For its latest collaboration the storied leather goods maker GUIDI has teamed up with its old friend, StyleZeitgeist magazine. The resulting product is one of long-standing mutual respect and trust in each other’s understanding of a shared esthetic and cultural values.
It seems rare these days that an independent designer launches a perfume. They now tend to come either from niche perfumery houses, corporate brands, or legacy fashion brands that are not owned by beauty conglomerates. Which makes the new Ann Demeulemeester perfume, titled simply “A,” an event in its own right, not to mention the fact that it gives Demeulemeester’s friends another reason to revisit her work.
In his seminal 1981 book Simulacra and Simulation the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard posited that in our postmodern world we no longer live in reality – meaning, we do not process our world directly and immediately, but in hyperreality – a world created by and mediated through a system of signs and symbols. In other words, we live in a simulation – via screens, through social media, soaked in a semiotic system created by the vast leisure industry – entertainment, news, advertising, and so on. The simulacrum of reality makes the direct experience of reality impossible because our brains are so full of received messages that we are only able to process and reference reality through them – like a twenty-four-hour Disneyland (or the Matrix), or like a 1:1 scale map overlaid onto the real world.
We tend to think that the fashion and art symbiosis is a relatively new thing, birthed by the late ‘90s and early ‘00s collaborations between Marc Jacobs and artists like Stephen Sprouse, Takahashi Murakami, and Yayoi Kusama. In fact, the relationship (as well as the tension) between modern fashion and art is as old as modern fashion itself. Its arguable progenitor, Charles Frederick Worth, deemed himself an artist. He compared himself with the painter Eugene Delacroix and put on artistic airs (down to wearing a type of a beret favored by Parisian painters), setting the model for the generations of fashion designers that came after him. From Paul Poiret to Coco Chanel to Elsa Schiaparelli and beyond, designers either cultivated friendships with or collaborated with artists.
When in 2014 Vetements burst onto the scene with their updated take on Margiela, it billed itself as a collective in a nod to the master of self-effacement. Soon enough though, the Gvasalia brothers decided that it was their show after all – Demna became its creative figurehead and Guram its business one. Just a year later, the hype surrounding the brand landed Demna a creative director position at Balenciaga, where he quickly proceeded to ruin the its reputation as a storied couture house by pumping out logoed hoodies, logoed denim jackets, logoed sweaters, logoed sneakers, and even logoed tailoring. Soon enough, what with Demna getting all the spotlight, the two brothers fell out. In 2019 Demna left Vetements, and in 2021 he dropped his last name, without offering a compelling reason for doing so. (Could it be that the brothers’ hatred for each other ran so deep that it extended to Demna’s desire to drop his family name?) He also moved from Zurich to Geneva
Over the decades of watching how people dress in America, this question has preoccupied me. It returned to my mind with renewed intensity over the past several years, as aspirational consumption in this country has kicked into overdrive. This observation comes from various directions: watching kids on the streets of SoHo strut in their logoed gear, looking at my daughter’s boyfriend who spends his hard-earned money on Moncler and Yeezy, reflecting on my own dress habits since I immigrated to America at the age of fifteen. We are all disparate, but we have one thing in common – we have known what it’s like to be poor and we are from ethnic minorities. We have something to prove, namely our worth, to each other and to this country. In other words, we are aspirational.
The haute couture week that just ended in Paris took place amidst the riots caused by police killing an Arab youth. In such a setting, showing ultra-expensive clothes to a bunch of ultra-rich women who descend on Paris twice a year for the haute couture week to throw money around felt a bit like the last ancien regime masked ball before the guillotines are rolled out. Only Celine displayed some sensitivity towards Paris, its people, and its own staff and canceled its show. For the rest, evidently, the show must go on.
Thinking back on this past Paris menswear season, I realize that it held few surprises. This is not a criticism. Lately, I have been thinking that as fashion increasingly becomes driven by celebrity and hype, the only thing left to do is to support those who produce genuinely creative work. This season they unanimously delivered strong collections, work that was strong in expression and full of conviction that they must stick to their guns as the world around them grows increasingly coarse and cynical.
Speaking of which, let’s get the gross spectacle that Louis Vuitton put on to celebrate Pharrell’s coronation as the new creative director of its menswear. To be fair, there were actually few cool looks in there – I, for one, was not mad at the Minecraft print. But most of it was exactly what Louis Vuitton wants, logo-driven drivel, the kind of lowest common denominator stuff squarely aimed at the masses consumed by conspicuous consumption.
The clothes, however, were not the most off-putting part; the cabaret show with which they were presented was. It was a pure power exercise; power over Paris, power over the fashion industry, power over its media, power over contemporary culture. For half a day a private company closed Pont Neuf, a major Parisian public bridge in the city center, so it could put on a celebrity-fashion industrial complex circus, bringing attendees to the show by boats, and essentially keeping them hostage for four hours. Perhaps in Louis Vuitton’s opinion everyone craves to be at a private Jay-Z concert, and considering the number of the blurry I-WAS-THERE! pictures of the rapper – taken in the hope that celebrity pixie dust will rub off – they weren’t entirely wrong. But they weren’t entirely right either. In the next few days I spoke with more than one editor who was quietly angry that Louis Vuitton simply assumed that they had no better place to be. What the brand signaled, I told them, is that they own them, and so the editors are expected to kiss the ring.
“Fashion brands are like toothpaste brands now,” the fashion journalist Lauren Sherman told me in a recent conversation on our podcast. I understood what she meant even before she launched into a car market analogy, that many brands today offer similar products, with the logo being the primary differentiator. What the luxury consumer has to decide today is not what garment to buy, but what brand to buy into, because their wares are increasingly interchangeable.
Over the past fifteen years I have met with many students and fashion enthusiasts who have voiced the same complaint, that they could not find a comprehensive framework for learning about the history of contemporary fashion, that the world of fashion has become too self-referential and lacking in historical knowledge. Concurrently, with the rise of social media I have witnessed a large number of self-styled experts who spread an incredible amount of misinformation. Enter the StyleZeitgeist Academy and its first course – History of Contemporary Fashion. In this course I draw on both my knowledge of fashion history that stems from deep research and years of reporting, and my teaching experience at Parsons the New School for Design. Everyone is welcome to take it, from fashion enthusiasts who want to strengthen their knowledge to students who are entering Bachelors and Masters program related to fashion and want to prepare themselves.