Does The Wheel of Fashion Spin Too Fast?

[Koibito]

Does the wheel of fashion spin too fast?

A recent article about the relentless fashion calendar has highlighted just how unforgiving the industry is to its designers and producers. Suzy Menkes, fashion editor of the Herald Tribune, noted: The fashion industry is broken in more ways than one: runway shows don’t match retail expectations; designers can’t keep up with demand; and customers can’t buy a coat in winter. So who’s to blame?

For many designers, the calendar is an ongoing treadmill, a machine that is constantly trying to speed up, yet one can run only so fast. If we look at the demise of John Galliano, the death of Alexander McQueen and so many other designers who end up in rehab (Marc Jacobs, for instance), it seems a very high price to pay to deliver fresh collections season after season, year after year.

Catwalk collections are no longer the most profitable
Because the problem is retailers are not content with two collections a year. In fact the most important delivery for store profitability are not the clothes seen on the catwalk, as these are only in shops for about 8 weeks. The most profitable collections are pre-fall and resort.

If we break it down by season, clothes for summer and winter and now interspersed with delivery drops in spring and autumn, along with Resort in November and Pre-Fall in May. If you are an established house, you may have two couture shows, menswear twice a year and perhaps a diffusion line. On top of that you may have promotional shows in Hong Kong, Singapore or Moscow - markets who have the buying power - and you are easily at 10 collections a year. If you show each of these that is practically one show a month. There is nothing glamorous about this calendar, it's relentless fashion that is taking its toll on the industry.

Designers don't have time to stop, reload and recharge before they embark on their next collection and are pushed to perform on a very intense, demanding and unforgiving treadmill.

As Menkes stated, we must accept the pace of fashion today was part of the problem behind the decline of John Galliano et al. The strain on both budgets and designers is enormous. While only the large corporations can really afford to put on the mega ready-to-wear shows, it forces smaller labels and brands to perform on a similar level.

How to make sense of this endless rush for the new when there are no longer any simple seasons? During the summer, when you are shopping for vest tops and maxi dresses, the fall wool coats are hanging on the rails. Come early November, they will have vanished in favor of resort.

So who is to blame? Is it the never-ending public demand for new fashion? Is it the media and fashion magazines? The Internet which make everything available to everyone at all times? Or is it the industry itself? Is the only true luxury today the ability to buy new and exclusive clothes every microsecond?

Traditionally it takes six months for a designer to order fabrics and produce the catwalk collection clothes before they are delivered to stores. Sadly the designer collections are easily outpaced by the fast fashion chains like H&M, Topshop and Zara, Target and J. Crew, who produce their collections in factories in Bangladesh and China where the hourly wage for workers costs the same as buying a button or zipper in Europe, and who can have their versions for sale before the designer looks hit the stores.

So while the wheel of fashion is spinning faster and faster, there seems to be no slowing down for anyone. Stores require fresh product and fashion house's must stay on top of the game. It's inevitable there will be a good deal more crash and burn among designers in the seasons to come.

fashionunited

 

[Luxx]

Yes, but it is in line with the way culture is going in general. Culture has become disposable and instantaneous and fashion as followed suit. I would imagine that for creatives the pace is difficult, not to mention the heightened levels of attention.

The pace is ridiculous and for all but a few it isn't exactly necessary. Consumers are calling out for more options and more pieces, but it let's be real - how many people really need a full set of new clothing every four months? How many labels really need to show full collections and pre-collections. How many people with legitimate buying power really give a damn about fashion week and the manufactured trends that are churned out?

These are rhetorical questions and I'm rambling, but the wheel spins too fast and the end result is detrimental to everyone. Just personally, but for me sometimes fashion no longer feels like artistic expression, it feels like the ultimate experiment in free market capitalism and in a situation like that, there is no room for anything but the relentless progression of the machine. Forget people, forget art, this is all about money.

 

[Creative]

Just personally, but for me sometimes fashion no longer feels like artistic expression, it feels like the ultimate experiment in free market capitalism and in a situation like that, there is no room for anything but the relentless progression of the machine. Forget people, forget art, this is all about money.

This. Fashion has never been as boring as these past three years. Everything feels so passion-free. I don't see 'fashion' in the catwalks anymore. Look at the beginning of NYFW S/S 14, it's everything the same... I can’t stand it!

You can also sense the urge to make money in the crazy changes of Creative Director that happen within the fashion houses. They stay one year and get fired. They aren't able to create an identity or develope a direction for the brand... It's really sad. Besides, CEOs go cheaper and cheaper when hiring new designers; it’s evident they just want 'too' marketable products... and anyone can do that.

And I will always say that aside from Chanel and Dior, the rest of the fashion houses shouldn't even show Resort and Prefall collections.

 

[thercbray]

I believe the wheel is definitely spinning too fast, but as presented earlier I think it is an attempt to satisfy the customer. With the countless media outlets constantly presenting the new "it" product, the consumer feels they must always have something new. Eventually that becomes an expectation.

Regarding the resort and per fall collections mentioned by Creative, I think they were initially conceived to provide the customer living/visiting in exceptional temperatures, etc. After a while those lines became more popular as they were less expensive and not necessarily featured on the runway so they had a longer shelf life. (Sn: Creative, I would love to hear why you think only Chanel and Dior should do prefall/resort collections.)

I would love for luxury and percieved luxury brands to realize they have more power than they think and trying to replicate with the constant flow of new merchandise from an H&M will ultimately make them competitors. The reason why Zara can churn out new merchandise in a couple of weeks is because their products don't have the same life expectancy (due to quality and flow of new merchandise) as one would think a Gucci dress might. Not to mention Zara is more affordable and can be bought in large volumes and/or discarded without a second thought, Gucci not so much.

 

[iluvjeisa]

This is understandable but there is a simple solution.

Instead of having the star designer design F/W, S/S, Resort, Couture, Cruise, Pre-Fall, Pre-Spring etc etc etc - why not just have the star designer design F/W, S/S and Couture (where applicable) and he can have one or two younger designers who he works with, but who are responsible for all the rest and who gets credit for the rest?

Surely, in practice I guess it must work like that? It doesn't really seem like it, though...with all these burn-outs.

Why does there have to be one single auteur?

 

[Bernadette]

Simons marvels at the speed of things. "I'm very scared sometimes that fashion might attack its own magic by the amount of exposure," he says. "Is this normal, the speed of fashion? They say there are too many shows, but the nature of fashion is to have it exposed in that moment of ecstasy.

"In the '90s, when a designer showed something, you had the patience to wait until it was in the stores," he continues. "That had a lot of romance and mystique to it. If you want something and you have to wait for it, you enjoy it, probably, longer. If it's just thrown at you the moment you like it, how much are you going to still desire it?"

Raf Simons - Harper's Bazaar

 

[Koibito]

"In the '90s, when a designer showed something, you had the patience to wait until it was in the stores," he continues. "That had a lot of romance and mystique to it. If you want something and you have to wait for it, you enjoy it, probably, longer. If it's just thrown at you the moment you like it, how much are you going to still desire it?"
Raf Simons - Harper's Bazaar

I completely agree with what he said. I think fashion has been forgettable real fast since people started to wear the clothes that just showed in the fashion weeks a few weeks before. For example, in the Versace spring 2014 show, Selena Gomez was wearing one look in the collection which was supposed to appear off-the-runway 6 months later.

 

[eizhowa]

I, personally, wouldn't mind if there was only 2 shows a year. Christmas wouldn't be as great if it came every month

 

[YoninahAliza]

^Completely agree you eizhowa, even as someone who doesn't celebrate the holiday. For me, one of my problems with the 'wheel of fashion' is that it is incredibly unsustainable. It isn't really ethical to make clothing this quickly, the quality often isn't that great (not to mention the conditions the clothes are made in since high quantity and quick return create such labor violations). Another issue I take with this method is the creativity levels seem quite sub par, if designers only worked on two (maybe three) collections a year, I feel like we'd have more revolutionary designs and ideas being expressed. Designers are expected to churn out so many collections and it just becomes a rat race rather then a process to create art. Often great art takes time, so wouldn't you think great design would be the same?

Maybe it's just me, but I also have a hard time keeping up with the collections and I do not find as much enjoyment in looking at them as I once did. Of course their are some designers I continue to love watching their process but I can't be bothered to look at all the brands because it is to overwhelming now. Since there are so many collections it becomes hard to process ideas, I'm still thinking about a previous collection when a new one is shown. Don't get me wrong, I love fashion, but I don't always love the crazy fast cycle it is currently in.

 

[Moofins]

I agree with the sense of being overwhelmed. Most designers now present four collections a year (SS, Prefall, FW, Resort - not including couture houses) and it is such a sense of inundation that I think a lot of the clothes lose their magic. It's harder to remember the gorgeous pieces from a FW show, for instance, because a month later those will be gone and replaced by resort pieces. It doesn't leave time to savor the designs and it can't be good for designer's creative muses, right? They must always feel stretched thin, creatively.

 

[Bambam]

Of course it does. Churning out more products a desire in the consumer, which means more money for those labels. Fashion has always been fast, and it's always been for the same reason - money.

 

[eizhowa]

A friend pointed out to me that pre-fall means Summer. She wouldn't accept anything else Fashion has apparantly nothing to do with the natural world to do any more

Why can't they do just spring, summer, fall and winter? Why pretend thats not what is going on anyway?

 

[softgrey]

pop will eat itself...

this is the name of a band but i always thought that it was a great line and very apropos in this context...

 

[rip_ian curtis]

I think it does.

I find the real problems are that the creativity level has dropped tremendously, and that's why fashion looks like one big thing at the time more than ever before. There's one or two "leaders" of the pack at the time (for example Phoebe Philos Céline for a prolonged period of time now) and that is what majority of the designers imitate simply because they have no time to sit and think themselves. Also, ecologically thinking it's alarming to think what avalanche of production can one innocent small-scale resort or pre-fall collection create when all the high street chains copy them at the scale of 100 compared to the original collection. If there's four or six show seasons to copy per year we can all imagine what amount of clothes are produced per year, luxury market and high-street combined. And clothing production from scratch is a big, BIG factor in pollution and natural resource consumption.

I think Raf Simons is spot on when he talks about appreciation of clothes today. Internet for the most part is one to blame for this phenomenon, as we can see everything right the second they're shown, and next week we are already bored with it. And it's dizzying how all this has happened in the last 8 years. Come to think of it, living in the 90's I didn't even know when exactly fashion weeks were happening and what was shown there. Maybe French and other fashion capital people saw a couple of pictures in the newspaper next day, but I had to wait for Vogue catwalk issue for several months after the collections had been shown. There was real magic there. I'm not sure if we will ever get back to those days Raf was talking about, internet is here to stay.

 

[runner]

the rhythm of mechanical production, even speedier tempo of circulation,
ceaseless upheaval and false novelty as only a disguise for unanimous exclusion of the new - for perpetual sameness, the stone of the stereotype, a new kind of barbarism,
these are a few of adorno/horkheimer's unfavorite things, a curse of decay.

 

[wild roses]

I think it does.

I find the real problems are that the creativity level has dropped tremendously, and that's why fashion looks like one big thing at the time more than ever before. There's one or two "leaders" of the pack at the time (for example Phoebe Philos Céline for a prolonged period of time now) and that is what majority of the designers imitate simply because they have no time to sit and think themselves. Also, ecologically thinking it's alarming to think what avalanche of production can one innocent small-scale resort or pre-fall collection create when all the high street chains copy them at the scale of 100 compared to the original collection. If there's four or six show seasons to copy per year we can all imagine what amount of clothes are produced per year, luxury market and high-street combined. And clothing production from scratch is a big, BIG factor in pollution and natural resource consumption.

I think Raf Simons is spot on when he talks about appreciation of clothes today. Internet for the most part is one to blame for this phenomenon, as we can see everything right the second they're shown, and next week we are already bored with it. And it's dizzying how all this has happened in the last 8 years. Come to think of it, living in the 90's I didn't even know when exactly fashion weeks were happening and what was shown there. Maybe French and other fashion capital people saw a couple of pictures in the newspaper next day, but I had to wait for Vogue catwalk issue for several months after the collections had been shown. There was real magic there. I'm not sure if we will ever get back to those days Raf was talking about, internet is here to stay.

Except the fashion world could have chosen to use immediate internet consumption differently. Rather than interpret it as 'instant gratification, need to produce more now now now,' they could have instead brought attention to the details, to the WHY we should all want this or that item now, why we should VALUE said products. And want it for months. It was the fashion world that choose instead to think they had produce more, make more, and have more collections. They went for the quantity approach instead of the quality approach. What's ironic is that the net is available to basically everyone, making the quality approach so easy had they chosen to use it.

And, media will always transform things. We went from mailmen who took months to deliver letters on horseback across a continent to telegrams/wireless where things got send in a matter of hours, to the TV, to the internet. Fashion was always going to be more... accessible... as media transformed to enable people to know about the broader world. However, (high) fashion prides itself on being elite and INaccessible and so rather catch up to the times, they instead have chosen to give up cheapness and higher prices for stagnated creativity rather than a more inclusiveness. (I don't feel I have explained myself very well, but hopefully the gist of it makes sense.)

 

[fashion doctor]

This is understandable but there is a simple solution.

Instead of having the star designer design F/W, S/S, Resort, Couture, Cruise, Pre-Fall, Pre-Spring etc etc etc - why not just have the star designer design F/W, S/S and Couture (where applicable) and he can have one or two younger designers who he works with, but who are responsible for all the rest and who gets credit for the rest?

Surely, in practice I guess it must work like that? It doesn't really seem like it, though...with all these burn-outs.

Why does there have to be one single auteur?

A more collective approach does seem sensible, indeed (i.e. having apprentice or junior designers be in charge of secondary collections). But could the choice to use a single auteur be because high fashion aligns with high art, and the logic of art demands a single author/painter/composer?

 

[fashionista-ta]

I haven't read Suzy's article that's mentioned, but I don't understand why I have to accept that the pace of fashion is a root cause of what happened with John Galliano.

Alber Elbaz does pre-fall, etc., and really enjoys presenting those smaller collections in an intimate way. He works all the time, but you don't see him going off the deep end. And there are plenty of other designers with their heads screwed on straight too.

Granted, fashion doesn't set a leisurely pace ... it may not be a sanity-encouraging environment. But there are plenty of examples of designers who are absolutely sane and have balance in their lives (exhibit A: Dries van Noten).

Personally I think what's happened with the designers named has far more to do with what's going on between their ears than what's going on in the fashion world.

 

[cultofcloth]

Fashion is certainly too fast in our hyper-commercial world. I think that social media contributes to this increased desire to consume - people don't want to be documented wearing the same items all the time and there's also a heightened sense of 'keeping up with the Jones's'. Designers at all levels are falling over themselves to satisfy these needs and remain visible and grow profits in an over-saturated market.

I find it extremely problematic. Firstly, this cycle has confused people as to the difference between want and need, and encourages them to spend beyond their means (not just in fashion, I should add). Secondly, as has been mentioned, it diminishes the creativity and 'specialness' of the collections, as new becomes old so fast. Thirdly, general resources are limited and people need to change their thinking about the way they consume in order to ensure that future generations can enjoy a good quality of life.

As an individual, it can be very hard to retain your sense of self when encouraged to buy into new trends every few weeks. I've had to set myself very strict rules so that I'm not tempted to throw away money on items that I don't love.

 

[Benn98]

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I'm glad that fashion is now being brought to its knees to address the frequency issue of collections. I'm one of those fervent extinction event nutters and it seems just like the earth has reset countless times on its own to start on a clean slate, so must the fashion cycle stop in order to dilute creativity, stop hemorrhaging great designers, feed into capitalism, and breed a ridiculous disregard for the environment.
Won't lie, I didn't see this coming, not even when lockdown was announced. Of course it would not have been impossible for brands to end the cycle on their own because See Now Buy Now, pre-fall, resort, special China capsule blah blah blah collections are profitable and the bottom line determines everything despite the suits banging on about how it 'drives commerce and create jobs'.

Excellent letter from Armani, but it will really just remain an excellent thinkpiece until the likes of Dior and Chanel put it into practice.

Giorgio Armani Open Letter:

'I am writing this open letter to WWD, and in particular to Miles Socha and his collaborators Samantha Conti, Alessandra Turra and Luisa Zargani, in relation to the excellent piece “Will Flood of Collections Yield to Slower Fashion?” published yesterday, April 2nd.

Congratulations: The reflection on how absurd the current state of things is, with the overproduction of garments and a criminal nonalignment between the weather and the commercial season, is courageous and necessary. I agree with each and every point of it, in solidarity with the opinions expressed by my colleagues.

For years I have been raising the same questions during press conferences following my shows, often unheard, or considered moralistic. The current emergency, on the other hand, shows that a careful and intelligent slowdown is the only way out, a road that will finally bring value back to our work and that will make final customers perceive its true importance and value.

The decline of the fashion system as we know it began when the luxury segment adopted the operating methods of fast fashion, mimicking the latter’s endless delivery cycle in the hope of selling more, yet forgetting that luxury takes time, to be achieved and to be appreciated. Luxury cannot and must not be fast. It makes no sense for one of my jackets or suits to live in the shop for three weeks before becoming obsolete, replaced by new goods that are not too different.

I don’t work like that, and I find it immoral to do so. I have always believed in an idea of timeless elegance, which is not only a precise aesthetic code, but also an approach to the design and making of garments that suggests a way of buying them: to make them last. For the same reason, I find it absurd that, in the middle of winter, one can only find linen dresses in the shops and alpaca coats in the summer, for the simple reason that the desire to purchase must be satisfied immediately.

Who buys an item to put it in the closet waiting for the right season? None or just a few, I believe. But this, driven by department stores, has become the dominant mind-set, which I think is wrong and needs to change.

This crisis is an opportunity to slow down and realign everything; to define a more meaningful landscape. I have been working with my teams for three weeks so that, after the lockdown, the summer collections will remain in the boutiques at least until the beginning of September, as it is natural. And so we will do from now on.

This crisis is also an opportunity to restore value to authenticity: Enough with fashion as pure communication, enough with cruise shows around the world to present mild ideas and entertain with grandiose shows that today seem a bit inappropriate, and even a tad vulgar — enormous but ultimately meaningless wastes of money. Special events should happen for special occasions, not as a routine.

The moment we are going through is turbulent, but it also offers us the unique opportunity to fix what is wrong, to regain a more human dimension. It’s nice to see that in this sense we are all united.

For retail this will be an important stress test. I want to send my heartfelt encouragement to the American fashion operators for the difficult weeks they will face ahead. United, we will make it. But we have to be united and operate in unison: This is perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from this crisis.