The bandage dress is back — here's how Gen Z is wearing it

The year was 2007. Apple released the iPhone; the Spice Girls set out on their first reunion tour; and the final Harry Potter book hit the shelves. It was also the year the bandage dress — a form-fitting frock that mimics the look of a body wrapped in, well, bandages — was ubiquitous, worn by the likes of Rihanna, Lindsay Lohan and Victoria Beckham.

Now, nearly 20 years later, the polarizing silhouette appears to be making a comeback, and the numbers prove it.

Molly Rooyakkers — an Amsterdam-based researcher who uses data to forecast fashion trends —  noted a recent surge in interest, globally, around the style (a 400 per cent increase in online search traffic in just one week in June). That has slowed, Rooyakkers said, but searches are still up compared to this time last year. "It's definitely still trending," she said.

While many may be familiar with the reign of the bandage dress in the late 2000s and early 2010s — some fondly refer to it as the "millennial going-out dress" — couturier Azzedine Alaïa first introduced the look back in the 1980s, drawing inspiration from the layered strips of fabric on Egyptian mummies. 

In the 1990s, designer Hervé Léger created his own version of the look, and it became a red-carpet staple; supermodel Cindy Crawford famously wore a white number to the Oscars in 1993. 

In 2007, A-listers started wearing the dress to buzzy events and it trickled down to the masses via fast-fashion dupes. A go-to formula for a night out at the club? A bandage dress, a blazer and a pair of wedge or platform heels to navigate a sticky dance floor. 

Like most trends, it died out, making way for styles like the slip dress, the wrap dress and the milkmaid dress. But last September — in an obvious nod to Crawford's fashion moment — her daughter, Kaia Gerber turned heads at the Toronto International Film Festival in a similar white bandage dress.

It was an early sign of the trend's revival, Rooyakkers said, but the spike came after British womenswear brand House of CB launched a collection of bandage dresses to celebrate the company's 15-year anniversary.

"Part of the appeal is that it pushes back against the rise of 'quiet luxury' and more conservative dressing," Rooyakkers said. "A lot of brands that used to cater to the going-out outfits, like PrettyLittleThing, have pivoted to minimalist looks. So people became really excited about the bandage dress because it was in opposition to a mainstream trend that they didn't necessarily like or relate to." 

Toronto fashion stylist Candy Sai said the trend is resonating with a younger generation. "While millennials remember the bandage dress as a nightlife staple, Gen Z is reinterpreting it through a fresh lens — pairing it with streetwear elements, oversized leather jackets or even sneakers to give it a more casual, wearable edge," she said.

And under creative director Michelle Ochs, the Hervé Léger brand is doing its part to bring the style back, releasing a slew of updates on the theme.

Of course, there's the concern that the return of the dress glamorizes toxic ultra-thin beauty standards. "The bandage dress is historically associated with very small body types across the 1990s late 2000s, so its comeback seems to overlap with that shift," Rooyakkers said. "It's not that the dress requires a certain body type, but culturally it's tied to that esthetic."
For Sai, the trend is no surprise, with Y2K fashion still dominating the runways and the streets. And Rooyakkers believes the dress has staying power as it's come back again and again — and is easy to thrift or find as a dupe. "That accessibility gives it the potential to keep circulating for a while," she said.