Nah, the decade of recycling, but why? I think because our culture, the competitve driven, capitalist, faster, hotter, cheaper, newer newer newer tendencies are stealing our dignity. Life is contained in sound bites and instagram frames and empty facebook posts. There are new dynamics cropping up, like Everlane or the rise of Etsy (where too, some people are churning out the same **** as the rest of the system, but not all).
A lot of people are realizing the rat race is not real and they are setting themselves free. But visually the old system is racing on and on and on. With time though, more people will put down their bags on the side of the road because life is thieved from them, we can only stand that for so long.
We are in the process of making new meanings, new worlds. The old ways seem harsh and unforgiving, but that is only because they were trusted and fed without questioning. Constructing new truths is very very difficult and often mistaken for naitivity.
I just hope I will be around to see it
This must be main reason.
Collaborative economy - disruption - Uberization - Online marketplace - Google car - hyperloop - 3D printing - artificial intelligence [...] I think you have all heard these terms at least once.
The reality of the fact is that the 2008 crisis passed by and transformed almost everything. People do not consume the same way as they used to 20 years go.
Let us take the millennials as commonly called.
A great majority are not interested in buying cars something which is a shocker from 50 years ago, they are not interested in television hence the disarray of cable TV in the US for example, they hate advertisements as seen with the increase of Adblock, they are not interested in working in a big enterprises like in the past but see their future in startups or as autoentrepreneurs [...]
It continues. They do not want to wait as seen with the great success of Snapchat which promotes the instantaneous, they are not interested in possessing unlimited quantities of products when they could just rent and return without having to accumulate excess [...] this, by the way also works with very expensive items.
And, last but not least, they prefer marketplaces like Amazon where they can find anything and everything, without having to move, as seen with many studies around the internet. So, what is left for fashion, as Amazon itself is looking to enter the industry?
It has simply just become a victim from all these choices but also a victim of some of the stereotypes that it decided to ride on for years.
Fashion modeling has been the first to benefit from all these transformations especially with the emergence of social media. It is true that, models are not just models anymore (e.g. girls who just walk the runaway anonymously). They are required to be social media entertainers, marketers and if possible, something more than just walking a runway.
Karlie Kloss is probably the main illustration of what I would call the modern model, she is a social media genius, a businesswoman and/or startup builder, a student, a programmer/coder [...] she is a lot of things but just a simple model.
That alone, is what society has become and will be keep becoming.
In fact, more than that, there are people who win more than $5 000 a month by just renting their house with Airbnb, by actively doing car-sharing or by waiting in queues for other people [...]
Well, can this be overlooked? I do not really think so, especially for those who think that fashion is the reflection of society. Analyzing these macroeconomic changes can help shed some light on what is the fashion for tomorrow.
I am less certain that brands like Chanel or Lanvin can keep riding this ultra-exclusivity wave with the upcoming generation, who seem to show even less interest, without getting somehow disturbed more and more by the power of applications.
Coding is easy, does not require a master's degree in mechanics and anybody can just build what would probably be the next fashion Snapchat that would make Vogue antiquated. There is this sense of self-empowerment that can be really disturbing for those of the old economy.
The world we live in right now is so disruptive that nobody is really safe. The fashion brands know that, hoping that the next Uber does not occur in their industry. They are trying to be innovative but it is really really complicated with all those traditions.
The main difficulty relies in the fact of finding the correct strategy to adapt these traditions to the modern world. It is a very hard fought battle but certain brands will have to bend and make themselves boring.
I'm not really sure that people are interested anymore in the stereotypes that have been constructed and entertained in magazines for example since the 60's. Why would they, when on Instagram, Periscope or Snapchat, you get a very large panel of cultures and population while on the other hand, these papers are stuck in a never ending segregation.
But I do not think the fashion world needs to worry because it is not alone. Taxis, hoteliers, lawyers, doctors, banks... are all brought to completely rethink their business model in order to fight against crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, open source, online marketplace [...] AND robots, at the cost of probably making some of these industries who rely on creativity, boring.
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