Discussion: Is Haute Couture Modern?

[Nimsay]

stylezeitgeist ? I mean they dont even know the difference between Modern and Contemporary. HC is Modern bc Modern refers to the 1950s when HC was in a golden age. So Dior’s New Look is basically the beginning of Modern. what SZ means is Contemporary meaning “now” - a period without a name because we are living in it.

Such a pet peeve. Modern was 1950!

 

[bc collector]

Just to make things clear:

Modern
existing in the present or a recent time, or using or based on recently developed ideas, methods, or styles:
modern life
modern architecture/art

Source: Cambridge Dictionary

I think Rabkin has a point. HC might still be alive and kicking, with the hordes of new riches wanting to prove their value on the global scene, but HC per se is a cultural relic, the last vestige of a world that no longer exist, a world, to be clear, that would rather have gone to the gallows rather than being caught on IG.
The great Cristobal said it all when he decided to quit.
For sure, there will always be wealthy people wanting something exclusive (the dirty word) and extra, there will always be a market, however small, of millionaires for whom a €40.000 suit is peanuts, but that is totally beside the point.

HC used to be were new ideas were forged for the rest of the industry to feed on, the experimental lab for fashion at large to get its ideas from. I can't even remember when that stopped to be the case (a rough guess: late '70's/early 80's, when Armani first and the Japanese later showed you can do avant-garde with ready-to-wear).

Again, I don't question the legitimacy of the practice of HC, the preciousness of the craftsmen who keep working on it, it's just that the existence of a dedicated fashion week has less and less meaning and, judging from the output, very little to distinguish itself, apart from the price tags, from regular RTW weeks (last case in point: Thom Browne).

And also talking of modern: my beef is the kind of taste pattern that HC keeps perpetuating. Defining it as traditional does not even begin to describe it. Sequins, ruffles, flower embroideries, more ruffles, more sequins, mermaid gowns...I guess this is what clients want but that says it all about how staid their aesthetic ideals are. Theirs or the husbands' (who write the checks to pay for those dresses).
The only ones who tried to shift ahead the needle of HC were Claude Montana at Lanvin and Raf Simons at Dior, and we all know how miserably they failed.

 

[MulletProof]

And also talking of modern: my beef is the kind of taste pattern that HC keeps perpetuating. Defining it as traditional does not even begin to describe it. Sequins, ruffles, flower embroideries, more ruffles, more sequins, mermaid gowns...I guess this is what clients want but that says it all about how staid their aesthetic ideals are. Theirs or the husbands' (who write the checks to pay for those dresses).

I think any conversation on whether something is modern or not might be a bit limited if the mindset is not particularly modern. If I'm understanding this small paragraph correctly, you could be Yan Du, Françoise Girard, but somehow haute couture is still for women incapable of affording it and potentially incapable of any aesthetic ideal so their rich husbands may or may not be the actual decision-makers that keep HC awfully conservative..?

Approaching the border of whataboutism but I'm going to insist this is CCP. No less justifiable, not less modern, not less reckless, certainly not less tone-deaf, or more accessible, but one garners respect and the other mockery. Why?

The deeper we get into globalization, the more watered-down any input is going to be, that's the whole premise of neoliberalism, to tone down identity in any positive or negative manifestation. It's not really possible to try to concentrate ideas and creative expression under one event, let alone one city, people travel now more than ever, the allure of exposure dethroned the allure of secrecy, and everything has also been consolidated into the equivalent of Pepsi and Coca-Cola in fashion, you're either working for Pepsi or working for Coca-Cola, so how could the bar be as high as when creativity and not ruthless marketing was the way to wow consumers and outdo each other each season?. Paris was also that place where only a selected few could visit, afford the newest of the new and go back home and stun everyone. It isn't that case anymore at all, so the demand for new isn't exactly on the client's mind. Opulence and luxury are and these are subjective terms.. so if we're in a time where people only respond to logos, people are only going to respond to the HC equivalent of a logo, some ruffle s*it in gaudy materials and loud colors. It's a representation of where we are in society (economically, culturally, politically).

 

[runner]

comprehensible. clear in traditional technical value. but mediocre in creativity. artistically stale.
these make hc sound like today's Great German Art Exhibition.
in that case, hc must not be modern. modern = degenerate.
but it's not just about hc. many of what are praised by this climate are usually like that.
things that are really new, or unclear, unfamiliar, uncanny, that is, incomprehensible tend to be unpopular and getting excluded, then repressed by an amalgam of capital and popular reasonings.
things favored or demanded could be just the renewed sameness that conceals the endless repetition of the sameness.

time-consuming manual labor is persuasive in considerable payment.
but if it influences the degree of being impressed, that might be a kind of illusion thrust upon us.
little kids will not be just because there was a lot of effort and skill put into.

 

[runner]

Nimsay you remind me of the days of stylezeitgeist when it was spouting out as an unapproved spin-off of tFS.
(welcome)




if it doesn't die, that's because it is dead already.
just that fashion can thrive, dead or alive.
but I want it to be what dies.
"only a flower that falls is a complete flower"
some may say it can exist. (even though it is forced to exist, being managed, protected, preserved, embalmed by mammonistic necromancers.)
but hautecouture or pretaporter, "whatever is exempt from the funereal is necessarily vulgar." (cioran)
"luxury is the opposite of vulgarity" (chanel)

anyway, it's good even if you wrote because you wanted to say something rather than because you had something to say.
but your world is shaped by what you talk about.
thesoloist showed a beautiful collection this spring. there's nothing in particular that I'd like to wear myself. and it's far from my taste. but undeniably it's the collection of the season. wasn't devoting all your energy and knowledge to describing how it could possibly be the best your work to do, as stylezeitgeist ?