If you can stand out by blending in, where does that leave fashion?

As the world has been warming to normcore — the inelegant, anti-style fashion trend that came into its own in 2014 —India also got its own version, Aamcore, characterised by the mousy muffler and untucked-in half-sleeved shirt. While there is a kernel of authenticity at the heart of Aamcore and its middle-aged male aficionados, its status as the vanguard of trendy ‘commonism’ may well be pipped by an emergent Cupertino version dubbed Applecore. The coolness-from-sameness movement is bearing fruit aplenty in Silicon Valley, so the stand-out-by-blending-in principle was much in evidence during this week’s launch of the newest iPhone, iPad and iPencil. The Apple biggies’ rolled-up long sleeves of shirts left untucked into plain flat-fronted jeans bespoke the wearers’ belief that they no longer need to dress to impress. It also silently screamed that the brand has emerged from Steve Jobs’ turtle-necked sartorial penumbra as well as his broader design mantra.

A slew of collaborations between Silicon Valley and fashion brands — including the Hermes tie-up for Apple Watch —have been paradoxically coinciding with this elevation of anti-style geek chic, turning yesterday’s sartorial outcasts into the newest fashionistas and trend-setters. Jobs may well have called this equilibrium the New Balance.