First, fashion was dead.
Then fashion was free. All within the span of six months. I know fashion is
fast-moving, but can it go from stone-cold deceased to––not only
resuscitated––but making a soaring bid for liberty in the time it took for
me to get my winter sweaters out of storage? Death is quite the bondage.
What happened? Was it kissed by a fairy-tale prince?
In the spring, Li Edelkoort, the world-renowned trend forecaster and
recent addition to Parsons’ fashion department faculty, proclaimed the
death of fashion in what became known as her Anti_Fashion
Manifesto and her doom-filled words rang throughout an industry
already existing in an albeit blinkered state of panic. Fashion journalists
analyzed her statements tirelessly. Weaker voices had been speaking of the
fashion system’s self-destruction for many months but Edelkoort’s
automatically carried more weight. And then, of course, the word “dead”
does have that tendency to stop people in their tracks.
Yet the views expressed at her follow-up mid-September seminar, The
Emancipation of Everything, with an entrance fee of 350 euro,
demonstrated an about-face. It seems, instead of being dead, fashion is
poised to embrace the color brown, promote granny-panties and demonstrate a
return of the pussy-bow blouse. (The style’s been around all year but
Edelkoort may have missed it while searching for her overarching decree
that would validate that costly entrance fee.)
Edelkoort discussed other trends which appeared to contain a little more
substance. She cited the “feminization of men” as something that will
create much change. For me, though, teaching at various New York City
fashion schools, this change will be barely felt as it’s a quotidian
occurrence to see boys in dresses and makeup. “Hey, that’s New York,” one
might counter. But recognition of this trend has spread beyond cosmopolitan
fashion capitals. Former Central St Martins student Craig Green was
recently awarded the Dress of the Year honor by the Fashion Museum of Bath,
England, and this was notable because it was the first menswear design to
win the title in fifty years. The museum’s website describes the winning
entry as one that “encapsulates the prevailing mood of fashion, represents
the past year and captures the zeitgeist or imagination.”
Green’s description of the appeal of his work is also telling of the
attitude shift to gender-specific dressing that’s been growing apace for a
while: “There has been a female customer for the collections since the
very beginning. To see anybody wearing pieces from the collections is
something exciting for me––male or female. I am not sure why some of the
pieces seem to attract a womenswear customer. [It] feels like some of the
garments’ shapes seem to have worked well on both male and female body
shapes. It feels like a sign of the times, the direction that everything is
moving towards. The rules and restrictions as to what is gender specific
have become increasingly blurred. It feels like something that should be
celebrated.”
Even London’s century-old department store Selfridges got on board back
in March when it launched its Agender concept based on its conviction that
customers no longer want to subscribe to a gender-specific method of
shopping, redefining its store layout to remove separate men’s and women’s
departments. And, interestingly, I purchased my first garment from a
student’s graduate collection this year and it was a menswear dress.
Designed by Lavan Chxeidze, here it is worn on the runway by Ritchie
Fabian, although it looks a little different on me.
Edelkoort also revealed her thoughts on an upcoming revolt that will put
the brakes on the lamentably accelerated fashion calendar, and signal a
return to artisanal craftsmanship, less consumption, likening what will
happen to the slow-cooking trend in food. “Creative directors and designers
are being squeezed out like lemons in the fashion system,” she says, citing
the experiences of Raf Simons at Dior, Alber Elbaz at Lanvin, and John
Galliano at Dior, who, she reminds us, had assistants light his cigarettes
for him because he was so busy. “Designers want another move in the fashion
system, but marketing does not want that––they are stuck in the last
century chasing the next ‘it’ item…The time for derailing in the industry
is coming.”
As a guest reviewer of the Parsons thesis students’ collections, I
unwittingly gained knowledge of this mutiny. It was already afoot back in
June when I interviewed several of the graduating class for
FashionUnited and asked their views on the future of fashion.
Elizabeth Bastian revealed, “Over the past two years I have been bouncing
the idea off my friends of starting a transdisciplinary design co-op. If
you think about it, fashion is one of the few industries in the world that
really has not advanced in the past 20 years or so. I think we need to stop
being obsessed with the individual in design; we need to collaborate with
other designers, not necessarily in fashion, to truly come up with unique
ideas by addressing problems differently…and not follow the fashion
system, but try and create more sustainable and innovative products.”
In a November post on the Central St Martins’ student blog 1
Granary entitled RUMOURED: CSM STUDENTS DON’T WANT TO WORK FOR BIG
LUXURY HOUSES ANYMORE (caps their own), the writers attempted an
on-the-ground investigation. Great idea. Why rely on a forecaster in an
ivory tower to impart this knowledge for an elevated sum when we can just
ask the new generation, the ones who will be most affected? Womenswear
designer Andrew Totah said, “If you look at when I started school, you
would never hear such talk between students. It is much more open. This
seems to be a general sensation going through the industry; it is a ripple
effect going directly to the students.” Print student Carmen Chan, fresh
from her year out at one of the houses under the current spotlight, Lanvin,
says it’s a bit of a “generalization” but recognizes, “why people do not
want to go into high-fashion brands is because the pace is very fast. If
you want a chill life, it’s not the place to be.”
Edelkoort tours the world––London, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Zurich, Tokyo;
in January she will deliver the same address to a select gathering at MOCA
in Los Angeles. For her, fashion is decidedly undead; it’s just suffering
from a touch of jet lag. It fills auditoriums and is translatable into
multiple languages (the seminar’s stateside price is 350 dollars).
Maybe it was the calculated click-bait nature of the title of her
previous pronouncement that stuck in my craw. She never gave me cause to
question her before. Maybe in this disturbing Trump era, it’s the idea that
someone positions themselves to proclaim anything to the seething masses
that troubles me. Maybe it’s the use of the rather pretentious, somewhat
archaic, word manifesto.
However, it’s not all bad. One prophesy in her The Emancipation of
Everything did resonate with me: “It will be seen as very luxe to be
able to function/live with so little.”
Lesson to live by indeed. So how about this for a trend? In fact, let me
adopt a more authoritative stance and locate my bullhorn so that my words
can be heard all across the industry, reaching both niche and mass, high
and low.
Hear ye, oh hear ye! How about we stop waiting for pronouncements from
professionals whose business interests might naturally conflict with the
good of their message? How about we return to common sense and listen to
our own inner voice? We are already armed with the knowledge. It’s been in
the air for a considerable time. How about we determine if the role of
Trend Forecaster is even relevant to an industry that desperately needs to
return to individualism, in which brands need to examine their raison
d’être, and designers need to lose the flock mentality?
To my highly pricked ear, Li Edelkoort even inadvertently suggests her
own redundancy in these words: “Emancipation is thinking how we can reverse
these fixed notions and roles in society––it is a moment to look at how
society is functioning and changing in silent revolutions.”
But silent revolutions do not require a high priestess. Take a seat, Ms.
Edelkoort, and behold. The revolution is upon us.
By contributing guest editor Jackie Mallon, who is on the teaching
faculty of several NYC fashion programmes and is the author of Silk for the
Feed Dogs, a novel set in the international fashion industry.