21 Topics shaping 21st Century Elegance
When was the last time it was deemed acceptable to open your mouth and pronounce s omeone or s omething “elegant”? This is a matter of vocabulary which begs al l kinds of questions. Who or what has been doing the “deeming”? Society since, what, the end of the Nineties? I do remember the l ast phase in fashion writing when “cool and elegant” could come together, without being laughed at, in sentences I wrote describing the work of Helmut Lang, for example. But then came the post-millennium time. When globalisation and fast-fashion hit – when streetwear and red- carpet and non- stop i nternet real it y- star gossip came to occupy the foreground of our attention – it began to breed a culture which had absolutel y no t i me or pat ience for any such old-sounding concept as “elegance”. As the ubiquity of popul ism has risen, it has scof fed at everything and anything, i n f act, which t akes t i me, pat ience, consideration and a l ittle detachment to achieve. Such things as education, skill, forbearance and empathy are chief among them.
So where is elegance now? In the past 20 years, if we’ve ever allowed ourselves to pause long enough think about where elegance went, it’s been with a sense of nostalgia, tinged with the embarrassment of longing for something so longgone. But what does it mean to admit to missing this quality of persons or things, right now, when the stream of everyday consciousness has been reduced to redfaced, reactive ranting?
It means that the value of elegance – rare, but not extinct – is beginning to be openly discussed again. Avant-garde circles of fashion are often dismissed as f rivolous, si l ly and non-intel lectual, but they are ful l of people who are tuned into the Zeitgeist. (And as anyone with creative i ntel ligence understands, there’s a distinction between zeitgeist and data: feel i ng t he zeitgeist goes faster.) Fashion designers are culture’s f i rst- responders to shi f t s i n society. They give shape to intuition, articulating our longings about how we wish to present ourselves to the world. And as we look around now, across men’s and women’s collections, the come-back of an aspiration to elegance is al l there before our eyes. Suits and tailor ing, the values of haute couture being breathed into ready-to-wear.
Diana Vreeland, fashion’s empress of epithet, said: “Elegance is refusal.” That st i l l stands, I bel ieve. But what does “refusal” mean to us in these times? It could easily be reduced to saying no to a drink, to eating too much. We all relate to that as an admirable, indeed fashionable aspiration today. But being thin and f it does not equate with being an elegant person. It goes far deeper than that. It includes rejecting over- consumption, that’s for sure. And the relevance of that certainly chimes with our desire to stop contributing to the waste we’ve l aid to the environment. But then, it goes further. In the context of today’s uncontrol l able fast-forward real it ies, refusal also has political, philosophical and spiritual dimensions. Refusal can mean a kind of resistance to the ugliness of the current political climate. A longing to discover and to look up to admirable ideas and people. To stand apart, be stil l, and ref lect on bigger and more beautiful things than ourselves.
That’s a hell of a lot to read into a set of fashion col lections, you may think. The r eturn of i magery based on t radition might easily be diagnosed as merely a backlash against the overwhelming trend towards streetwear, hoodies and trainers that has saturated fashion for the past few years. But if fashion had truly been reduced to the f indings of data analytics, t he ex isting demand for streetwear would just rol l on regardless, ad inf initum. The feeling for rethinking tailoring and haute couture is something that goes beyond the novelty of just another trend. It’s more than a mere alternative look for the bored; something new to buy. It refers us back to a re-evaluation of the skil ls that go into making beautiful things. It evokes the concept of considered buying – an aesthetic that reconnects us to the time when men and women had clothes made for them by personal tailors and couturiers. Wardrobes which framed individual personalities, built to l ast.
I think this leads us back to the concept of what is valuable, timeless and essent ial ly human. It takes us somewhere profound, beyond appearances. Elegance, in its deepest sense, is of the mind. It’s more than any particular style or look. Working towards a modern def inition of elegance has to leave snobbery and wealth to one side. Elegance is as considerate as it is considered. ( How many wealthy and self ish people can we name in the world?) In considering good things, it has to consider its impact on others.
Perhaps these are some of the reasons why the term “elegance” is returning to our vocabulary right now. It is hard to def ine, yes. Everyone can have their own opinion as to what it may mean, who has it, and how we can strive to acquire it. But to me, even the fact that we a re now t hinking about it i s one of the most encouraging shi f ts cur rently under way. Fashion and the way it looks opens this conversation; and it’s one with the most optimistic, l ife-aff irming potential we’ve star ted to have for a ver y l ong t ime.