Minimalism as a genre occupies various forms of expression across art, design, music, and literature. The term originates from the artistic movement that appeared in 1960’s in New York when a group of artists including Donald Judd, John McCracken, Agnes Martin and many others, “rejected the traditional representations in painting and sculptures and chose to pursue the new mode that owed as little as possible to the physical existence of an object”. Deriving from reductive aspects of Modernism, Judd described his work as “the simple expression of complex thought”, which sums up the aesthetic as it exists within fashion, too.

Many times, considered as a starting point from which everything originates and to which the designers return to renew and recharge, minimalism has been recently exploited and slapped on every posted outfit or décor photo simply because they are white and sparse. While it is true that the idea of ‘less is more’, i.e. reductivism, is an element of Minimalism, it is not the sole definition of the aesthetics movement, especially in the realm of art and design and fashion. It is much more than a use of single colour or a trend of simplicity.

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Similar to what the word minimalism means, minimalist fashion, like everything else related to this subject, is based on functionality. The idea is to create a wardrobe of a few, carefully selected items, accents, all of which are in a similar style – a minimalist style. Basically, this means the precise coordination of different pieces, the harmony of colours, fabrics, and shapes, resulting in a complete look. The overall look will whisper elegance, sophistication and minimalism.

Minimalism has always been the indicator of economic cycles and technological development in a way. Even though the official minimalist movement had not started yet, we can observe the minimalism style underpinning almost every social development structure of the 20th century.

Early minimalism in art rejected tradition of craftsmanship and rather opted for raw materials. The Japanese designers like Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo in the 1980s followed similar path by sending down the runway clothing in unconventional fabrics like polyester, PVC, Lycra etc., baggy silhouettes and layering of distressed fabrics, not often found in Western fashion characterized with elegance and artisanal craftsmanship of haute couture.

Not only this, but Minimalism of this decade was also a way of escaping gender stereotypes. It removed the idea of gender by covering up or revealing the body in new ways and challenged traditional perceptions of sexiness. 

The underlying key is that Minimalism is not about achieving flawlessness, but cultivating the relationship between the viewer and the object, like that approachable kid next door with his thin body structure and specs bigger than his face as opposed to the beautiful work of art that is Andrew John Hozier-Byrne who is forever unattainable.

The idea of accessibility, or accessible clothing, has briefly surfaced in the previous paragraphs with works of Japanese designers, such as using cheap materials to make creative, high-quality garments, and not having to conform to the idealised beauty standards to don genderless, weightless and ageless clothing.

While the fashion in the 1980’s was divided between the so-called bourgeois and the avant-garde, two very different types of minimalism emerged. The large designer houses, such as Donna Karan and Armani, opted for chic and clean purism, while emerging designers and smaller labels continued by moving minimalism into more conceptual direction. The next stage of minimalism was born: deconstructionism. It takes a complete garment and reduce it even further to its barest state; a snapshot in time portraying the process of its construction, stripping it down to its fundamental parts. Take it as an extreme form of reductivism, if you’d like. And its pioneer? One and only, Martin Margiela.

Margiela’s works panders to impersonal aesthetics, in that the purpose or meaning of the design object is secondary to how it looks. Margiela has always been one of the few labels whose signifiers are exaggerated proportions. As the fashion became more concerned with labels and branding, his work became even more relevant, not only for its technical brilliance and new take on feminine elegance, but also for its values of anti-fashion, anti-status symbol.

In the 90s era the mainstream fashion was marked by the shift of focus to the female arena, in which designers such as Calvin Klein and Donna Karan made easy clothes for the modern working women. According to Klein his version of Minimalism is ‘an indulgence in superbly executed cut, quiet plays of colour tones and clean, strong shape.’ Although formal Minimalism discouraged figuration, Post-Minimalism allows casual references to the human body, as long as they appear in reductive a manner as possible, notably exemplified by Klein’s nondescript slinky slip dresses. 

Every fashion trend undergoes several changes throughout the years, and minimalism is no different. From then to now the concept of minimalist style has changed even though its basic principles have been the same.

Today, Minimalism has became a responsible way of fashion consumption and aesthetic that pervades the current fashion consciousness, with designers as Stella McCartney, Phoebe Philo for Celine, Haider Ackermann or high-street brands as COS and Uniqlo leading the way. 

Ultimately Minimalism, regardless of its iterations, “seeks to challenge perception of space and matter, ensure purity of design, and to reduce form to its cogent, accessible essence.”