What will our outfits look like in a museum? 🩴
2026
4/24/20263 min read
Can you believe it! Two guys hanging in the park while having lunch, and looking sharp. Their outfits would’ve been hip streetwear in the 50s, but now it sticks out as something very formal.
Actual formalwear would’ve consisted of white bowties, tailcoats and cylinder hats back then—not of the suit separates the guys are wearing here.
This scene is direct proof of the powerful resurgence to appreciate especially classic sartorial menswear among young people (here’s the menswear connoisseur Hugo Jacomet conversing about this in French).
While in the 50s every guy would’ve worn something similar just out of conformity to general clothing norms, these guys have had to research this style to come up with these outfits. They have most likely read books, blog articles, magazines, and watched YouTube videos on sartorial style to know what they’re doing. And I congratulate them on their efforts.
But no matter how much joy I get from seeing outfits like these every now and then, I still try to train my eye to appreciate some of the other aesthetics of our own time as well.
I'm learning to see sportswear as streetwear for what it is: the aesthetic vibe of the time I'm living in. Some people wear extremely cool special-edition sneakers in pristine condition—others wear ones that have clearly already lived their best days.
Fortunately, I saw some pieces of art in January that really helped me to see the beauty in this current reality.
I present you the paintings of Bilal Hamdad.
I don’t know about you, but I consider the 1950s aesthetics the epitome of elegance.
And there seems to be a general consensus even in historical research that it’s considered the golden age of elegance.
For example, historian Carol Dyhouse has expressed in her book Glamour : women, history, feminism (2011) that the 1930s–40s were all about glamor, but elegance was the ‘it’ word in the 50s (I’ve discussed this in detail in this essay about Maria Callas’ elegance).
Could we go as far as to say that our current era is the era of inelegance compared to the 50s?
It would be quite a radical thing to say, but I’m not saying it’s an inherently bad thing either.
It just depends on definitions of elegance and which era we compare it with.
What’s for sure is that for people like me who appreciate 50s fashion, the aesthetic differences of our time are evident every day when looking around us.
Actually, very few people wear outfits that would've passed in the 50s.
Which is (again) not a bad thing, but just an observation.
Fortunately for me, in Paris the probability of seeing aesthetic references to that era is relatively high (which is one of the reasons I love living here).
And sometimes I truly see glimpses like these that make me feel like I’m time traveling:
Yes, indeed, they are paintings.
Stylistically they resemble a photo on an Instagram feed, but there’s something quite wild about him having painted something like that.
The best part was that these paintings were integrated alongside the older paintings in the permanent collection at Petit Palais Museum.
It was a way to directly see the contrast between what people wore in the 18th or 19th century, and what we wear now as the paintings were hanging side by side.
It felt even therapeutic to see those scenes of modern-day Paris. It made me look at the world around me more objectively and notice its beauty—despite the flip flops and droopy clothes.
That’s the eclectic vestiary landscape—or streetscape—that surrounds us in Western countries these days.
And one day these paintings will be considered old and representative of what early 21st century style was about. Then they won’t look as out of place in a museum as they do now—they’ll belong there.
What do these paintings represent to you?
Do you have a hard time seeing the elegance in our current streetscape or not?
Have an elegant week!
Bisous,
Elle