We’re in the Era of Shipwreck Chic

There’s this look I can’t get out of my head lately. It defies neat categorization. Drenched. Asymmetrical. Slightly disheveled but in a considered, intentional way. SZA does a version of it in her music video for “Shirt” (the one where she and LaKeith Stanfield cycle through disguises and spray gunfire on everyone they meet). It’s the way she looks in the story’s final act; after he betrays her and she exacts revenge, enlisting a small kitchen crew to—I can only assume—butcher him while she shoves his car into the sea.

Pause here, seven seconds into minute three of this Pulp Fiction-esque drama. Her skin shimmers softly. Her hair sits long and loose around her shoulders. Her dress is a lightweight ribbed knit the color of bone, and all the hems are raw, winding, and tattered. It’s as if she’s just emerged from a violent tide and taken a moment to sun on the shore. A single strand of cowrie shells dangles near her right ear as she moves through port de bras. The trawler she’s standing on glides off into a rainbowed horizon. Call it shipwreck chic.