Cavarzere is a sleepy Italian town about twenty-two miles southwest of Venice. Until the 1950s its main business was agriculture, but eventually it became a part of the fashion and textile manufacturing powerhouse that the province of Veneto grew into during the second half of the 20th Century, and that is now also dying or being transformed thanks to the two Frenchmen who are keen on buying up as much of Italian manufacturing as possible.
This year as sales for many luxury fashion brands have dipped in key markets like China and the US, there has been much talk about fashion finally moving from product-driven, sellable but uninspiring fashion that has brought record profits for the fashion industry, but also made it into a lackluster, uninspiring discipline that by all accounts lacked creativity. To add to fashion’s tarnished image, we have seen appointments and subsequent quick exits of buzzy young designers like Rhuigi Villasenor at Bally and Ludovic de Saint Sernin at Ann Demeulemeester that has shown that hype does not equal talent and discipline required to run a major fashion brand. In such a time of reckoning the industry has two choices – to create excitement by taking creative risks or to seek refuge in bland commerciality. Much to the dismay of many fashion observers, it has chosen the latter.
This fashion season has been one of going through way too much effort in terms of just being at the shows. Invitations went missing or showed up at the last minute or even after a show. Editors and buyers are increasingly being relegated to second row in favor of celebrities and influencers, of whom there is an ever-increasing number. Some said that this could be because of the Hollywood strike, but I think we are seeing a permanent shift, in which the only metric that matters is your Instagram following. It looks like many brands just want amplifiers of their image, and don’t care for, or are actually afraid of engaging in a conversation about their output. If it’s the latter, they are not wrong, considering what a parade of mediocrity the fashion month has become. But not in Paris, at least not yet. This season virtually all of the brands that I hold in high regard delivered – it was an uplifting fashion week and a wonderful reminder that fashion can still evoke emotion, create beauty, and make one think. And if it’s the PR agencies that spoil everything with their lack of professionalism, then, well, even though I still absolutely love being at a good show, in 2023 I can do this from the comfort of my home.
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.