GRAND GESTURES AND TANGIBLE SUPPORT

GRAND GESTURES AND TANGIBLE SUPPORT

Fashion has a duty to nurture its young. It’s an idea embedded deep in its history – of designers working for other designers, toiling and toile-ing, learning the craft; of mentors and protégées.

It’s Paul Poiret appointing Charles James as his spiritual successor, or Cristóbal Balenciaga leading his clients across the Avenue Georges V, after his couture maison closed, to the salons of Hubert de Givenchy, inheritor of his mantle.

And that latter example is prescient because it should be about not just grand gestures – appreciation of talent – but tangible acts of support. About allowing talent to be appreciated.

At one point, the industry lost that feeling – maybe around the “Greed Is Good” Eighties, when it became about one-upmanship rather than giving someone a leg up, as we say in Britain.

But today, fashion has rediscovered its heart, alongside its soul. Because the different support mechanisms for young designers are neither heartless, nor soulless, nor motivated by greed.

And there is something wonderful about the egalitarianism of those ideals, of allowing talent to win, and of designers being unafraid to champion a new generation, without feeling it encroaches on their territory, or somehow threatens their own sovereignty.

The world as a whole has become smaller, in ways simultaneously good and bad. Globalisation, communication, travel have brought us closer together than ever before, physically and ideologically. Geographic distance has been erased through technology – we can talk to the other side of the globe in seconds.

Yet, paradoxically, small-minded politicking is pushing us ever-further apart, enforcing delineation between people and cultures, not only encouraging but outright rewarding xenophobia, building walls instead of bridges.

To see fashion as an example of an industry erasing self-erected frontiers – a medium breaking down those walls – is kind of glorious. In particular when doing so ensures its own survival. The world is tough, and cold, and mean. Fashion doesn’t have to be. Fashion cares.