Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1544634
Less is More Minimalism asked fashion to subtract. Essentialism asks it to choose. After a generation, the industry is finally learning the difference. By Paul Jebara. S omewhere between the third beige cashmere hoodie and the 13th "stealth wealth capsule wardrobe" video, people stopped getting dressed and started performing austerity. It happened with interiors, too — white walls, one sad linen sofa, that single dried stem in a $200 ceramic vase that held nothing. The word minimalism deserves the blame. Born in the art world of the 1960s, it was a genuine philosophy once. By the time fashion and Instagram finished with it, the word meant nothing more specific than the absence of color and the presence of good lighting. The correction arrived on schedule: Individuality reigns supreme, so wear everything and layer everything, since the cure for too little is apparently too much. But that misses the point, too, because the problem was never how much or how little. It was that an entire culture lost the words for why: Why this fabric? Why this silhouette? Why anything at all? Those words exist. They've just been buried under decades of misuse — and the man who defined them best would be furious about what happened to his legacy. Donald Judd, the Texas-based sculptor widely considered the intellectual godfather of minimalism, published an essay in 1965 called "Specific Objects" that became the movement's founding text. He then spent the next 30 years insisting he had nothing to do with it. The word, he argued, described what his work lacked rather than what it contained. His own definition was more demanding: "the simple expression of complex thought." Not less for the sake of less, but everything extraneous tried, convicted, and removed so that what survives can be experienced on its own terms. This from a man who collected Navajo textiles, tartan plaids, and dozens of pieces of Alvar Aalto furniture across properties in New York, Marfa, and Europe — and whose 13,000-volume library in Marfa was organized by each author's date of birth. Nobody accused Judd of owning too little. His beef with minimalism was that it let people confuse discipline with deprivation, which is a bit like confusing a sommelier with someone who doesn't drink. If your closet feels empty rather than focused, you've made the same error. Fashion certainly did. Helmut Lang, Jil Sander, and Calvin Klein brought Judd's philosophy to the runway in the early 1990s, and all three spent more time running from the label than into it. Lang, an autodidact who started making clothes in Vienna because he couldn't find the ones he wanted, contested the designation for years — the shows he produced in Paris looked spare only in contrast to the spectacle of Mugler and Gaultier, he argued, not because subtraction was the goal. Sander, whose real name is Heidemarie Jiline Sander, rendered her Hamburg home in a full Renaissance fantasy by Italian decorator Renzo Mongiardino. The queen of less liked her rooms lavish. Phoebe Philo encountered the same bind at Celine, where critics filed her under minimalist and she responded with bold neon accessories and graffiti prints on the same runway — the fashion equivalent of answering a whisper with a bullhorn. None of them were subtracting. They were selecting: choosing with conviction, which takes more confidence than choosing less. Fashion spent the next three decades pretending the two actions were identical, and the rest of us paid the price in beige. Which brings us to someone who never pretended, and whose work you're looking at in these pages. Nicolas Ghesquière, the creative director of Louis Vuitton's women's collections, grew up in a Loire Valley town of 7,500 people, made dresses out of his mother's curtains at 12, and promised himself he'd be working for Jean Paul Gaultier before turning 18. He kept the promise. His first real design job was funeral clothes and wedding dresses for a Japanese licensing department at Balenciaga. When he was named creative director there at 25, he had four months, bad carpet, and no decent models. He hated that show, he admitted, but still loved the clothes. Bernard Arnault's instructions when Ghesquière arrived at Vuitton were blunt. The brand is not minimal, Arnault told him, and Ghesquière agreed. This is a designer who built League of Legends character skins with Riot Games and cast the Final Fantasy heroine Lightning as the face of a Vuitton campaign — the first time a video-game character modeled for a luxury house. His garments are engineered to appear effortless, which is among the most labor-intensive illusions in fashion. He doesn't remove. He selects. And what he selects stays because it has to be there. That instinct — only what earns its place — has a name, and 2026 is the year the rest of the world is catching on. In fact, Pierre Mahéo titled his entire Officine Générale Fall/Winter 2026 menswear collection "Essentialism." Sherwin-Williams, of all unlikely prophets, defined the concept in its 2026 color forecast: Unlike minimalism, which reduces, essentialism "allows for flexibility and expansion, encouraging us to keep anything that serves a purpose or feels especially meaningful." Pantone named a warm white its Color of the Year because, as executive director Leatrice Eiseman put it, "The cacophony that surrounds us has become overwhelming." Two-thirds of Stitch Fix's clients reported trend fatigue this year. TikTok's underconsumption movement has college students filming anti-hauls. The common thread isn't austerity. It's intentionality — keeping what belongs and letting the rest go. It seems the movement is applicable to far more than a wardrobe. Judd organized his library by author's birthday. Sander decorated in Renaissance gilt. None of it was minimal. All of it was essential. The next time the beige hoodie calls from the back of the closet, ask it the only question that matters: Does this need to be here? If the answer is no, it was never the right piece. It was just the safe one. Donald Judd, widely considered the intellectual godfather of minimalism, published an essay in 1965 called "Specific Objects" that became the movement's founding text. He then spent the next 30 years insisting he had nothing to do with it.