By Jussara Da Silva
We have confused timelessness with neutrality. Somewhere along the way, fashion created a visual uniform for what a timeless wardrobe is supposed to look like: the beautifully made black leather handbag, the white shirt, the perfectly cut trousers, the camel or black coat, the simple knit, the loafer, the understated watch, the delicate jewelry, the pieces quiet enough that nobody could immediately identify the year in which you bought them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this idea. In fact, there is a reason these pieces return whenever we talk about building wardrobes that last. Certain objects really do possess a kind of universal timelessness. A Hermès Birkin or Kelly can appear in photographs separated by decades and somehow remain completely understandable in each one. The Chanel 2.55 and Classic Flap have survived enormous changes in fashion without becoming dependent on a particular season. The Lady Dior, the Louis Vuitton Speedy, a beautifully constructed leather handbag without excessive decoration, a wonderful black coat, a good pair of trousers—there are objects whose design language has existed for long enough, and adapted to enough different generations, that we have collectively stopped asking whether they are “in.” They simply exist. Someone can dislike a Birkin. Someone can think the Classic Flap isn’t for them. Someone can prefer contemporary handbags to the Lady Dior. Timelessness does not mean universal taste. It simply means that the object’s legitimacy is no longer particularly dependent on the trend cycle. Nobody sees a woman carrying a black Kelly and thinks, Oh, she must still be dressing for 2019. The object has somehow escaped that conversation. It belongs to fashion, but it no longer belongs exclusively to a particular moment in fashion. And yet I think we have made a mistake by assuming this is the only form timelessness can take, because there is another kind of timelessness that may matter even more when we are building our own wardrobes: the things that are timeless only to us.
I think personal timelessness is one of the least discussed ideas in fashion because it is much harder to package into a shopping guide. Universal timelessness can be turned into a list: ten handbags you’ll wear forever, five coats that never go out of style, the shoes every woman should own. Personal timelessness cannot be prescribed so easily because what feels permanent in my wardrobe might feel completely temporary in yours. A perfect example for me is the Chanel 22. I can understand why someone might associate it strongly with the period in which it became enormously popular, and perhaps someone else will eventually look at it and think of early-2020s Chanel. That does not particularly matter to me because I don’t experience the bag through that lens. For me, it has become one of those pieces I can imagine continuing to carry regardless of whether Chanel is currently promoting it, whether street style photographs are filled with it, whether another handbag has become more desirable, or whether fashion media eventually decides that we have “moved on.” Its timelessness in my wardrobe doesn’t require universal agreement. It requires continuity between the object and my own taste. Someone else may feel exactly the same about a pair of leather trousers. Fashion might declare leather trousers essential one autumn, less relevant two seasons later and suddenly “back” five years after that, while this person has simply been wearing hers every winter throughout the entire conversation. Someone may have worn oversized gold earrings for twenty years through periods when tiny jewelry dominated and periods when statement jewelry returned. Someone else might have a particular haircut, pair of sunglasses, coat silhouette, shoe shape or color that appears repeatedly throughout their life. These things may not be universally timeless, but they become personally timeless because their relevance survives changes in external approval. Something doesn’t have to transcend every fashion era to be timeless. Sometimes it only has to transcend every fashion era in your own wardrobe.
That distinction becomes especially important now because we are living through extremely visible trend cycles. Trends themselves are not the enemy. I love that fashion changes. I want new collections, new ideas, new silhouettes and objects that make us reconsider what we thought we liked. Fashion would become incredibly dull if every designer entered the studio asking only, Will somebody still consider this tasteful in thirty years? Creativity requires experimentation, and experimentation sometimes creates objects that belong unmistakably to a particular moment. There is something wonderful about that. The problem begins when we allow the existence of something new to invalidate everything that came immediately before it. A new handbag arrives and suddenly the previous handbag is discussed as though it has expired. A new shoe silhouette dominates the runway and suddenly people begin wondering whether the shoes they genuinely loved six months earlier are embarrassing. A particular trouser shape becomes popular and another is declared dead, only for the supposedly dead silhouette to return a few years later under a new styling language. We have become so accustomed to fashion being described through beginnings and endings—what’s in, what’s out, what’s back, what’s over—that we sometimes forget our wardrobes do not need to behave like fashion publications. Fashion’s responsibility is to move. Your wardrobe’s responsibility is to belong to you. Those are two very different jobs.
This is also why I think we need to become more careful when we describe someone’s clothes as “dated.” There are, of course, looks that are deeply connected to particular eras. We can look at certain combinations and immediately recognize the visual codes of the early 2000s, the 1980s, the 1960s or almost any other period. That isn’t necessarily an insult either; sometimes dressing within a very specific historical aesthetic is intentional and incredibly interesting. But there is another phenomenon where we call something dated simply because it is no longer at the center of the current fashion conversation, and I think those two things are frequently confused. If someone has worn a particular trouser silhouette for fifteen years because it consistently works with her proportions, wardrobe and identity, has she become dated simply because another silhouette currently dominates the runway? If someone has carried the same handbag through three separate “it bag” cycles, is she behind, or has she simply developed enough personal style that those cycles have become irrelevant to her? Sometimes the difference between looking dated and having a signature is repetition with conviction. We often celebrate this when we look at famous women with incredibly recognizable personal style. We admire that they have a uniform. We admire the consistency. We say they know themselves. Yet ordinary people are often encouraged to continuously reinvent themselves to prove that they are paying attention. I find that contradiction fascinating. Perhaps timelessness is not always an inherent characteristic of the object. Perhaps sometimes we make an object timeless through the way we continue choosing it.
At the same time, I don’t think the answer is to turn our wardrobes into museums of sensible purchases and insist that everything entering them must survive a hypothetical thirty-year test. I actually think our obsession with “timeless investment pieces” can become limiting when taken too far. Fashion is supposed to contain pleasure. Sometimes you should see something unusual and simply love it. Sometimes the shoe can be strange. Sometimes the handbag can be covered in something completely unnecessary. Sometimes the jacket can be a color you have never owned before. Sometimes you can buy something knowing perfectly well that it may not become the object you reach for every week for the next fifteen years. There is a tendency in fashion advice to treat this as irresponsible, as though every purchase needs to defend itself through cost-per-wear calculations and promises of eternal relevance. But wardrobes are not financial portfolios. They are records of our lives, our taste, our experimentation and sometimes our willingness to have fun. A wardrobe made entirely of universally timeless pieces can be beautiful, but it can also become strangely anonymous if the person wearing it never allows anything more specific to enter. The foundation can be timeless without requiring every object placed on top of it to be.
And this is where I think we need another distinction: timeless pieces and collector pieces are not the same thing, and they do not need to be. Take something like a heavily decorated seasonal handbag or a Chanel 25 in a particularly recognizable print such as the Polka Dot version. I would hesitate to call something like that universally timeless, because the very thing that makes it interesting is its specificity. A distinctive print, unusual fabrication, seasonal embellishment or highly recognizable design treatment can attach an object to a particular creative period. But why should that automatically diminish it? Perhaps that is precisely what makes it collectible. A collector does not necessarily want every object to conceal when it was made. Quite the opposite. Sometimes the historical specificity is the point. We admire vintage runway pieces because they tell us something about the designer, the house and the period in which they were created. A Galliano-era Dior piece doesn’t become less interesting because we can recognize the era it came from. Its ability to carry that history is part of its value. The same principle can exist on a smaller scale inside an ordinary wardrobe. You might own a simple black handbag that quietly works with almost everything you wear and then another bag that is decorative, strange, colorful, seasonal or unmistakably connected to a particular fashion moment. They are doing completely different jobs. One doesn’t need to replace the other, and neither needs to pretend to be something it isn’t.
I think the Chanel 25 itself is an interesting example of how difficult it is to declare timelessness in real time. I really like the bag. I think it is beautiful, and I completely understand why people are excited about it. I have also seen people describe it already as a future timeless Chanel bag, and perhaps they will be right. Maybe in 2030, 2040 and beyond we will continue seeing the Chanel 25 carried across generations and it will gradually detach itself from the period in which it was launched. But I don’t know that yet, and I don’t think any of us really can. Timelessness is something time proves; it is difficult to manufacture through language alone. Brands can describe an object as an icon. Publications can call something an instant classic. Consumers can predict that a particular handbag will become permanent. But ultimately, culture decides through continued use. The Chanel Classic Flap, the 2.55, the Kelly, the Birkin, the Speedy and other pieces we now casually describe as timeless were not given their status because somebody wrote the word “timeless” beside them when they launched. They accumulated it. Generations wore them. Their context changed while the objects remained. New fashion movements appeared around them and somehow they continued making sense. That is what makes universal timelessness so rare. It is not simply minimal design. It is survival.
Personal timelessness, however, doesn’t need to wait for cultural consensus. You can decide much earlier that something belongs to your visual language. This is perhaps where knowing yourself becomes far more useful than knowing every trend. If you consistently return to the same shapes, materials, colors and proportions, those repetitions tell you something. Maybe you always feel most like yourself in wide trousers even when narrow silhouettes return. Maybe you have always preferred enormous bags regardless of the years when tiny bags dominate. Maybe you love silver jewelry despite a period in which everyone around you seems to be wearing gold. Maybe you consistently return to ballet flats, pointed shoes, structured jackets, oversized coats, silk scarves, red nails, dark sunglasses or one particular handbag shape. Instead of treating those repetitions as evidence that you need to become more adventurous, perhaps sometimes they are evidence that you have discovered something important about yourself. Personal style is partly created through experimentation, but it is also created through recognition: noticing what keeps returning after the experimentation is over. Your personally timeless pieces are often the things you keep choosing after the world has stopped reminding you to choose them.
And perhaps that gives us a better way to think about shopping altogether. Instead of standing in front of every object and asking, Is this timeless?, we could ask, What role is this going to play in my wardrobe? Is this a foundation? Is this something I can realistically imagine wearing regardless of what happens around it? Is it personally timeless because it belongs so naturally to my existing taste that I don’t need external validation to keep loving it? Or is this something completely different—a joyful piece, a fashion moment, an experiment, a collector’s object, something that makes an otherwise familiar wardrobe feel alive? Those are all legitimate reasons to own something. The important part is understanding the difference. Problems arise when we buy a trend expecting permanence, or buy a supposedly timeless piece that has absolutely nothing to do with our personal taste simply because someone told us every woman should own it. A black leather handbag is not a good investment in your wardrobe if you hate black handbags. A camel coat is not timeless for you if you never feel like yourself wearing camel. A white shirt can appear on every “wardrobe essentials” list ever written and still spend ten years untouched in someone’s closet. Universal timelessness does not automatically create personal usefulness.
This is why I increasingly believe that the strongest wardrobes exist somewhere between permanence and curiosity. They have an architecture. There are pieces that remain while everything else moves around them: the coat you always return to, the handbag that seems to work regardless of the year, the jewelry you almost forget you’re wearing because it has become part of how you see yourself, the trousers whose proportions simply make sense to you, the shoes you replace rather than abandon when they eventually wear out. Those pieces create stability. But around them there should also be room for discovery. A strange seasonal bag. A color you suddenly cannot stop thinking about. A runway piece that captures something about this exact moment in fashion. A shoe that might look completely different from what you normally wear. A piece you buy not because you expect to pass it down to your grandchildren, but because it makes getting dressed exciting right now. I don’t think those two impulses contradict one another. In fact, I think they need one another. Timelessness gives a wardrobe identity. Newness gives it movement.
Maybe this is ultimately why I want us to expand the conversation around timeless fashion. Timelessness should not become another aesthetic rule telling everyone to dress the same way. It shouldn’t mean stripping wardrobes of personality until nothing remains except beige knitwear, black leather and perfectly respectable trousers. It shouldn’t become a moral hierarchy where the woman who buys only classics is considered sophisticated while the woman carrying an embellished seasonal bag is treated as frivolous. Fashion is far too interesting for that. Timelessness is useful when it helps us recognize permanence, not when it makes us afraid of change. There are universally timeless pieces whose cultural relevance has survived generations. There are personally timeless pieces whose relevance may exist almost entirely between an individual and her wardrobe. And there are collector pieces, experimental pieces, trend pieces and wonderfully unnecessary objects whose beauty may come precisely from the fact that they capture a particular moment. A thoughtful wardrobe can contain all of them.
So perhaps the next time someone tells you something is timeless, the question shouldn’t simply be whether they’re right. Ask what kind of timelessness they mean. Is this an object that culture has already proven capable of carrying across generations? Is it something that has quietly become permanent in your own life even if fashion occasionally moves away from it? Or are we trying to force the word “timeless” onto something simply because we feel uncomfortable admitting that we sometimes buy fashion because it is exciting right now? There is nothing wrong with permanence, and there is nothing wrong with the present. The art is learning which things you want to carry between the two. Because perhaps the most timeless wardrobe isn’t the one nobody can date. Perhaps it is the one whose owner remains recognizable throughout every era she moves through—not because she never changes, but because underneath all that change, there are certain things she has always known she loves.
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