WEAR DO WE GO FROM HERE?
There’s a revolution brewing in studios around the world, with sustainability-minded designers and established houses alike grappling with the need for a more considered approach to fashion. Styled by Alex Harrington. Photographed by Tierney Gearon.
Sustainability-minded designers and established houses alike grapple with the need for a more considered approach to fashion.
We’ve been having big conversations, emotional conversations, about fashion lately. We’ve been talking about creativity, about inclusivity and community, about longevity and sustainability, about respect and kindness, about what we believe in and why. These values are being expressed and demonstrated in action by established international houses and by upstart labels all around the world, as well as in the conversations we are all having with friends about our overflowing wardrobes.
Signs of a great systemic fashion realignment are percolating as we think about how our spending links up with our shared values. It’s not so much a backlash as a reconstruction, with new business models being built around upcycling, reselling and renting, things that no-one imagined a decade ago. As the era of Instagram (which was, after all, only launched in 2010) coincides with a renewed focus on what’s truly important, we’re beginning to put a brake on the bad, something corporations are just waking up to.
You can read it in the symbolism in the clothes in these pages, the last collections of the final year of the 2010s, how so many designers who are now at the top of the tree are producing exuberantly creative work while upholding analogue qualities and handwork – and adding an older sense of value to their present work. Oddly, the feeling isn’t so much chopped-up and anxious as calm and integrated. There’s a desire to connect with the outdoors; a collective chorus, in unison, to slow down.
Gone is the pretence of being what one is not. At Valentino, Pierpaolo Piccioli made glamour joyful by imbuing it with life and fun and the personalities of his co-workers in Rome, and by celebrating a kind of multicultural elegance on his runway. “I want to create a community around Valentino,” he told Vogue. “And community means inclusivity.”
The beginning of a shift to corporate transparency and openness is coming to pass, all part of a new, globally expansive era when the amount of respect shown to a broad swathe of communities, some of which simply haven’t been a part of the fashion conversation until very recently, has become indivisible from a brand’s attractiveness.
Piccioli is but one of many designers leading us forward into the next decade. Demna Gvasalia at Balenciaga, Jonathan Anderson at Loewe, Olivier Rousteing at Balmain, Anthony Vaccarello at Saint Laurent and the revolutionary female couture-house trio of Maria Grazia Chiuri at Christian Dior, Clare Waight Keller at Givenchy and Virginie Viard at Chanel have also produced bold, paradigm-shifting new work. So have those who choose to consciously distance themselves from fashion-establishment old-think. Pared-back real clothes are what Gvasalia, who removed himself from the hustle of Paris to live in the calm of Zurich two years ago, came up with for his autumn/winter Balenciaga show, modernised Cristóbal Balenciaga coat silhouettes and tailored pantssuits shown on women of all ages.
We’re also seeing a new culture of small-scale, ethical entrepreneurs around the world who are judging what success means for them completely differently. “Feeling good” about the clothes we wear is no longer strictly about appearance, or comfort: it’s about feeling good to represent something, to do the right thing.
A difficult question still stands, though: can fashion change the culture? If you dress for the revolution, will it come? (Two questions likely on the mind of Tom Ford, the new chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America.) Among all this positive change, there’s a place of personal responsibility that we all occupy. In the quest for considered, long-lasting, meaningful clothes, we’re still up against the battle against disposable fast fashion – and a high- speed, carbon- emitting industry. The fact remains that globally, three-fifths of all clothing produced ends up in a landfill or incinerated.
But there has been recent progress, and it’s being led by our changing attitudes toward beautifully designed and meticulously crafted clothes, and beauty products we can use with a clear conscience. Now, when we peruse the possibilities of a Burberry trench, or a satin tuxedo from Saint Laurent, or a months-in-the-making Hermès bag, we’re attuned not simply to their immediacy but to their longevity, and to the notion that, perhaps, we might keep them circulating in the system by selling them on to someone else.
Meanwhile, start-up after start-up is setting up shop aiming to reuse, repurpose and make beautiful things from non-damaging materials. “I like to recycle, but with a magical kick,” young Parisian designer Marine Serre says. “It’s hard to do it, but I see it changing, little by little. There’s a great time coming.”
“I like to recycle, but with a magical kick. It’s hard to do it, but I see it changing, little by little. There’s a great time coming” – Marine Serre