From Power Shoulders to Power Hips: The Bold New Silhouette for Autumn
The autumn/winter 2025 collections have given us a range of Eighties-inspired suits, mainly in Gordon Gekko-style greys and classic pinstripes. That means the power shoulder is also back, though this time, it’s entering an era where the mantra “greed is good” has taken on horrifying new resonance.
But why does it always have to be a power shoulder? Are we really going to tackle this patriarchy with a pair of rounded pads in our jackets? What feels more powerful, stronger, is the idea of asserting ownership over what’s going on below our waists.
Enter the power hips: a silhouette that isn’t exactly hourglass, nor is it related to the size or scope of our skirt. This is about an overt exaggeration of our hips – a glorious, jutting, pouffed-out, padded, oft-abstract or sculptural rendering of the hip line of a top, skirt, or dress. It started in New York with Colleen Allen’s beautiful sapphire floor-length velvet coat that features removable hip bustles. There were also hip pads used for designer Ashlyn Park’s standout collection, which she and her team referred to as “hip dumplings.”
In London, Dilara Findikoğlu decorated the hips with conch shells and elsewhere, added ruffles to the hips of bodysuits.
Milan gave us the spectacular final Bally collection from Simone Bellotti, and with it, an exploration of shape and form by way of rounded hips. One dress even had a built-in peplum that gave the hips a disc shape from within the garment.
Peplums have been everywhere this season, and whether rendered in a sci-fi spaceship saucer shape or something more fluid, they’ve served as popular forms of expressing new-meet-classic propositions for the way clothes can fit and form to the body.
But what’s been even more compelling are the exaggerations of this idea, like the classic wool skirts at Marie Adam-Leenaerdt in Paris, which had a strict, straight hip that came up to the midline of the bodice. Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons did something in a similar vein, showing minis and midis with harder-edged paper-bag waists. There were also Vaquera’s blown up bras worn draped over the tops of skirts, with breast cups situated at the hips.
Then came the mastery of Pieter Mulier at Alaïa. No house or designer is more well-versed in crafting sculptures from complex or curious fabrics. Challenging our notion of the dialogues between the body and a garment is the core of the house’s DNA, as the autumn/winter 2025 show inside their new headquarters reminded us. Hips were among the key focal points in Alaïa’s exceptional collection, with tube-like structures orbiting around the model’s waists, swaying with grace and a beautiful peculiarity as they moved down the runway. There was a lot of softness in these clothes, but they all had a strength to them too.
If power shoulders were (or are) about co-opting a trope of menswear, then maybe the power hip is something much more appealing for those of us looking to find strength within. No matter anyone’s size or shape, an exaggerated hip is about taking up space. As Mulier said towards the end of his show notes, “Your body is yours.” Hips and all.
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