s definitely been an acceleration in this type of dressing post-pandemic, when cosy comfort dressing collided with a return to the office and the club, resulting in dress code rules sort of bending and slackening. Now, the rules are collapsing even further. Just take a look at Prada’s autumn/winter 2025 menswear show, which turned this idea up to 100, spanning “caveman to cowboy to businessman and more – all at once,” as wrote Luke Leitch for Vogue. “It was curated chaos deployed to declare new disorder.”

The best thing about pick ‘n’ mix dressing is that it’s a really fun way to dress. Gone are the days when people would look at you like you’d lost your mind if you, I don’t know, threw a silky underskirt over some trackies and paired them with kitten heels. The abnormal is the new normal. It’s time to embrace the chaos.

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