From faux fur to Olympic form: What happened to fashion in 2017
2017 continued the trends of the past few years: designers seek for ethical production, publications promote a variety of beauty, and brands unite and create capsule collections that cause a stir across the world. If something new happens, it is already within the framework of these unbreakable trends. Our selection of key events of the year will help to track where the modern world of fashion is moving.
Variety of beauty
This year, the diversity of beauty was spoken especially often: more and more people agree that the usual standards regarding age, parameters and skin color are outdated. This is evidenced by a set of participants in the spring shows: women over fifty, Asian and African descent, plus-size models and transgender people. And all this is true for both giant brands and niche brands.
Brands from Gucci and Acne Studios to Monki and Lonely have launched ad campaigns whose main idea is to love yourself for who you are. One of the most discussed was the shooting of Mango "A Story of Uniqueness", in which the sixty-three-year-old university teacher and the author of the fashion blog Lin Slater participated. Even glossy publications take a step forward: this year, the models that left their careers many years ago and transgender people were on the covers. In the Russian industry, too, progress is being made thanks to the efforts of agencies like Lumpen or Oldushka: now women over sixty years old are taking part in filming for domestic brands, including underwear. More and more attention is paid to people with disabilities: for example, this fall, the Bezgraniz Couture brand, which creates comfortable and functional clothes, presented a bow book of special business clothes.
Failure of natural fur
A critical look at clothing production is another bright trend of recent years. This year, for example, several well-known brands at once refused to use natural fur: among them Gucci, Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo. At the same time, the French Fur Federation opened a hotline to support the “victims” of green activists. We have already discussed how ethical and harmful for the ecology is the production of artificial and natural fabrics.
Collaborations of the year
One of the most anticipated collaborations of the year is the Swedish mass market H & M and the British luxury brand Erdem. The latter often creates things in the spirit of the Renaissance fashion: lush, made of dense or, on the contrary, flying materials, with a motley print. The joint collection includes long dresses, flared skirts and translucent blouses in a small flower. Online store H & M could not stand the influx of buyers in the first hours of sale; selected items were then resold on eBay twice as expensive: for example, a dress worth 150 pounds was given away for 400. The same story happened with the collaboration of the Japanese mass market Uniqlo and designer Jonathan Anderson: some key items (for example, inflated backpacks) were sold out in a matter of days, and the trench regularly flashed in the street style chronicles - often it was worn inside out. Most recently announced that the second joint collection is planned in the spring of 2018.
The selection would be incomplete without one of the loudest collaborations of the year, the unprecedented collaboration of Louis Vuitton and Supreme. Needless to say that overseas things bought up in a matter of hours, and in Russia, the clothes went exclusively to the owners of VIP-cards. The success of another interesting collaboration, Burberry and Gosha Rubchinskiy, has yet to be assessed: the collection will go on sale only in January. Let Gosh Rubchinsky remain not understood at home, his clothes are successfully sold in the West, which inevitably makes you wonder why the giants brands work with leading designers.
New form of Olympic athletes
It seems that the fate of Russian athletes in recent months has been followed even by those who care little about sports. Besides the fact that the issue of participation in the upcoming Winter Olympics was resolved, the situation with the uniform attracted a lot of attention. Instead of Bosco di Ciliegi, who wore Russian Olympians for the last fifteen years, the ZaSport brand became a supplier of sportswear.
Social network users were skeptical about the new designer Anastasia Zadorina: three years ago, the daughter of the FSB general released a collection of T-shirts with "patriotic" with the words "Topol is not afraid of sanctions" and "Sanctions? Don't make laugh my Iskander." In the latest ZaSport collection presented ski jackets, turtlenecks with Olympic symbols, long-sleeves, parks with the inscription "Russia" and futuristic costumes with a strip-flag. Some noted that the old-school design resembles the style of Gosha Rubchinsky. The irony is that after the removal of Russian athletes from participation in the Olympics to show the form on the world stage will not work. However, there is still a chance to get to international competitions: if athletes agree to participate under a neutral flag, Zadorina will send a new collection that meets the requirements of the IOC.
Changes in fashion media
Once the taboo topics are discussed more boldly today - so launching a glossy LGBT publication was only a matter of time. In the fall, Condé Nast discovered Them.us: the site talks about the relationship between parents and transgender children, about the perception of homosexuality, about sex and much more. Of course, this is not the first thematic edition, however, thanks to a recognizable brand in the kit, one can hope that the gay community will become even more noticeable.
Shortly before this, another edition of Condé Nast touched on the change. In the British Vogue, for the first time in its hundred-year history, the editor-in-chief appointed a man, the former fashion director of W Magazine, Edward Enninful. He replaced Alexander Shulman, who worked in this post for twenty-five years. However, not only the new post, but the first cover of Enninful caused a wave of discussions. The magazine came out with the headline "Great Britain", and his face was Advoa Aboa - a British model and a feminist whose ancestors come from Ghana. Enninful’s decision was not accidental, since the publication had long been criticized for its lack of diversity: from 2002 to 2014, not a single model of African origin appeared on its covers.
Gloss is naturally experiencing hard times, while the popularity of small and independent fashion publications that look at fashion and beauty much wider is growing. This can not fail to affect even such publishing giants as Condé Nast: several Italian magazines (L'Uomo Vogue, Vogue Bambini, Vogue Sposa and Vogue Gioiello), as well as the printed version of Teen Vogue, closed this year.
Reshuffle
This year, an enormous number of designers made serious career steps: some left the brands altogether, others changed their colleagues in the posts of creative directors. The appointment of Lucy and Luke Meir in Jil Sander was curious - there was confusion in the company in recent years. Lucy and Luke are the dark horses of the industry: their names are not known despite the fact that she worked in Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga and Dior, and he - in Supreme and her own streetwear brand OAMS. They expect a lot from designer Olivier Lapidus, who took over the post of creative director of Lanvin after Bushry Jarrar, - in his own words, Lapidus plans to breathe new life into the brand and make it "French Michael Kors".
Castling took place in both Chloé and Givenchy. The first company appointed Natasha Ramsay-Levy, who was Nicolas Ghesquière’s right-hand man for Balenciaga and Louis Vuitton, for a long time, whose futuristic aesthetics is very different from the Chloe femininity, as creative director. Having left Chloé, Claire White, meanwhile, moved to Givenchy, replacing creative director Ricardo Tisci. If we consider that he has defined the aesthetics of the company over the past twelve years, it will be especially interesting to follow the changes in the brand image.
But the industry was stunned most by the departure of Christopher Bailey and Phoebe Failo, who left the posts of creative directors of Burberry and Céline. And if Bailey announced that he wants to devote time to personal projects, Fileno does not disclose plans yet.
Photo:H & M x Erdem, Mango
