Hot off the press

Inside fashion's old affair with newspaper print

KARACHI:

In a dazzling display of meta-media brilliance, YouTube sensation Amelia Dimoldenberg has just stopped the press—by wearing it. At a candlelit London venue, the Chicken Shop Date creator celebrated her show's tenth anniversary in a headline-grabbing newspaper print dress, adding another chapter to fashion's most pressing love story.

Dimoldenberg's choice to celebrate her digital media success in analogue print speaks volumes. Her asymmetric wrap dress, with its playful ruffled hemline fluttering above the knee and classic black-and-white newsprint gathered at the waist, perfectly bridges the gap between old media and new. The modern, flirty cut complements her signature style, while the traditional black-and-white palette proves some stories never go out of style.

By opting for this classic black-and-white palette in a social media-driven world, she taps into a nostalgic longing for "real" journalism and a slower media era. And especially at a time when fashion can feel ephemeral, Dimoldenberg's choice to wear newsprint seems like a deliberate act of preservation. It's as if she's reminding her audience that some stories deserve more than a scroll—they deserve to be front-page news.

To her credit, her fashion statement is backed by a long history. Since its earliest days, this striking, monochrome aesthetic has been as much a medium as a message. But what gives the audacious newspaper print its timeless appeal?

Scoop on the runway

The story of newspaper print in fashion begins long before Dimoldenberg. While conventional wisdom credits the legendary French designer Elsa Schiaparelli for this typographic trend, fashion watchdog Diet Prada has famously traced the creative turn to 1886, when Matilda Butters, the wife of an Australian politician, made headlines—quite literally—in a gown made of newsprint. This original sartorial statement, now preserved in historical photographs, gave the world its first taste of newspaper print as wearable art. Fashion historian Elizabeth Wilson once said that "to dress fashionably is both to stand out and to merge with the crowd," and Butters' gown, a visual fusion of current events and personal expression, perfectly illustrates that sentiment.

Though Butters may have pioneered the look, it was Schiaparelli who truly turned the medium into the message in 1935, plastering her own press clippings across haute couture – a meta move that would influence fashion editors for decades to come.

The 1940s and 1950s saw designers experiment with the print in swimwear, where French engineer Louis Réard debuted his scandalous invention in 1946: the bikini. Considered risqué for its time, Réard did not have an easy time finding a model willing to don his piece. Fortunately for him, a long search led him to French dancer Micheline Bernardini and a radical spin on newspaper print. For her photo shoot, Bernardini wore a small two-piece swimsuit printed with news articles to generate a splash of intrigue in 1946. This daring use of newspaper print on beachwear drew attention not just to the bikini but to the daring spirit of the print itself.

Sources close to the style desk would tell you that the enduring appeal of newspaper print lies in its stark visual impact. Black text on a white background creates unmatched graphic drama. Organised chaos meets structured rebellion—the ultimate street-style story that refuses to be filed away.

Among its many resurgences, newspaper print was a notable trend on the '90s runway, and Franco Moschino was one of the many big names to run wild with it. In retrospect, the designer's creations only reiterated his delightfully outrageous maxims like "fashion kills" and "good taste doesn't exist," bringing a punk sensibility to the print.

Carrie's column

No discussion of newspaper print in fashion would be complete without mentioning John Galliano's iconic newspaper print dress for Christian Dior in 2000. Most famously worn by Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, the dress merged Dior's archival news articles with Galliano's bias-cut elegance.

The dress—a sleek, bias-cut slip with a cowl neckline and asymmetric hem that hit just below the knee—was unmistakably a love letter to fashion's self-referential nature. A nod to the influence of the press on trends and brand mythology. The dress's sleek silhouette and meta-textual allure encapsulated the fashion media's role as both chronicler and creator of style narratives—a theme that resonated in the show's own portrayal of Carrie as a New York columnist.

In more recent years, designers have continued to reimagine newspaper print, using it as a bridge between the print and digital worlds. Newspaper print's reappearance in the 2018 New York Fashion Week collections, amid the United States' political climate post-Trump, further solidified its status as a powerful tool of commentary. Designers like Assembly and LRS embraced the print to make political statements, channeling the era's "fake news" anxieties and media distrust into wearable critiques. Calvin Klein's Raf Simons republished Andy Warhol's Tunafish Disaster on his designs, using newsprint to interrogate celebrity culture and the media's role in shaping public consciousness.

Different silhouettes

Viktor & Rolf's 2019 couture collection, Fashion Statements, plastered in memes and social media slogans in newspaper typography, exemplified this trend. "To what extent can you say something with clothing, literally," the duo posed the question. Their designs, full of humour and irony, demonstrated how newsprint could transcend its traditional confines to make way for digital-era commentary.

The result was a collection of 18 oversized tulle gowns adorned with bold slogans printed in classic newspaper typography. The brightly coloured creations each had a voice: a dress in striking solid green proclaimed, "I am my own muse," embracing the defiance and autonomy that newspaper print has historically embodied. A wide, gradient pink and blue gown cheekily claimed, "Less is more," capturing fashion's cyclical debate on excess versus restraint. Another in white with fluorescent green trim urged viewers to "Give a damn" about climate change, using the graphic directness of newsprint to amplify its message.

The collection brilliantly bridged the gap between traditional media and digital communication, proving that even in the days of X (then Twitter), print isn't dead—it's just wearing different silhouettes.

What's behind the sustained appeal of newspaper print? It's more than just the visual allure of high-contrast black and white. For many, wearing newspaper print is a way to critique, or even celebrate, the media's omnipresence. In an age of fast fashion and fleeting trends, newspaper print offers a sense of permanence, grounding its wearers in an aesthetic with real historical weight. And while each iteration brings something new, they all share an undercurrent of social commentary, a wink at fashion's role in shaping—and being shaped by—the news.