What Will Fashion Look Like In 2021?

 As the chair of fashion at Ryerson University, advocate and educator Ben Barry has tirelessly championed a more conscious and inclusive approach within the modern fashion world. So, it’s not surprising that Barry announced last week that starting next fall, he would become the dean of fashion at The New School within New York’s Parsons School of Design.

While he will certainly be missed by Canadian creatives and others who have watched him help to transform our local fashion education system – including the hiring of thought-leaders like Fashion and Race Database founder Kimberly Jenkins, who joined Ryerson’s faculty earlier this year – Barry assures us that this new post will simply be an expansion and augmentation of the work he’s done in the style space so far.

“First and foremost, I’m excited to scale and amplify the work for radical inclusion in fashion,” Barry says. “That’s work that’s begun in Canada [and] that Canadian academics, creatives and designers are leading internationally. Now I’m able to bring all this experience and perspective to a platform like Parsons, which can only amplify that globally…. I think as Canadians, we’re so humble we don’t often realize that the world looks to Canada as doing exciting, progressive work in so many fields, including fashion. But they do.”

We naturally wanted to know Barry’s fashion predictions heading into 2021, and from how we shop to what we’ll be buying, he had plenty of interesting ideas.

I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of change this year, as we all have. Let’s talk about what you’re thinking about moving into 2021.

We’ve seen the growth of Zoom-wear, and I think we’re going to see a movement to high-glam Zoom-wear. At this point in the pandemic, people want to experiment with new ways of pulling looks together to unleash our creativity and to uplift our spirits. I’m imagining that there’s going to be an increase in terms of design concepts and aesthetics – thinking of really big shoulders, bold colours, embellishments and sparkles around the neck and shoulders. Details that give people the pure joy in dressing up. I think we’ll still be wearing pajamas and lounge pants on the bottom – I don’t think that will change, I think we love that. But the top is going to be less about hoodies and more about high glamour.