6 Clothing Styles I've Never Understood and 6 I Would Reach for Instead

Eugénie Trochu is a Who What Wear editor in residence known for her transformative work at Vogue France and her Substack newsletter, where she documents and shares new trends, her no-nonsense approach to fashion and style, plus other musings. She's also working on her upcoming first book that explores fashion as a space of memory, projection, and reinvention.

There are pieces that fashion keeps trying to make happen, season after season, as if the entire industry were gaslighting us into believing they make sense. They appear on runways, in lookbooks, on stylists’ mood boards, and every time, I try to imagine a life in which they’d be practical. Every time, I fail.

Here are a few that have always left me puzzled, and what I’d wear instead.

1. The "No Pants" Trend

Otherwise known as going out without trousers. It’s also called the “underwear trend,” or, for the brave, Miu Miu’s version of courage.

The idea? Throw on an oversize shirt, a chunky sweater, a huge blazer, and underneath, almost nothing. A pair of briefs, a micro-short, a “statement.”

I try to keep an open mind. I’ve always defended personal expression through clothing: kitsch, oversize, transparent. Why not? But there’s a point where creativity becomes a question of weather, and the weather has never endorsed the disappearance of pants.

The movement supposedly started at Miu Miu, then spread through a few celebrities with 1.2-meter legs. On stage or in photos, it works: It’s daring, a little conceptual, a sort of body manifesto. But in real life, the effect is less provocative than alarming. And perhaps you look like someone who left home in a hurry.

What I’d wear instead: an ultra-short, perfectly cut pair of shorts, almost like reimagined underwear but worn as real clothing. Or, my signature choice, a miniskirt.