I hear what you're saying, Phuel.
For me, a memorable example of insensitive 'inspiration' was the canceled Rodarte/MAC collaboration inspired by the mass killing of young women in Mexico. How murders inspire makeup, I'm not quite sure.
Now MAC is famous for its benefit collections ... it would have been a completely different thing if the collection had been raising funds to help end the murders. Instead, it was the perfect example of utterly tone-deaf 'creativity.'
I believe that one of the things we are held responsible for is how we make other people feel. I just don't believe that creativity or creative freedom trumps offense. And I have certainly seen things on the runway I thought were offensive. Based on that, I can more than understand how a designer version of something viewed as sacred by some could offend.
I'm not sure why, with a universe full of creative options, someone would need to create something that enrages people already ground under society's heel.
It's quite true that we have to work hard for our own success, but I think it's also important to make a contribution toward improving the system or society in some way for others. I'm sure that a tipping point is coming, just as it did in South Africa. I hope it comes sooner rather than later.
That Rodarte/MAC mess sounds like it was concocted by racist-chauvanists... Simply no words. And to be frank, there are some really unintelligent people working in this industry with prominent positions...
Someone had posted in the MET Gala thread how beautiful the women and the costumes they wore in the film
The Flowers of War were and how amazing it would be to see these costumes on the red carpet. But it's a film about a group of people fighting to survive and flee the Japanese occupation of Shanghai... My grandmother lived through that occupation and although she died when I was just a baby, my mother would tell me the horrors my grandmother witnessed and experienced of that time, and I see how inappropriate it is for me to see the beauty of the costumes and the women of the film. One of the stories my mother told me was particularly heartbreaking and still disturbs me to this day: My grandmother was from a wealthy family and the last generation of girls of which footbinding was still practiced. But thank God my great grandparents were modern and thought the practice barbaric, so my grandmother was spared from this mutilation. During a time when they fled Shanghai, my grandmother saw girls and women, some of her friends, had to crawl on the ground because their mutilated feet, which was the highest status symbol of wealth, beauty and femininity, suddenly turned them into individuals that were less physically capable then the beggars on the streets. So, that's what I think of when I see the costumes of
The Flowers of War. But, I can understand how someone would only see the beauty of the fashion, and that alright. Maybe that initial attraction to the beauty of the fashion would lead them to learn more about the times.
That's the price for freedom though--or more specifically in this discussion: Creative freedom. There are always those that will abuse it and do more harm, or use it in a thoughtless, purely superficial way (as in the case of Rodarte/MAC) than good. But I would prefer everyone be afforded that freedom.. You know, for every shallow, witless pillaging of a cultural heirloom by Karl and the Catenacci guys, I see something that inspires and thrills my very core by Gaultier or Dries. And just speaking once again within the context of high fashion, because it's a Pandora's Box if we wrangle in the real world, there will always be those that won't quite think it through with their cultural "inspirations". So who decides what's OK and what's not?
I definitely have my preferences when it comes to fav designers abd how they present their designs. Everybody does. But the lesser ones are still relevant-- I mean, they're all relevant really, even the ones I don't like at all. That's what I love about the fashion world, that there's a place for Karl and his cluelessness just as there is a place for a visionary like Rei.
I guess people like you and me will always disagree but I think we still try to understand one another -- that I'm glad for, instead of trying to shout over or ignore each other because we don't agree on issues. I'm glad we're able to have this discussion because I'm learning. It's always going to be a grey matter-- like dior_couture1245 pointed out-- even in high fashion, it's never black and white. And, I will always think wouldn't that be great if those that are so offended by high fashion's cultural appropriation of what they hold so sacred would only see how genuinely inspiring some designers can elevate their inspirations? (But after seeing some of the awfulness-- like the mentioned Rodarte/MAC travesty, I can see why they'd just shut us out...)
) aren't creative at all, they're simply meant to be notorious.
