This winter the hottest fashion accessory out there is, you guessed it, rustic barns. They’re dusty. They’re dirty. And they make very expensive very clean clothes look that much more sparkling and unattainable.
Calvin Klein, the all-American fashion house, is bringing barns to a new level of chic. Their 2017-2018 #MyCalvins campaign has featured a number of stars including Solange, Dev Hynes, Kelela, Kaia Gerber, the A$AP crew, and most recently the Kardashian-Jenners — all photographed in an old, sparse-looking barn while standing atop large quilts.
“Americana,” the ad screams. “Yay, agrarian societies!” Barns are no longer for farming; they’re for posing.
CK isn’t the only brand to catch the farming wave. A rusty barn and some bales of hay threaten to upstage the models in the campaign for Elisabetta Franchi’s spring/summer 2018 collection. Meanwhile, it seems Moschino got to the farm early with its fall 2017 campaign.
Falling in line with a larger pop culture trend of embracing rural aesthetics, fashion ads featuring barns and other venues of hard labor are almost more elitist than go-to locations like French palaces and Malibu mansions — and much less believable. You don’t have to be a poor unknown to go gallivanting around an apparently abandoned barn with your friends, but it does make more sense than the idea of the Kardashian sisters doing it. But no matter the reasoning, the fashion industry has its sights on America’s laboring class architecture. Up next: Idris Elba modeling Gucci in a half-collapsed grain elevator.
