Look at all the runways and recent street style images, and you’ll likely be reminded of a series of iconic ‘90s characters: Cher Horowitz of Clueless, Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City,…and Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus of The Matrix. And no, your eyes aren’t deceiving you: The 1999 action sci-fi blockbuster is turning out to be the fashion film of 2018.
Over time, the Wachowski-siblings-directed series has come to embody the late ‘90s zeitgeist—not only because of its iconic cast and now meme-able moments, but also because of its strong visual language. At the first mention of The Matrix, we see Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Laurence Fishburne (who played the aforementioned trio) in their floor-grazing trench coats, patent leather, combat boots, and tiny sunglasses. That uniform is to the franchise what Cher Horowitz’s little plaid set was to Clueless. And though both films had a distinctive (albeit vastly different) role in defining ‘90s fashion, The Matrix never really achieved the same mainstream appeal or the sartorial clout the way Clueless had…until now, that is.
Seemingly out of nowhere, all the most-followed, most paparazzi-snapped stars—Kendall Jenner, Bella and Gigi Hadid, and Kim Kardashian, to name a few—followed by a flood of street-style stars, have begun to dress like they’re on the set of a Matrix reboot. Sure, we knew the Wachowskis-created worlds (a machine-made virtual construct versus a post-apocalyptic reality set in the year 2199) to have a pretty vast fan base, seeing as the film earned $27 million on opening weekend and went on to gross $463 million worldwide. But to come back 20 years later as the inspiration for 2018’s most ubiquitous trend?
