Following the recent Instagram trend, I decided to dive back into 2016, when fashion went full volume. Before quiet luxury, before restraint became aspirational, 2016 was about impact.
This was the era of Vetements energy, Balenciaga proportions, and Gucci maximalism. Oversized silhouettes pushed to excess, hoodies and bombers worn like armor, chokers framing the neck with intention, distressed denim taken to extremes, thigh-high boots paired without hesitation. Logos weren’t whispered, they were declared.
Streetwear and high fashion didn’t just meet. They collided.
The current return to 2016 isn’t accidental. It follows a widely discussed ten-year cultural cycle, a moment when fashion and internet culture begin to reject hyper-curation and visual restraint. As the polished, controlled aesthetics of the early 2020s lose momentum, there is a renewed appetite for excess, imperfection, and emotional immediacy. What resurfaces isn’t a replica of the past, but the attitude of it: fashion that allows scale, provocation, and unapologetic presence.
For me, 2016 wasn’t a reinvention. It was a moment of alignment, when the dominant fashion language finally mirrored an intensity I had always embraced. Gucci’s eclectic maximalism, Vetements’ provocation, Balenciaga’s scale: the visual vocabulary of that year allowed fashion to be excessive, expressive, and unapologetically styled.
What followed didn’t soften. It intensified.
My style didn’t pivot after 2016, it escalated. Proportions became sharper, contrasts more extreme, statements more deliberate. Not in response to trends, but through a long-standing instinct to push silhouettes further rather than edit them down.
This post is a curated edit of my favorite looks from 2016, a year defined by volume, attitude, and fashion without restraint. If you like to see all the details of the respective looks, I invite you to visit the previous post MY FAVORITE OUTFITS OF 2016.
LoL, Sandra
Photos: © Sandra Bauknecht
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