Loafer bags to sock shoes, 2024 was all about the mashed-up accessory

Just before men’s fashion month began this past June, Meta introduced a new tag for Instagram and Facebook allowing you to label images ‘made with AI’. It was a response, no doubt, to the bizarre ‘AI art’ which flooded the latter: anthropomorphic animals that move like humans; statues of Jesus made of stacks of shrimps or vegetables; ‘cyborg’ children engineered with empty plastic bottles and computer detritus. They have been deemed ‘slop’: a queasy and surreal stream of images made by a mysterious army of bots to mine likes and views (search: ‘weird AI art Facebook’ on Google Images to view some of these oddities).

Later that month at Prada, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons showed a menswear collection which the duo said explored ideas of ‘truth and pretence, the real and the unreal’. It made for a collection of illusions: belts that looked like belts but were actually stitched into the construction of a trouser, shirts that were warped with hidden wires, shield-like sunglasses overlaid with images of Roman statues, ravers and American highways. ‘Viewed from afar, pieces can pretend to be other,’ said the designers. ‘Details may seem simplistic, naïve, but up-close, physically, perceptions transform.’ It was fashion for our bewildering post-truth era, where nothing is quite what it seems.

Throughout 2024, designers have used their collections to grapple with designing for our increasingly disorientating world, resulting in idiosyncratic and intriguing collections which British designer Jonathan Anderson best described as ‘irrational clothing’ (he was talking about his own S/S 2025 menswear collection). The idea of the hybrid ran throughout, strange mash-ups that seemed to capture the dizzying spin of a social-media stream: at Loewe and Balenciaga garments appeared crafted from stacks of discarded clothing, at Sacai garments like the MA-1 flight jacket were melded together in Chitose Abe’s offbeat style, while at Issey Miyake sweaters appeared stitched on to the front of vests (typical of the Japanese brand’s innovative approach, they were actually knitted as a single piece).

Though it was accessories that made for some of the most curious hybrids. There was JW Anderson’s loafer bag, first appearing as part of Anderson’s S/S 2025 menswear collection in Milan, which ‘deconstructed and reconstructed in bag form’ the penny loafer (the classic shoe’s ‘whale-tail keeper’ detail runs across the bag’s boxy design, while the base recalls a loafer’s sole). Part of a collecton that was inspired by the stream of memories dug up by hypnotherapy – sweaters ran with slogans like ‘Real Sleep’ – it was both strange and familiar, like an object appearing from a dream. And, judging by a buzzy release last month, it looks set to follow in the JW Anderson ‘Bumper’ bag’s footsteps as a contemporary it-bag.

At Hodakova, the Stockholm-based winner of the 2024 LVMH Prize, eponymous designer Ellen Hodakova Larsson uses deadstock in imaginative ways. Like a series of bags constructed from discarded belts, or a surreal bag crafted from a knee-high boot, capturing an undone glamour that feels fitting for our times. At Duran Lantink’s thrilling S/S 2025 show, handbags became hats, while at Acne Studios trompe l’oeil prints saw ‘denim jeans’ printed across silk scarves and tote bags. Demna, meanwhile, melded a soft satin house slipper with towering stiletto heel at Balenciaga, while at Bottega Veneta, what appeared like a knitted wool sock was actually a woven leather shoe. Off the runway, New Balance’s loafer-cum-trainer was one of the year’s most divisive (and talked about) shoes.

These were pieces that spoke of not only the experience of living in what feels like an endless, infinite scroll of a social media stream – the dizzying juxtapositions from one post to the next – but also a newly experimental attitude in fashion as designers shift away from the quiet to the loud, no doubt buoyed by a new generation of consumers willing to make bolder statements with the clothes they wear. Indeed Anderson said his S/S 2025 collection had partly been inspired by seeing young people experiment with their outfits when he had attended Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona earlier that year. ‘The experimentation with clothing among younger generations is incredible,’ he said post show. ‘The eye has changed within menswear and within womenswear. People want something that is really challenging.’

Hybrid accessories: the Wallpaper* edit