Are Two-Piece Matching Sets Still Trendy?

Are two-piece matching sets still trendy? I wanted to find one for a casual summer event, but then I wondered if that look had passed its prime. — Yael, Bronx, N.Y.

The coordinated “set,” known more colloquially as the co-ord set, that perfectly matching combination of top and bottom, has been part of the standard wardrobe for decades. What, after all, is a suit but a set with different vowels? It has, however, taken many forms over the years and ebbed and flowed in the public consciousness.

The last time sets really became a thing was in the fall of 2021, after the Miu Miu show during Paris Fashion Week. That’s when Miuccia Prada showed matching khaki or gray pleated micro-miniskirts and cropped jacket tops or cable knits, like a (yes) suit gone Britney Spears rogue.

Before you could say “social media catnip,” the Miu Miu set had gone stratospheric, worn by Nicole Kidman on the cover of Vanity Fair as well as influencers by the truckload, reinforcing Mrs. Prada’s position as the most powerful female designer in fashion.

It was not, however, the first set, and it certainly won’t be the last. The Juicy Couture tracksuit, beloved of Los Angeles denizens and celebrities everywhere in the early aughts, was a set. The fact that the aughts are currently enjoying a style renaissance, along with the whole set concept, is probably not a coincidence. Before that, Cher Horowitz’s yellow plaid suit in “Clueless” was a set.

The playsuit that rose to popularity in the 1960s was a set. In the 1920s, Coco Chanel loved a knit set, a coordinated cardigan and skirt inspired by clothing worn to play tennis and golf. Some historians trace the origins of the set back even further, to the 16th and 17th centuries, when men started wearing matching doublets and hose.

As to why the set concept lasted so long, it’s pretty simple. As the stylist Gabriella Karefa-Johnson told me when I asked, “it makes life easier.”