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A pair of camouflage pedal pushers and a ’00s-era Ed Hardy T-shirt, a Karen Millen blouse and Nike parachute pants; a Plein Sud stretch-mesh top and rimless Chanel sunnies, low-slung Von Dutch jeans and J’adore Dior baby tees. Over the past couple of years, Bella Hadid’s unique relationship with clothing—and Depop sellers with names like @princesspeach310 and @electricheartz—has laid the blueprint for what young people on social media consider to be successful dressing: a certain recherché Y2K hype-girl, torn from the pages of Mizz magazine and beamed into an Erewhon in LA.
It was, at times, berserk, which is what made it so brilliant. And while so many of her contemporaries had begun to seek status through brands like The Row and Bottega Veneta—sartorial shortcuts to being seen as prestigious and having good taste—you got the impression that Bella was not dressing to be taken seriously as a fashion person. “I dress like a little boy,” she said in 2022. “You couldn’t catch me in a dress willingly at this point in my life.” But since reentering the public eye this week, Bella seems to be taking a more measured, mellowed approach to getting dressed.
See: the outsized blazer and cigarette jeans, the cable-knit separates, the trench coats and the roll-neck sweaters—all of which are sedate, muted, matured even. And just last night, Bella was photographed with a “mystery man” in cream sweatpants and a knitted cardigan. If I was writing this in August (and not entirely fatigued with girl trend nomenclature), I would interpret this as Bella’s “vanilla girl” moment, and probably make a tenuous comparison to this Kaia Gerber look. But I think this could be unpacked in another direction: That Bella is a hit-maker—capable of going viral with just one outfit—but no longer into all the attention that might inspire. This is Bella’s soft life, soft launched.