I thought of this thread when I was reading a reprint of an essay the late Bill Cunningham wrote for the NY Times in 2002. He said then,
He may have (had) a point there. We are getting the fashion we deserve... or that we tolerate.
To quote a news show I used to listen to, "If you don't like the news, get out and make some of your own!"
Or, to put it another way, "after all, it was you and me".
This is probably the most dead-on and concise way of describing the current fashion climate -- and fashion as a whole -- that I've read. And Bill, may he rest in peace, was 100% correct.
I think we're really in a place where fashion is, by and large, followed by people who don't actually
like fashion very much or understand it very much, if at all. It's something I've found myself wondering about to myself when fashion month comes around and I inevitably keep up with the commentary here on tFS. Inevitably there's a lot of hyperbole thrown around decrying a lot of stuff as the most tacky, offensively ugly, sl*tty, tasteless, irrelevant ever to walk a runway. Granted, fashion and the people who follow it would probably cease to exist without hyperbole, but when I look at the collections which garner that sort of response -- let's take the newest Saint Laurent collection by Anthony Vaccarello as an example -- I'm usually more shocked by the seemingly extreme reactions some people have than I am by any of the apparently offensive clothes that we've all just looked at. Reading commentary on collections like Versace, or Fausto Puglisi, or Marc Jacobs just reaffirms that for me, that people are apparently scandalized by something which is downright tame compared to many of the things that I've seen, and re-seen, and seen yet again.
One of the things which stuck out in the Saint Laurent discussion was the amount of clothes on display which were, for the runway at least, designed to expose the wearer's breast to some degree, the most obvious example being a leather dress on Binx Walton which was folded down on one side to show her glitter-covered nipple. The reactions were basically one of two things: either outrage and disgust at such a flagrantly offensive shock tactic, or (as was the case for me and others who seem to know their fashion history) a sort of mental shrug of "eh, nothing I haven't seen done before in more creative ways". It left me wondering if the people complaining about how crass it was had any idea that bare breasts on a fashion runway aren't new, or shocking, or even particularly vulgar given how hard some people have been fighting against the public stigma around women's nipples. It also left me wondering how those people would've reacted to, say, Tom Ford's own collection for YSL where some model's nipples were painted purple and deliberately exposed in sheer tops or clothes which were deliberately falling off, or Rei Kawakubo's collection that basically amounted to nothing but skirts and hats as every single models' breasts were barely covered in an extremely sheer veil of tulle that did nothing to conceal them, or an old Dior collection by Galliano where the tops of dresses were slashed in half to reveal one breast as an homage to classical images of female goddesses and warriors in Greek and Roman sculpture. Hell, jumping off of the runway and into celebrity world for a minute, you can even look to the time that Lil Kim wore a pastie on one boob to the VMA's and Diana Ross felt it up on live television -- shocking by 1999 standards, and, apparently, shocking by 2016 standards too.
I'm not really saying that any of those instances were or should have been shocking either, but given that they all happened well over a decade ago, and given all of the relatively recent attention paid to such socially progressive ideals as Free The Nipple, should that sort of thing really offend anyone today, and would it if they understood the long history of such a thing in high fashion? I'd actually venture to say that back when those collections I cited were shown (which just made me sound like a wizened elder starting a story with "you know in my day...", oy
) were less disruptive to the followers of fashion than they would be if they were each shown today, and I for one find that both incredibly indicative of the ultimately sheltered, conservative times we're living in where it seems like only lip service is paid to being daring or bucking convention, and insanely disturbing because, let's face it, for all of the progress society has apparently made, for all of the loosening social mores we've apparently embraced, if all it takes to startle even ONE person who follows fashion with any sort of enthusiasm is a short black dress and a glitter covered nipple, then we've clearly backtracked. If Marc Jacobs' rainbow colored faux dreds can enrage people, I can only imagine what sort of reaction something like Gaultier's Hasidic collection or Galliano's Masai couture collection would garner today. If Donatella Versace's current work for Versace or Jeremy Scott's Moschino output can be viewed as the ultimate in tacky, sl*tty, unforgivably ugly fashion, what the hell would people today think of Gianni and Franco's designs, being that they were infinitely more bombastic, ornate and boundary pushing?
If it sounds like I'm devaluing people's opinions -- and I suppose that, to a point, I am -- what I'm really trying to get at in my own long-winded and rambling way is that fashion right now, from runways to magazines to what's sold in stores, points to the fact that we're not living in a time where anything that may ruffle feathers or offend people's often square sensibilities is just not accepted. We're living in a time where people are actually making huge amounts of money by dressing exactly like each other and taking exactly the same types of pictures as each other to post on Instagram. Look at the people who garner thousands of likes and millions of followers -- none of them actually break outside of the box. None of them post anything that a huge swathe of people won't necessarily understand. Even an idiot who can't properly pronounce Givenchy will be able to understand a bomber jacket, ripped jeans, Dior sunglasses and Yeezy sneakers. As much as I can't stand him and think that he got his start by having more money than style, BryanBoy (back in the day) at least did something off-kilter by carrying women's handbags and wearing women's pieces on occasion. The fashion bloggers and influencers of today wouldn't dare. Celebrity stylists and image makers would sooner quit than dress their clients in fashion that could possibly be mocked by Middle America. Even Lady Gaga, who started the new decade by dressing as a deliberately theatrical, unrelentingly high fashion and high concept alien being the likes of which MTV hadn't seen since, arguably, Marilyn Manson, has toned down her look
considerably, and while I'm sure part of it is a creative choice for her, you cannot tell me that part of it isn't because oddness, whimsy, gaudiness and glamour hasn't gone completely out of fashion.
We absolutely have the fashion that we deserve as a society right now, except I'd argue that the people who
really love fashion, who obsessively chronicle its every move, who get a jolt of excitement out of watching clothes they can't afford, wouldn't fit into or even have someplace to wear parade down a runway, have had very little to do with it. Sadly, because of factors that didn't really exist as little as five years ago, I don't know that the pendulum will ever really swing back into the direction I think many of us hope it will, not as long as there are people who find a glittery nipple shocking or candy colored dreadlocks offensive publicly sharing their opinions.
