Copy-paste, stir, don't mix
Looks like that's the recipe of a successful fashion collection. And as far as fashion is only a projection of cultural and social trends, the formula works in every area of modern life creativity.
Do you remember the time when all the fashion reports were about the return of the 60s or 70s, yellow in the trend, big jewellery, minimalism, futurism? Flower patterns out, jeans in? Mini against maxi? Flats for good girls, heels for posh? That was an amazing time to report about style. Everything felt fresh and clear. Though trend meant a massive repetition there was still a fashion police guarding every collection to mark the plagiarism or at least praise the most influential designers.
No one can say when the sense of newness in fashion became the impression left after a show, the styling or the “message” the professionals could learn backstage and spread as a kind of a manifest. The impact of fashion on life right now is nothing. While life on the contrary defines the runaways. Is it the fault of the marketing influence on the creatives, or shareholders don’t let the management risk their raising dividends? The general degradation of fashion thinking, attitude to the profession as to the art? I can’t say. And no one can. No one wants to take risks. Styling as a method to actualise the design as well as declaring fashion design as an art are ways leading to the same result - lowering the level of the creative’s responsibility.
So they don’t need to invent the vision for now or for the future, prove that design costs its money, it’s enough to make garments from quality materials or produce strange clothes. No one asks more. And that state of things exists for quite a long time.
The last generations of young designers know everything about new technologies and the digital world, but nothing about the actual profession - how to cut, sew, juice the ideas from everywhere, deconstruct to reconstruct new and produce collections for fair price. The ideas come from some stock places like social networks or directly from the shows. Exactly like those are stock photography archives. Development takes days, so there’s no time or intention for studying history, observation of classical arts, reading books, watching movies, life diving, nature witnessing.
Everything that previous generations of designers used for their evolution and for search is off the date as a practice. It’s time to train the body not the mind or imagination. Mindfulness that is the trend right now shrank to the practice of meditation or superficial search of the ecologically or socially safe solutions. That demonstrates only the intention to be responsible to the society, but not the deep understanding of the processes. In practice that means - the same design from sustainable materials that cost more.
You can ask: “What is there to understand - creativity is a process of mind, you can’t control it?” Yes. But how many thoughts do we produce that can easily be forgotten because they are useless, ordinary, change nothing? Creation without the purpose is just a noise. Even artists whose process doesn’t lead to ergonomical or practical results have a purpose to express themselves and be understood or at least seen by the public. They are looking for new methods, new ways to interact with our sights, values and emotions.
Designers feel free of such a mission today, though they took artistic expression as their universal key to explain their shows and add value to the basic commercial output or to unwearable statuesque constractions. Reduce their responsibilities to the client’s and stylists' talents to dress up, adapt everything to their taste.
And that leads us as consumers to two options - to buy and style as we want, paying attention only to the quality of the thing, not to the brand’s identity, because the latter doesn’t exist anymore. And to stop buying at all. The old stuff is doing perfectly fine, no need to participate in overproduction and overconsumption.
Very few things are worth our attention as an investment into fashionistas' wardrobes, because lately most of the brands are about their creatives that we should see as stars. They are not actors or directors, not musicians or politicians, but they are discussed in the fashion media like they are performers. I think even football players attract less criticism and expectations when they play. Only that keeps the interest in the particular names. So you go to shop for something associated with those, not something you really need or enjoy. You find comfort in relation to the fashion star.
Media creates idols. It’s enough to make a good show once and then just repeat the same tricks over and over, design doesn’t matter. New colours, different models, resize-upscale, exaggerate. It’s not shameful to keep it as a recognisable citation, like it’s a postmodernist act of creation. Though it’s not an art. It’s a wearable design - you see Gualtier, Chanel, Balenciaga, Saint-Laurent, McQueen, but it goes under Schiaparelly name. Or Gualtier, Balenciaga by Ghesquière, Prada with McQueen bottom - under the name of Balmain. But we don’t expect much from the letter. It’s ok.
Balmain FW 2022/2023
And Daniel Roseberry disagrees with me. He built the new Schiaparelli as an endless art installation. The original designs are called the inspiration sources or puzzles of cultural and time codes or whatever. But where’s the border between copying and reinvention or the art of combination and recombination?
Or you can take something from the industrial design and use it as an addition to the usual cuts lines - the collaboration between Dior and D-Air Lab for fw 2022/2023 show.
Dior FW 2022/2023
Stir the garments in the school girly way, and pretend it’s your vision of the cultural underground, while it’s just a copy-past ancient design and expropriation teenager’s rebel spirit of 90s/2010s or student’s dressing from the 2000s.
Above: MiuMiu and Louis Vuitton FW 2022/2023
The more you mix the trashier the looks. Maybe it’s for better because few people want to actually look into the details to see the novelties.
Gucci with Adidas FW 2022/2023
Many satiric social accounts show how such looks can be made from anything you can find in the utility room. It just proves that contemporary fashion as it’s sold to us by fashion houses right now isn’t just too far gone, it’s also about such low concepts that it doesn't inspire dreams anymore, only jokes or annoyance. The same goes to the celebrities and influencers that try to promote their sense of senseless beauty.
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