Earlier this week, The New Yorker received some flak in the comments section of a post that read: “These days… grown women—dreaming of porelessness, wearing white socks and penny loafers and hair bows—evidently want to look like 10-year-old girls.” While it wasn’t the point of the story, the line caught many people’s attention. One user wrote, “No woman wants to look like a 10-year-old child. That’s giving a very unsavoury feeling.” Another observed, “I wear a bow to look like grown women in the ’60s, not 10-year-old girls—what a bizarre take.” Though I must admit when I saw drop waist bubble-hemmed dresses show up on the racks at Zara earlier this year, it did strike me that last time I wore a balloon skirt was, in fact, in my tweens. But as an adult who is a die-hard fan of all things ‘girly’—headbands, bows, and juicy, flavoured lip balms—I was ready to bring the puffball skirt back in a more mature avatar.
Gathered hemlines with bulbous proportions are nothing new—you’d know if you wore them growing up in the mid-aughts or lived through Princess Diana famously wearing her striped bubble dress on an official trip to Portugal and then again at the Cannes Film Festival in 1987. Like all trends, the silhouette’s popularity has waxed and waned, but it’s reached a fever pitch again in 2024. Last June, Jacquemus’s Le Chouchou show was pegged to the puffball silhouette (no surprise that Princess Di was on the mood board). The designer showcased not only frothy miniskirts, but also lingerie-adjacent micro-shorts and cocoon tops. On the spring/summer 2024 runways, frilly, puffy, ruffled skirts were everywhere, including at Miu Miu, Tory Burch, and Bally. Even Rei Kawakubo sent out bubbly fabric sculptures at Comme des Garçons, while Pieter Mulier’s summer/fall 2024 show for Maison Alaïa was based “on the curve, on the circle” (according to show notes) and was punctuated with rounded hems in fringe and knitted fur. And it’s far from over. Most recently at Copenhagen Fashion Week, we saw ultra-mini cuts at Rotate, Sinéad O’Dwyer, and Herskind too.
Bubble fever is playing out on red carpets as well, with celebrities like Ayo Edebiri, Jennie Kim, and Sabrina Carpenter turning heads in playful, poufy shapes. On the streets (and on our Explore pages), bubble skirts are being paired with everything from baby and baggy tees to frilly tank tops, tubes, crisp button-downs, and long-sleeved zipper jackets.
Ruchi Sangma, the Delhi-based designer behind RuSh, recalls wearing balloon skirts over jeans as a child. “I have always loved unconventional silhouettes, so I guess I’ve always been into stuff that looked different or elevated,” she says. Her latest collection has multiple iterations of the inflated miniskirt made with three metres of gathered fabric, which lends them enough structure to stand on their own. The ultra-short silhouette is perfect for those who don’t mind showing some leg and have been on the fence about trying out the pantless trend. Meanwhile for modest dressers, there are office-appropriate options at ‘Malie and Zara that go well below the knee.
If you need more inspiration, look no further than the OG blogger and bubble girl, Susanna Lau, who’s currently System’s digital editorial director. A longtime champion of the bubble hem and all things associated with girlhood (bows on everything, stockings in bright colours, layers and layers of tulle), she’s been spotted wearing ballooning styles from Self-Portrait, Molly Goddard, and Simone Rocha, and has even written about what it means to be a grown-up girl. So, whether you’re someone who isn’t ‘ready to grow up’ just yet or believe that clothes have little to do with age or demographic, below are our picks so you, too, can re-embrace the joy of a big skirt.
