What Are You Wearing to the End of the World?

The future is now. From doomsday preppers to haute couture, everyone seems to be obsessed with the end times. There are a million ways to imagine the future, why not choose one that envisions yourself with great style?

Utopia

Brands like Coperni and Van Herpen have promised us a future worth living. With dreamy, avant-garde and sharp designs, wearing clothes has never looked so exciting. Van Herpen’s creations are on the cutting edge of technology, blending 3-D printing, silk-steel fabrics and magnets to create art that explores questions on the metaphysical. They push the boundaries of the ordinary, daring to envision a future that marries the human with the elemental.

Coperni’s Spring-Summer 2026 collection fuses the physical form with the material. The textiles are infused with a symbiotic blend of prebiotics and probiotics that respond to the body’s heat, movement and touch. This activates microorganisms that help rebalance the skin’s microbiome, encouraging its renewal.

It’s a hopeful avenir, one that promises people more harmony with the universe and themselves. 

Dystopia

Not all futures are bright. The 2010s had a very brief but very intense love affair with the dystopian YA genre. Franchises like “Mad Max” and “The Hunger Games” wrapped viewers in the bare threads of a collapsed future, selling a brutal but still somehow romantic outlook. As opposed to the utopian outlook, post-apocalyptic fashion leans into the grit — half-warning, half-idyllic. 

The advent of “Mad Max” in the 2010s spurred the dieselpunk look, characterized by rugged silhouettes in dusty, neutral tones. Deconstructed garments and techwear combine both the expected destruction of the Earth with a touch of innovation, to create an unconventional look. 

This era gave us ratty olive field jackets over worn henleys and tattered combat boots — a more street-friendly version of the techwear popular in other subcultures. Whether hiding from an unnamed surveillance state or running from zombies, these looks mirrored the main characters from “Divergent” and “Maze Runner.” It abandoned any airy utopian promises for a nightmare so real, we were dressing like the world had already ended. 

This aesthetic loves its hoods (presumably to shield from the searing rays of the sun cutting through the busted ozone layer). They’re like a personal shroud, a reminder of imminent demise. It’s function over fashion. 

Escape

Perhaps this obsession with the end of the world comes from the constant pull of a struggling society. A world ravaged by wars, famines and climate change craves nothing but escape. Dressing like the apocalypse is upon us is accepting the fact that the future is in fact uncertain, despite all the ways we try to envision it. It’s what all those films have been trying to do.

There is a solace to be found in dressing well, even as the world we know collapses around us. Sure, the seas may be rising and conflict might tightening its grip, but at least you look good doing it. Clothes offer us that sense of control — though perhaps false — that we’ve got our lives together, even if we don’t. 

That’s the joy of dressing.

Do you embrace the now or ponder the apocalypse? Let us know @VALLEYMag on Instagram!

Related