The great minds of fashion have been trying to solve the closet conundrum for months: What is the formula that distinguishes dressing from styling?

On TikTok, thousands of videos tagged #wearingvsstyling are trying to answer questions with a 15-second jump-cut hack. Tuck a French top or sweater. Add a belt or "wrong shoes", and then slide the sunglasses. If you feel adventurous, tie a sweater over a coat. This is the sound that accompanies the video goes, "You are better."

If a creative director and a legacy house designer enter the chat, their answer sounds a bit different. Instead of tweaking a standard shirt or sweater in its final form, it creates clothes that are clearly layered, folded and fixed from the beginning. Call it the trompe-l'šil effort: a piece that does hard work for you, already built, arriving with a carefully styled perspective. 

This is the evolution of micro-trends that have simmered slowly in fashion over several seasons. From Fendi to Bottega Veneta to Doris van Noten, designers have incorporated gesture-like pre-style work into their Fall 2024 collection.There are sweaters with extra sleeves, as well as accessories that skillfully drape on knitwear built with lively folds and darts. Tory Burch was an early adopter who designed the sweater for the Fall 2023 collection, featuring fully pushed-up sleeves.The appearance was realized by the rubber hidden in the cuff rubbing off the fabric. After the season, Fendi released several knitwear and mini with extra asymmetrical sleeves, designed to mimic the look of a combined coordinated cardigan tied over a dress or top.

To the untrained eye, these works appear to have been lovingly layered-tuned by the behind-the-scenes design team rather than the person who wears the spring 2024 pre-style pieces, from ballet shoes lined with Tibi's varsity striped socks, pulled halfway through with Dries Van Noten. They range from sweatshirts that are constructed to be strung together.

The scope of the designer's interpretation expanded only with the presentation of the collection in the fall of 2024. In London, J.W.Anderson showed a low-key crew neck with a draped knit looped at the waist. In Milan, Gucci riffed the layered sweater worn by Dua Lipa, designed 2 knit sets with button・up cardigans sewn on top of them to a draped coordinated sweater. Prada's hat-centric collection also includes a cut-neck turtleneck, creating the illusion of a perfectly layered polo collar. And in a more avant・garde approach to layering in Paris, Rick Owens modelled on sweaters with bulbous, crisscrossed sleeves-like tubes tied to the front

All these pre-style pieces arrive at the moment when the pursuit of personal style becomes a form of soul-searching in fashion - but not in fashion. But find that social media algorithms, from "girlhood aesthetics" to "mob wife style" to color trends that become obsolete in the blink of an eye, have a whimsical style of clothing

already twisted, pushed and folded, with a sense of joy and originality. You can also do heavy lifting and superposition for those who are not interested in spending their days studying styling hacks on their mobile phones. But even a new piece may not be able to satisfy the discussion of wearing and style alone.