ICONS ONLY

What makes an outfit live on in history? Which outfits changed the way we think about getting dressed? BAZAAR assembled a team of experts to determine some of the most iconic looks of all time.

- BROOKE BOBB

Four cities per season. Hundreds of shows per city. Double-digit looks per show. It all amounts to thousands of new runway looks every year. And hundreds more appear on the red carpet and in the streets, where they’re photographed and then broadcast across the world.

On social media, millions post their daily dressing rituals, which are then liked and commented on by millions more. We are bombarded with fashion in an endless scroll of outfits. How, then, does a look stand out? What makes it imprint into our collective consciousness and, sometimes, even change the way we dress?

Therefore, we sought to not only figure that out but also anoint the most iconic looks throughout history. We started with the nipped-waist jacket and full skirt from Christian Dior’s debut collection in 1947, a revelatory silhouette that ushered in a return to femininity after the ravages of World War II. When she saw it for the first time, legendary Harper’s BAZAAR editorin-chief Carmel Snow declared it the New Look. It changed fashion forever.

To determine the fashion moments that deserve a place alongside Dior’s watershed New Look, we assembled a brain trust of industry experts, including fashion historian Valerie Steele, image architect Law Roach, Moda Operandi’s co-founder and chief brand officer and artistic director of home for Tiffany & Co., Lauren Santo Domingo, SSENSE’s director of content Steff Yotka, and Lewis’s founder and editor Jeremy Lewis, as well as our own editors. We debated the merits of hundreds of looks. For each one, we asked, did it become a part of the culture? Are we still thinking about it? Did it shift the way we got dressed? Then we narrowed the results and here are our picks, in no particular order.

CHRISTIAN DIOR’S NEW LOOK, 1947