Arce home Some things I like
No. 02 · Style

I'm really into the oversized era.

And I'm sad that it's coming to an end.

I'm into comfort over everything, so this era really hit the spot for me. However, the fitted button-downs are starting to creep in. I can see them. Once a trend starts to take over the mass market, you start to see the pendulum swing in the other direction.

Black oversized tee with Faith Over Fear print
Boxy black tee with cropped hem
White oversized Tokyo graphic tee
Black tee on white stairs
A rack of colored sweatshirts
Cream wide-cut tee with giant lettering
Oversized white tee with brown cargo pants

Exhibit A — the box tee: shoulder seams somewhere down the arm, room in every direction

Oversized is a recurring swing, not an invention: 1920s dropped-waist, 1940s zoot suit, 1980s Japanese avant-garde (Kawakubo and Yamamoto in Paris — clothes explicitly designed not to describe the body), 1990s hip-hop and grunge.

The current wave has a traceable origin around 2015–2017: Demna at Vetements and then Balenciaga, Virgil Abloh at Off-White, Kanye's Yeezy drape. Streetwear got absorbed into luxury, and luxury needed a silhouette that read as "street." It was also a direct reaction to the most extreme skinny era in a century — Hedi Slimane at Dior Homme shrank menswear so violently in the 2000s that the correction was mathematically inevitable.

Then Covid hit, and we went from Lululemons to full-on sweats.

Oversized black NBA Essentials hoodie
Baggy grey sweatpants with drawstring
Two friends in oversized hoodies and sweatpants
Grey hoodie and pants against a blue background
Pink oversized hoodie and sweatpants
Two friends in hoodies and baggy pants

The lockdown uniform — worn two sizes up, the hoodie stops being loungewear and starts being architecture

Some thoughts on why it stuck

  1. Fit is the most expensive problem in apparel. Grading a garment across sizes, and eating return rates when it doesn't fit, is where margin dies. A boxy tee fits a size S and a size XL body acceptably. Oversized is a supply-chain trend disguised as an aesthetic one. Shein, dropshippers, and every DTC brand with no fit-model budget rode it hard.
  2. One SKU, two genders. Unisex sells inventory efficiency as inclusivity.
  3. Body composition. Loose is forgiving. Two-thirds of North American adults are overweight. Fashion doesn't advertise this driver, but it's real.
  4. Algorithmic legibility. On a 3-inch phone screen, fabric quality, stitching, and drape are invisible. Silhouette is the only thing that survives compression. Oversized creates dramatic outline. TikTok didn't just spread the trend — it selected for it.
  5. Thrift economics. The secondhand boom put a lot of men's clothing on smaller bodies. Poverty aesthetics got retconned as style, same as every prior baggy cycle.
Leather jacket with baggy jeans
Baggy jeans leaning on a car hood
Boxy oversized brown jacket by the water
Baggy fit in front of a colorful wall
Oversized blazer and wide trousers on the runway
Wide-legged fit in an empty urban space

The feed — what the algorithm sees: silhouette, nothing else

So, what's next?

Well, it's the opposite. The tailored look is on its way — which means you can't hide them french fries, and the abs (whether there or not) will be on call.

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