Feature and Op-Ed articles

Op-Ed: What the FarFetch and the Matches Deals Really Mean

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

Last week marked not but two major fashion e-commerce deals, in which FarFetch and Matches found new owners. FarFetch was bought by Coupang, aka the Amazon of South Korea, and Matches was bought by Frasers, a large British mass market retailer. Both deals were an embarrassment for the luxury e-tailers, valuing them at a fraction of what they were worth not so long ago. In essence, they were rescue operations. This prompted a slew of reflections from the fashion commentariat about the death of luxury e-commerce. This is wishful thinking, of course, but the two deals mark a good time to reflect on what’s going on in the retail segment of the fashion industry.

Op-Ed: Why You Feel Alienated from Luxury Fashion (It’s Not Just the Prices)

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

Recently I had dinner with a fashion and culture commentator who is based in Asia. He was describing the scene at a party celebrating the newly opened Prada flagship in Shanghai; how the impeccably tasteful shop was filled with young kids with too much money and too little taste, dancing to bad music in celebration of conspicuous consumption. “That’s who buys this stuff,” he concluded. And with this one phrase he got to the crux of why many of you cannot relate to luxury fashion. Simply put, if you are a person of taste, intelligence, in possession of a certain attenuated sensibility, a degree of elegance and sophistication, today you are not luxury fashion’s target audience.

Op-Ed: It’s Time for Governments to Regulate Fast Fashion

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

Over the past twenty years fast fashion has spurred unbridled consumerism, with disastrous consequences for the environment and human rights. In this time period, companies like Sweden’s H&M and Spain’s Zara have gone from middle-size purveyors of inexpensive clothing to juggernauts that operate thousands of stores across the world. In the last ten years they have been joined by new entrants such as UK’s BooHoo, America’s Fashion Nova, and most notably the Chinese giant Shein, which has undergone explosive growth in the past few years. All efforts to stop them have failed. It is now time for governments to step in and regulate fast fashion the way it has regulated Big Tobacco and the automotive industry.

By pumping out vast amounts of clothing in countries where labor laws are lightly regulated, fast fashion companies have become some of the worst offenders when it comes to sustainability and ethical labor practices. Shein is a particularly egregious example because its operations are centered in China, which allows it to keep its manufacturing practices completely opaque and away from the eyes of Western regulatory agencies.

Meanwhile, on the consumer end, the amount of textile waste generated by the developed world has reached truly staggering amounts. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, in 2018 Americans discarded 17 million tons of textiles, most of which came in the form of trashed garments.

Much hand-wringing has been done to lament this sad state of affairs, and much blame has been put on the companies themselves. Fast fashion firms have enabled the shift in consumer mentality that has turned clothes-shopping into an addictive form of entertainment, making disposability the norm. Some of the blame should also fall on fast fashion consumers who treat shopping as a competitive sport, buying and discarding clothes at a historically unprecedented rate. According to a 2019 report by the UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, “The average consumer buys 60 percent more pieces of clothing than 15 years ago. Each item is only kept for half as long.”

The Universe of Geoffrey B. Small

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

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. 

The Season of Designer Comeback That Wasn’t

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

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.

Rick Owens Spring Summer 2024

Notes on Paris Women’s Fashion Week Spring / Summer 2024

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

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.

Op-Ed: Phoebe Philo Does Not Exist

Culture, Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

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.

Op-Ed: The Next Act of the Gvasalia Brothers Circus

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

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

OP-ED: IS DRESSING BADLY A SIGN OF PRIVILEGE?

Culture, Features/Op-Ed

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.

OP-ED: IS HAUTE COUTURE MODERN?

Culture, Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

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.