What Happened To Fashion Being Controversial?

[fenty]

I had this thought in my head for a while but I am noticing as time goes on, fashion is not pushing the boundaries as it use too. Now that we are in the era of "cancel-culture" and people getting virtually beheaded by online critics for the littlest of things, there goes the question of "Are people playing it safe when it comes to fashion?" What personally made me fall in love with the industry and the creative aspects of it was that the designers, photographers etc etc weren't afraid of showing what they put their blood sweat & tears in now they have to hold themselves back due to criticism and whether its considered "Politically Correct" or what not. Im intrigued about what y'all have to say

 

[Salvatore]

Yes, everyone is so afraid of being cancelled as well as pleasing everyone that the result is a watered-down vision from milquetoast designers. Even the designers that think they are being daring and progressive and pushing fashion forward are not doing anything near that. It’s just the time that we are in that everyone wants to be liked by everyone which has been driven by social media.

 

[fenty]

Yes!! its all being watered down and social media is definitely to blame but even during the early stages of the "Social Media Age" covers, editorials, designs were still being produced in the original vision so I feel like something shifted recently I can't really put my finger on what it is

 

[blueorchid]

I think this applies to lots of artistic/design subfields these days. I really can't even fathom *what* a designers could do these days that would be TRULY controversial and subversive. In terms of the actual fashion itself, so not a runway circus, etc.

 

[KoV]

I'm not sure it's been watered down, to me it feels more like media/internet/society has progressed (devolved? depends on your perspective I suppose) to the extent that things which were once considered controversial (tan lines, increasing amounts of skin showing, gender-fluid/androgyny) are now so common place. It's just harder stir up controversy these days without doing something truly vile because what's left? What subject or controversy has been left untouched by a designer or a photographer in a magazine? Especially because the audience for fashion now is pretty much everyone, not just a select few clientele. In a prudish world it doesn't take a whole lot of creative genius to think of something to shock or cause controversy - though in my opinion it's not really a worthwhile end goal in and of itself. Nowadays, with no subject actually off limits and with very possible extreme having a platform, I'd prefer designers focused on quality, beauty, and sustainability and less on needlessly looking for ways to push the envelope to cause a scene.

 

[Cocteau Stone]

People's understanding of what is controversial has shifted. Many things are no longer off limits (like what @KINGofVERSAILLES mentioned) but what is now viewed as not on trend or outdated, like the photography of Terry Richardson or Deborah Turbeville for example, would in a way be the new controversial for now. To be controversial in this day and age is to deny or completely amplify the preferences of now and to just go for it without concerns. I think people forget that within areas like fashion, art and design it is bit cyclical so nothing is ultimately new, it just becomes a different proposition.

It also comes down to being genuine with the work. McQueen's 'Highland r*pe' or the arrival of the Japanese designers to Paris were so genuine and honest explorations , and very well made based on their skills at the time, that point of view really fueled that fire at their respective times. People are now too concerned to make controversy a "moment" if they're ever looking for it which only riles up social media for a couple of days then dies in the ***. I mean, there are still heaps of people that think the works of Juergen Teller is still subversive no matter how repetitious and expected he has gotten.

Slightly off topic, but this made me think of the latest Linda Vogue cover and her video. No mention of that Makeover Madness Italia editorial in the video BUT could you imagine the furor if they did a part 2 of it for the issue... It would have been rather grotesquely fitting.

 

[Drusilla_]

I mean, we're in the middle of ongoing fallout from the Balenciaga "let's pose kids with child abuse court case documents" adverts.... I don't support empty provocateurism or cancel culture but I do think designers have to have the conviction to stand by their work if they intend to provoke. Lee McQueen would never have blamed his production team or anyone else even after all the heat he took for the name of the 'Highland r*pe' collection, Demna made it worse by claiming to have no knowledge of what was going on and blaming the production company initially.

 

[fenty]

This thread definitely aged terribly lmfao

 

[Drusilla_]

^true but who could have predicted Balenciaga putting their foot in their mouths like that?

But your original point remains true, Demna/Balenciaga half *ssing and not taking responsibility at first made it even worse. I'm all for controversial as part of genuine questioning/commentary, but invoking child abuse/sexualising children as a way to sell things is always, and I mean always, very poorly received. I mean, people were furious even over that Vogue Paris ed from 2010 with the 10 year old model all made up like a 30 year old (it was one of Carine's last issues), similarly over then 12-13 year old Dakota Fanning in a Marc Jacobs Daisy ad all the way back in 2007.

Things like the infamous 2003 ad campaign with the Gucci G shaped pubic hair, now that I have no problem with - it was indeed controversial but also a clever nod to how extreme branding was back then, and Carmen was an adult woman. This is not that.

 

[GivenchyHomme]

It's because the brands no longer rely solely on bags and accessories for a majority of their sales. The fashion shows of years past were more of a marketing tool rather than a showcase of sellable products. The rise of fast fashion, social media, and e-commerce opened up the world of fashion to a new and diverse customer that can afford not just the bag, but also the clothes. Why just sell one product when you can sell everything? The time, money, and resources required to present and modify an avant-garde collection is no longer feasible when you can sell shop ready clothes without any modifications. Designers like Phoebe Philo at Celine and Alessandro Michele at Gucci were able to strike an ideal balance between art and commerce in a way that was appropriate for the times. Obviously a designer will never again be able to present a Galliano-esque extravaganza without getting fired, but if they could find a balance, then perhaps they could keep the dream alive.

 

[gallianostan]

Obviously a designer will never again be able to present a Galliano-esque extravaganza without getting fired, but if they could find a balance, then perhaps they could keep the dream alive.

i'm not so sure this is true, though. the suits might not want that kind of flashy showmanship - even if it does drum up publicity - but the public certainly does. that's why 90s/2000s nostalgia exists, or the hotbed of high fashion twitter accounts who haplessly fawn over mediocre talents like iris van herpen, daniel roseberry or guo pei. of course, these are designers who merely attempt - and spectacularly fail - to emulate the creative vision and technical virtuosity that masters like galliano and mcqueen effortlessly had. people are yearning for a return to fashion as spectacle and theatre, it's just that some of us are less easily impressed with the industry's current offerings and substitutes. tempering this return to form with commerce (sellable merchandise), as you say, would both please the suits and capture the zeitgeist. i suppose my main contention here is that galliano did precisely that and continually turned profits at dior. we need only look to the saddle bag and the brilliant marketing behind dior parfums. yes, his final years at dior were certainly a dud creatively but his fall from grace was the result of personal, not professional, circumstances.

 

[stylebyblu]

I'm not sure it's been watered down, to me it feels more like media/internet/society has progressed (devolved? depends on your perspective I suppose) to the extent that things which were once considered controversial (tan lines, increasing amounts of skin showing, gender-fluid/androgyny) are now so common place. It's just harder stir up controversy these days without doing something truly vile because what's left? What subject or controversy has been left untouched by a designer or a photographer in a magazine? Especially because the audience for fashion now is pretty much everyone, not just a select few clientele. In a prudish world it doesn't take a whole lot of creative genius to think of something to shock or cause controversy - though in my opinion it's not really a worthwhile end goal in and of itself. Nowadays, with no subject actually off limits and with very possible extreme having a platform, I'd prefer designers focused on quality, beauty, and sustainability and less on needlessly looking for ways to push the envelope to cause a scene.

I agree, for example the Chanel spring 1996 bikini was very controversial when it was first introduced and worn and then when Jennifer wore it, not much noise was made about it due to the fact that it’s normalized to see that amount of skin.

 

[Phuel]

It’s as simple as past fashion eras were created by and for fashion people and for those that enjoy fashion. Not so much this era, where people that don’t even like fashion, let alone contribute to it, have such massive influence on what is allowed in fashion. This is an extremely reserved, conservative, creatively-oppressive, and ignorant consumer-oriented era we're in, where so-called progressive agendas will cancel anyone/anything that doesn’t confirm to very strict social narratives, anytime in a hot minute, without even thinking anything through— or even simply thinking. And SM is all-powerful, emotion-driven, knee-jerk reaction that’s faster than light. No corporation wants to be at the receiving end of such instant wrath of the pitchfork-and-torches of the masses. And the fashion industry deserves it, as far as I’m concerned: When they’re greedily kowtowing to the common sheep, all in the name of optimizing brand profile and maximizing profit, then they deserve the wrath of the not-too-bright commoners.

Growing up in the midst of the golden age of fashion that was the 90s— where provocation and controversy were simply standard fares to define creative vision: fashion stories of models giving the Hitler salute wearing Gucci; Meisel’s p*rn audition campaign for CK Jeans; McQueen’s aggressive presentations that infuse politics and sex; and campaigns/fashion stories imageries of sexual liberation presented in a thousand and one ways but always managed to be fresh and exciting. It was all daring to challenge the customers/readers and not treating them as dumb sheep, nor kowtowing to the dumb sheep-- as they are now. Creatives rose to the challenge of always pushing their audience further and further, and we were so much better for it.

Very different times now, where the so-called liberals are the pearl-clutches/finger-wringers/whistle-blowers all competing to cancel any fashion that strays the slightest out of line from their very narrow, conservative acceptance and narrative threshold. And hilariously enough, these types aren’t even the customers nor fans of fashion LOL …You reap what you sow and all that— just ask Demna.

 

[runner]

the history of not only art but also fashion and other culture industries is a sequence of successful transgressions.
"foul" becomes "fair".
if you try to foster the history, your work has to be unacceptable to fashion tourists.
if everyone likes your work, it's great in its own way. but it's a failure when your aim is to create something new or present suggestions and possibilities instead of preformed rightness and conventional beauty.
restraint and sobriety, the fear of things that seem like what must not last. but the prohibition is there to be transgressed.
as far as this is about fashion.
and the work doesn' have to be an extravaganza. the greater voice voyeuristic spectators have, the more poignantly, feverishly it will glow. hopefully.

 

[Drusilla_]

Thinking about it, it's the result of fashion over the last two decades basically becoming another form of entertainment - something that's been accelerated in the social media era, where people seem to think hitting 'like' on a post entitles you to have the brand take your opinion as seriously as that of a paying customer. Gimmicks - big, eye-catching, bold - play well on these channels, but subtlety doesn't. Schiaparelli was controversial in the 1930s, now in the 2020s her work is reduced to its most obvious element ("weird stuff") and the ig/tiktok crowd just lap it up, but there's zero controversy in it because the window of what is considered unusual or controversial has shifted so much.

 

[runner]

from the p0rnographic imagination- susan sontag, for reference

"to put it very generally: art (and art-making) is a form of consciousness; the materials of art are the variety of forms of consciousness.
.......one of the tasks art has assumed is making forays into and taking up positions on the frontiers of consciousness (often very dangerous to the artists as a person) and reporting back what's there. "

"his principal means of fascinating is to advance one step further in the dialectic of outrage. "

"That discourse one might call the poetry of transgression is also knowledge. He who transgresses not only breaks a rule. He goes somewhere that the others are not; and he knows something the others don’t know.
P0rnography, considered an artistic or art-producing form of the human imagination, is an expression of what William James called "morbid-mindedness." But James was surely right when he gave us as part of the definition of morbid-mindedness that it ranged over "a wider scale of experience" than healthy-mindedness."

"Perhaps most people don’t need ‘a wider scale of experience’. It may be that, without subtle and extensive psychic preparation, any widening of experience and consciousness is destructive for most people. "

 

[runner]

one more

godard - susan sontag, 1968

"it may be true that one has to choose between ethics and aesthetics, but it is no less true that whatver one chooses, one will always find the other at the end of the road. for the very definition of the human condition should be in the mise-en-scene itself." - godard

godard's films havent yet been elevated to the status of classics or masterpieces......
that is, his films arent yet embalmed, immortal, unequivocally (and merely) "beautiful. " they retain their youthful power to offend, to appear "ugly," irresponsible, frivolous, pretentious, empty. film-makers and audiences are still learning from godard's films, still quarreling with them.
meanwhile godard (partly by turning out a new film every few months) manages to keep nimbly ahead of the inexorable thrust of cultural canonization; extending old problems and abandoning or complicating old solutions - offending veteran admirers in numbers almost equal to the new ones he accquires.