Modest women's wear for the postmodern rebel

Despite the appearance of total power, the facade of libfem domination is cracking.

A little over a year ago, Mary Harrington wrote in Unherd that modest fashion was having a comeback. In British department stores for middle-class women, high-neck midi dresses and loose-fitting sportswear currently take up the most available shelf space. She explains: “The [traditional] turn in high-street womenswear feels like a mutiny against the long-unchallenged belief that clothing is a vector for self-expression — an idea that usually precedes someone trying to sell you something uncomfortable and expensive.”

We can easily detect a similar change in America in woke storefronts like H&M, Old Navy, and the classic department stores, but especially in the explosion of modest boutiques that usually advertise through social media. Hill House's famously versatile nap dress has expanded into an elaborate collection of feminine, high-quality, easy pieces that can be dressed up or down. Ivy City Company, whose tagline is “dresses by women for women,” carries high necklines, low hemlines, and mommy-daughter sets. Others include Dainty Jewells, My Sister's Keeper, and Inherit.

See also Julia Berlozheimer’s blog; she was an early exponent of this look, a pioneer in the realm of implicitly conservative high fashion. My favorite life hack is to search her old brand "Gal Meets Glam" in secondhand customer-to-customer exchange platforms like Poshmark or ThredUp, neither of which are particularly ideologically overt one way or the other.