There is no question that my personal tastes lean toward classic/ real time fashion ... meaning true veritable design and not gimmicks, no shock and awe but actually designing a silhouette; I am a huge proponent of designer signatures and that does not mean logos, that means actually looking at a garment and knowing who designed it.
Every day I am reminded on Instagram of just how incredibly detailed a runway show was as there wasn’t one facet of what you saw on the runway that was over looked whether palettes, themes, hats, makeup, hair, shapes or a detail that ran through the collection and then of course there were the gloves, shoes, hose and jewelry. Today’s world of fashion pales considerably when you take all that into account.
Today we are faced with shock/schlock and awe and designers blabbering some nonsense as if the words justify the clothes which in 95% of the words are faux intellectual ramblings that do not reflect what you are looking at. Today we have designers who design clothes for Instagram, for likes as the median age of an Instagrammer is a millennial or younger. I hardly think they are in the market for $700 jeans that look like they came out of dumpster or have the cash to buy them if they did want them. Designers of some of the most heralded and heritage brands of the 20th century have turned them into circuses of freaks, costumes or Ripley’s believe it or not filled with hubris and self-gratification. Yes, given the job of designing for one of those brands is a weighty proposition but no one gives a crap if the name and the clothes bear any relationship to each other and what the brand stood for.
Occasionally we are tossed a bone or scrap that MIGHT remind us of how and why these brands became juggernauts over 50 years ago and then everything else is just clothes. The instance of the current Balenciaga Couture collection which is horrifyingly heralded by the so-called fashion media looks 2 dimensional constructed with fabric as stiff as a sheet of steel... OH BUT THE HAT as if that makes up for the mockery of the collection. The eponymous designers draped, sketched, cut, sewed and were architects of their own works. Today’s renditions and iterations are photo op versions of what was once groundbreaking. I’m willing to say that most of this generation’s designers don’t possess the skillset to produce collections worthy of the brands they supposedly design for.
Then there is the case of trying to revive brands that no millennial ever heard of let alone knew what they designed or who they designed for which brings me to the point of times have changed dramatically and the clothes of a YSL circa mid 80s are only nostalgic reminders of “how it was done!” When Karl was no more, we should mourn the last of or one of the very few who still know what fashion is and that no detail should be overlooked. Today we have a parade of frauds who would rather run their mouths and spew all this gobbledygook that even they don’t understand let alone relate to the clothes and recite press releases so that the uneducated, for the most part, fashion media can regurgitate that in their reviews when they run out of writing about venues, front rows or anything else that will prevent them from actually reviewing or addressing the collection. When is the last time you read a review that spoke of how a shoulder was set in or the length of a sleeve or blazers versus cabans?
The mighty ad dollar has taken over the creativity and actual originality and handed these jobs to ill equipped people who can barely design a dress let alone be in charge of store design, ads, accessories and brand imaging
Please keep in
mind that the photos shown are not only about the clothes, especially since women
really don’t dress like this today....at least most don’t.... but about the
perfection of what runway presentations should achieve. As I have reiterated so
many times, clothes do not hang on a hanger with a romance card it is
impulsive, aspirational and immediate gratification... there are some who say women
dress for men and some who say women dress for other women and I say can you
tell the difference between Celine shredded jeans or those from Balenciaga?
PS... how can I possibly have forgotten to speak of the days when models actually modeled.. they came down the runway in singles, in pairs, in triplets and in armies that smiled, sashayed languidly, turned, stopped removed a coat or jacket and actually added something to the clothes ...LIFE!
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