High fashion trends are muddying our priorities
Gucci is selling an “eco washed organic denim overall” with fake grass stains for $1,750.
Dirty couture proves our world is coming apart at the seams.
When they’re sipping champagne and spitballing new ideas, do Gucci execs just laugh out loud?
“How about a mohair crop sweater with a chick hatching and the words ‘Mon Petit’? And we’ll charge $2,100. HAHAHA! Let’s get an androgynous model who has Tilda Swinton’s bone structure and Carrot Top’s hair to pose in a tartan cotton long smock shirt. And we’ll charge $3,200. HAHAHA!”
I’d love to have a midlife reinvention and ditch this newspaper racket for haute couture. Granted, I’d be an instant pariah when I show up on Day 1 in my off-the-rack blazer and Jack & Jones jeans. Still, it would be thrilling to work in an industry where every bonkers idea is hailed as genius.
Velour trousers in which the left leg is cut off at the knee? Brilliant!
A retro whalebone corset with metal grommets that’s only available in Size 0? Incredible!
It was Monday evening and I was watching the Jays pound the Yankees when a friend sent me a link to a People story: “Gucci Debuts $1,200 Jeans Designed with Grass Stains Around the Knees.”
Even before clicking, I could hear the laughter in Florence.
After reading the story, I went to the Gucci website and it was my turn to double over.
In addition to these new jeans, the company is also hawking an “eco washed organic denim overall” with the same fake grass stains for $1,750. As they inform customers in the product description: “Gucci explores new takes on the cult fabric, reinterpreting it with different designs and washing techniques that blur the line between vintage and contemporary.”
Translation: Here you go, suckers. Cult is probably the key word. Also blurred is the line between jackass and bonehead. Are we really in a global pandemic and are there snooty fashionistas still willing to splurge their jewelry money on overalls that simulate an illusion you were just dragged on your stomach across a dewy meadow by a Clydesdale bedecked in an alpaca wool-blend frock?
I’m no sartorial expert. A few years ago, editors asked me to cover Toronto Fashion Week — they thought it would be amusing to have a doddering neophyte try to make sense of the fabulous proceedings — and I honestly felt like I had been helicoptered into a Scientology boot camp.
Nothing made a lick of sense. I was getting air-kisses from random strangers and having weird chats with perky scenesters who’d casually reference a Versace this or Burberry that. I was watching ethereal models strut across a catwalk in getups that looked to be designed by drunk space aliens.
I remember one show in which the models wore carpets. I’m not kidding. The crowd was oohing and aahing and all I could think was, why are these leggy and malnourished young women pouting around in heavy textiles? It was very unsettling.
People, she clearly hasn’t had a hot meal since Tuesday!
Remove that throw rug from her lithe shoulders and give her a granola bar!
My takeaway that week, right or wrong, was that high fashion is all about the low expectations too many brands assume of their global clientele. You couldn’t get away with this stuff in any other industry. You can’t get someone to pay an exorbitant sum for a threelegged chair or electric car that only goes backwards. But slap a designer label on $700 toeless socks and there will be a stampede.
This is most obvious when you track denim trends in recent years. Gucci may think it’s breaking ground with these new dirty jeans. It’s not. Three years ago, Nordstrom’s “Barracuda Straight Leg Jeans,” which retailed for about 600 bucks, arrived coated with — wait for it — fake mud.
I still don’t get why anyone who has never done a minute of manual labour would want to get bottle service at the club looking like he had just swapped out the spark plugs in his tractor. But the fake mud jeans were a huge hit. Around the same time, Vetements charged customers upwards of $2,000 for jeans that could be unzipped at the butt crack for full-backside nudity.
Is mooning a thing for the nouveau riche? Not to be outdone by the merchants of conspicuous consumption, low-end Topshop released a line of “MOTO Clear Plastic Straight Leg Jeans” that also quickly sold out. I can only imagine how my wife and kids would react if I sashayed into the dining room in my INVISIBLE JEANS.
I was hoping this pandemic would help society reprioritize and focus on what matters. You know? Maybe get serious about climate change. Maybe try to really understand inequality. Maybe help us realize the importance of community and sensible and sustainable consumerism.
In this context, jeans with fake grass stains are not just a luxury oddity.
They are more proof the world is coming apart at the seams.