T  o say that fashion is busy these days is an understatement. Not only is this a reference to the showing of Pre-Fall 2017 season that is still happening while the Fall Winter 2017 collections for men (which have shown some womens' looks within these collections) plus the start to the womens' Fall Winter 2017/18 collections (which have featured men's looks within these collections) competes for attention with the Spring Summer 2017 haute couture collections that are now underway, but the reference also applies to the proliferation of prints and textures heaped upon each other in many of the said presentations as well (and even this article's start is busy). The overwhelming changes that we are facing on so many fronts has us in a state of overload.

Political and technological changes compete with generational and cultural changes. So much is happening at once and we have devices to fully inform and critique every aspect of its unwinding, leaving us even more informed than any generation previously.

Much of the clawback for comfort is, of course, the retro story that fashion will not let go because we cannot either. Just as the post 9/11 years rattled us into a holding pattern of the familiar until we could get a grip on what living in the 21st century was going to mean, the changes now have pushed us into oscillation between sentiment and advancement. And as we go through it, the chaos is becoming second nature.

Some collections in the various season categories are reflecting this. Within Prefall 2017's recent outlay, you have Sacai and Stella Jean, while Fall Winter 2017/18's early entrants of Casely-Hayford and Katie Eary take this blended and layered concept into the next season. Meanwhile, gender play in model choice  for Prefall 2017 from Acne Studios and MSGM underscore the confusion as fluidity of our current gender landscape where all are for all and nothing can be categorized and contained. Even the carefully assembled restraint of haute couture shows a little letting loose as the falling away and off-filtered asymmetry creeped into Alberta Ferretti Limited Edition.

We are all feeling the destabilization, unsure of what's next. The industry faces great change as the conventions of the 20th century make way for technology's hold on us in the 21st century. The see-now-buy-now model and the emergence of digital-only retail in the hands of several generations making sense of their place in the new century and millennium that is only beginning to define itself in the face of transformative technologic shaped by the power of AI and big data. All this is reflective of similar forces in various aspects of society thrusting us forward in combat with those resistant to change that aim to push us back.

History has shown that the pendulum swings back and forth as we eventually go forward. The technical genie is out of the bottle but it has yet to conquer the most primal of human behaviour: fight or flight. This powerful force within is all too familiar in fashion as it has long been manipulated to feed its growth. Now we find this to be the force that shapes its creativity, and the battle within finds expression in what's being created today. It will be interesting to see what else will come in the following weeks as the various season collections unveil the latest of observant minds transforming material into functional yet intimate identifiers of our state of mind.