Style arbiters, including Vogue magazine, have taken to calling it “war-core.”

“Fashion ideates what’s going on around it,” said Francesca Granata, an assistant professor of fashion studies at the Parsons School of Design in New York. And these days, she said, it is “making sense of societal anxieties or fears.”

Cultural manifestations of our collective anxiety are everywhere, said Roseanne Morrison, the fashion director at the Doneger Group, a retail and forecasting consultancy firm in New York. She points to shows including “Black Mirror” and “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the video game Fortnite and the constant drumbeat of news about climate change, political unrest and economic troubles.

“People like to mentally prepare for the end of the world,” Ms. Morrison said. “This blurring between reality and fantasy, we’re seeing it in books, we’re seeing it in movies, it’s affecting the psyche.”

In other words, it’s the end of the world as we know it — dress accordingly.

Younger designers have pushed the doomsday references further. Matthew Williams of Alyx, a brand based in Ferrara, Italy, created a tactical vest festooned with cinch straps, Velcro pockets and other details borrowed from military vests.