Microtrend Monday: Like It or Not, This Divisive Trend Is Back

Here at Who What Wear UK, we always strive to tell you about the next big trends ahead of time. That’s why we created Microtrend Monday, your weekly alert to let you know the items and styling tricks that are suddenly taking off.

Tie-dye has a lot of associations—think Woodstock hippies in the ’60s and My So-Called Life in the ’90s. It’s also become a calling card for beach bums and their wardrobe of travelling trousers. But this summer, tie-dye is making a name for itself in fashionable circles. In fact, those psychedelic swirls are soon going to go from far-out to in. Model and actress Laura Harrier turned up to the Veuve Clicquot polo party—always a good bellwether for summer trends—earlier this month in a Prabal Gurung T-shirt dress splattered with pink and purple tie-dye.

Giorgia Tordini and Gilda Ambrosio, the street style stars behind Italian label Attico, have already convinced us to wear dressing gowns during the day and satin ankle cuffs to dinner. Now they’ve got their sights set on making tie-dye hip instead of hippie-dippy. They both wore silk that looked like it had been subtly tie-dyed to an Attico brunch party in L.A. Perhaps it wasn’t the kind you dye job you remember from GCSE textiles using lots of elastic bands, but it was definitely a grown-up take on the trend. Tordini’s puff-sleeved blouse faded from scarlet to jade-green to violet, while Ambrosio wore an ombré minidress the colours of a tequila sunrise.

Tie-dye also made a surprise appearance on the spring/summer catwalks. Michael Kors showed surf-ready splotches of the stuff on sweatshirt dresses, wafty skirts set for weekends at the Hamptons and bandeau bikini tops. The models even carried matching swirl-print towels. Christopher Bailey’s swan-song collection for Burberry included a tie-dyed tank top that might prove to be Harry Styles’s gig uniform for summer 2018, while model Adwoa Aboah braved a rainbow tie-dye trouser suit by Alex Mullins to Love’s party at Loulou’s.

The downside to tie-dye can be looking like you permanently live at Coachella, so avoid bleached denim, dungarees and rose-tinted glasses, don’t even think about daisy chain crowns, and if in doubt, go for an ombré effect instead of concentric circles that include every colour on the wheel. Keep scrolling for five dream tie-dye buys that are ripe with ’90s nostalgia and guaranteed to put a smile on your face.