Everything is complicated: How fashion tries not to go out of fashion
In the depths of YouTube you can easily find an interview with Coco Chanelwhich she gave to French television in 1969. To take without a shock the maxim that women have no reason to open knotted knees and walk in trousers does not work out of 2017: today Chanel’s intonation, a designer who was once considered an innovator and revolutionary from the fashion world, seems not only arrogant, but and reactionary.
“Luxury of all times - Birkin crocodile skin”, “counterfeits - unequivocal evil”, and “only a very tall, very thin owner of a classically beautiful face” can become a supermodel - such an associative row no longer works today. The triumph of anti-fashion and know-browl culture, the death of conventional luxury, the imminent victory of body-positive, diversity and gender ambivalence - all this happened in just a couple of years, before our eyes and changed the fashionable landscape forever. Fashion follows society: new social norms come into force, new ethics are developed. It's time to see how fashion trends are estimated from a new angle, and why the same fashionable gestures used to cause delight, and now indignation.
Take social responsibility, for example. Today, Gosh Rubchinsky is being obstructed for romanticizing the culture of Gopniks and commercially parasitizing the problems of difficult teenagers. But remember Vivienne Westwood with her punks and Raf Simons with his unformals - at one time the work of these designers was perceived as a revolt against elitism in fashion, and their marginal aesthetics was regarded as an attempt to draw attention to the problems of disadvantaged social groups.
Similar changes have occurred with the perception of Coco Chanel’s “fashionable rules”, which she set out half a century ago to the applause of the public. In today's society, such rhetoric of rejection is considered indecent: even Karl Lagerfeld, well-known for his incontinence, has been obediently silent for the past year and no longer allows himself to say in the spirit of “no one on the catwalk is your women with forms uninteresting” and “Adele is still a little fat, although she beautiful face and divine voice. "
Theresa May was the first female politician to get out of her tightly buttoned business suit and deftly pack her passion for fashion into a wrapper of feminism
In 2017, cultural and ethnic borrowings are quite different. When in 1967, Yves-Saint-Laurent showed his African collection, which was a fashionable medley on traditional African costumes, the designer was applauded: his gesture was interpreted as a manifestation of political correctness and sincere interest in the life of the African population. Five decades later, the accusations of designers in the cultural appropriation and exploitation of another's heritage became commonplace. One recent example is the use of dreadlocks at the Marc Jacobs show of the spring-summer 2017 season. White women with dreadlocks in pop culture are now perceived as an insult to the memory of the fight against segregation, and a trendy show with dreadlocks that lacked a shadow of human rights , - and not at all like spitting in the face of political correctness. Despite many explanatory comments, Marc Jacobs, it seems, could not justify himself.
The difference in the approaches to fashion marketing thirty years ago and at the end of the second decade of the 21st century is very indicative. If, in the 80s, Kelvin Klein’s tactics were considered a revolutionary step, which led to the seemingly immutable postulate that “sells youth”, then today it’s indecently young people in fashionable campaigns to surprise no one, but the appearance of older women in lingerie advertising or swimsuits are still provoking powerful public debate.
The metamorphosis that undergoes the perception of the image of a woman - public figure and her manners to dress is interesting. Using the example of British Prime Minister Theresa May, we have already analyzed in detail the evolution of modern power dressing: Teresa was perhaps the first female politician who managed to get out of her tightly buttoned business suit and deftly pack her passion for fashion and challenging outfits into feminism.
The American journalist Megin Kelly, who interviewed Vladimir Putin, is following in her footsteps: she also claims that in 2017 a woman has the right to look arbitrarily sexy and at the same time be taken as a serious professional. In contrast, it is difficult not to recall Margaret Thatcher, for whom stressed conservative and strict clothing served as an additional touch to the portrait of a powerful politician, or Raisa Gorbachev, because of her love for fashionable toilets, she was repeatedly subjected to widespread censure.
The real Kafka situation is in the fashion world with fakes. Throughout its existence, fashion fiercely fought with fake, and then suddenly, just a couple of years, counterfeit became an important part of the official fashion culture. First, as usual, Vetements felt it all: in 2016, as part of the Fashion Week in Seoul, the brand organized a pop-up boutique with the telling name Official Fake and put up for sale a collection whose design was inspired by South Korean fakes Vetements.
And it started: first, Alessandro Michele invites to work on the autumn-winter collection - 2016/2017 by the graffiti artist GucciGhost, who became famous for painting the streets with the classic Gucci logos, and then, at all in the 2017 cruise collection, he produced copies of Gucci fake T-shirts from 90's.
The paradox in the spirit of the new time lies in the fact that authentic fakes, let's call them so, have acquired the status of a new luxury.
Then Louis Vuitton with Supreme created a joint collection, which was initiated by a fake line of skateboards and T-shirts with the LV logo: in 2000, Supreme released it without any coordination with the French. One of the most discouraging scandals on this ground happened quite recently, and again with Gucci. In the latest resort collection, Michele presented a model, the design of which was almost exactly borrowed from Dapper Dan, the famous Harlem tailor of the 90s, who used the company symbolism of big brands — from Gucci to Louis Vuitton — to make their products without hesitation. It sounds absurd, but just Michele had to apologize for this double plagiarism for a long time.
The paradox in the spirit of the new time lies in the fact that these authentic fakes, let's call them that, have acquired the status of a new luxury: the very updated Gucci T-shirts from the 90s became a deficit right after the sale, but the prices for items from the collection Louis Vuitton x Supreme surpasses the wildest assumptions. The current fashion agenda does not allow any definitive conclusions to be made on this subject, and all that remains is to open the mouth of astonishment to observe how this fake bacchanalia will end and who will put an end to the endless stream of quasi-counterfeit.
In the finale of this text, I would like to say that all the judgments and observations of the author are inconclusive: new fashionable syllogisms are not carved in stone, and the relationship of fashion and new social order is most accurately determined by the exhaustive Facebook status "Everything is difficult." To be continued.
Photo: Ports, vetements
