Eugene Rabkin:Making The Case Against Fast Fashion Collaborat
2012-11-15 09:21阅读：
It’s been eight years since Karl Lagerfeld for H&M, the first
collaboration between a high fashion designer and a mass retailer
on a limited-edition capsule collection. Since then, a number of
retailers, from Target to Topshop, have launched designer
collaborations of their own with the likes of Proenza Schouler,
Christopher Kane, Alexander McQueen and others. And the success of
this formula shows no signs of fading, with Maison Martin Margiela
for H&M expected to sell out soon after it hits stores on
November 15th.
But while ‘cheap and chic’ collaborations have proven extremely
popular with consumers, it’s important to point out that, for large
retailers like H&M and Target, their success is mostly measured
in media impressions, not sales. Indeed, these collaborations
rarely move the needle in terms of overall sales volume. Instead,
they generate the ‘earned media’ equivalent of millions of dollars
in advertising, driving people into stores. Meanwhile,
participating d
esigners benefit from large scale exposure to potential new
customers and fat fees that can sometimes exceed $1 million.
These underlying commercial motives are often obscured, however, by
a ubiquitous but pernicious phrase: ‘the democratisation of
fashion.’ Whoever coined the term is surely the marketing genius of
the 21st century. On the face of it, who can argue that ‘the
democratisation of fashion’ isn’t a good thing?
I can.
For the words ‘democratisation’ and ‘fashion’ no longer have
meaning. In an essay written in 1947, titled “Politics and the
English Language,” George Orwell warned against political figures
who purposefully obscured language, rendering certain words
meaningless. ‘Democracy’ was his prime example. But since then,
marketing gurus have left politicians in the dust.
‘Fashion,’ in the sense now being co-opted by the high street, used
to mean designer fashion; that is, something made by a creator who
puts care and thought into what he or she is creating. It means
carefully crafted designs made with attention to detail and
aesthetic sensibility.
But somewhere along the line, the definition of ‘fashion’ shifted.
Several years ago, I was taken aback by one of my students at
Parsons who proclaimed that “everything is designed.” Not true. For
example, the first polo shirt was carefully designed. But these
days, the only major difference between polo shirts made by various
competitors (often in the same factories) is the logo: alligator or
polo player. Indeed, today, the word ‘design’ merely means ‘cool.’
To say that something is designed is to say ‘Isn’t it cool?’ And by
extension, ‘Aren’t I cool?’ The same goes for fashion.
I invite anyone to argue that fast fashion brands produce ‘fashion’
in the original sense of the word. They may sell decent clothing at
affordable prices — but not fashion.
This is perfectly fine, of course. Providing access to affordable
clothing is a noble goal. But, alas, this goal was perverted a long
time ago by the rise of irresponsible consumer behaviour that has
transformed the act of shopping into a leisure activity. According
to Textile Recycling for Aid and International Development (TRAID),
consumers in the UK purchase a whopping 2.15 million tonnes of new
clothing a year. They also throw away over 900,000 garments each
year, sometimes with the sales tags still on them. In the US, the
picture is even more dire, with consumers dumping an estimated 10
million tonnes of clothing annually.
Dries van Noten once told me that his grandfather was a tailor
whose specialty was to repair worn suits by taking them apart,
turning the fabric inside out, and putting them back together.
Surely, we no longer need to do this, but there is nonetheless
something endearing in this story. We used to care about objects
that surround us.
It was not until the 1930s that the price of clothing started to
fall and people were able to buy more. In fact, the cost of
clothing has been on a constant downward trajectory since, despite
inflation. And today, much of Western society has gone from meeting
their needs to gorging on disposable clothes. Take a weekend stroll
on London’s Oxford Street
or on
New York’s Broadway
and witness hordes of teenagers on their weekly shopping
pilgrimages courtesy of mass-market retailers.
For this audience, ‘clothes’ are not cool enough. ‘Fashion’ is what
lures young people into stores, which is the raison d’être behind
these designer collaborations. But make no mistake, what is called
‘the democratisation of fashion’ is really the bastardisation of
fashion; that is, taking a designer’s ideas and watering them down
for mass consumption.
Real style is a matter of taste. And taste is a matter of
experience. Just like one’s tastes in music, art or books, taste in
clothes forms over time. It takes effort and knowledge. Buying into
a style, quickly and cheaply, inevitably leads to the disposability
of style. It’s like reading the Cliff’s Notes instead of the
book.
Search YouTube for “H&M collaborations.” You’ll see bleary-eyed
kids lining up hours before stores open in order to get some
“designer” bargains. In one such video, a young gentleman says he
arrived at H&M nine hours before the launch of the Comme des
Garçons for H&M collaboration because “Comme des Garçons is a
cool brand.”
Ironically, such brand worship was exactly what
Maison Martin Margiela was against. For
years Margiela was a designer’s designer, an intelligent creator
and a pioneer of deconstruction who refused to talk to the media,
letting his work speak for itself. The tags on his garments did not
carry his name, but were pure white. He was a tinkerer, a sartorial
engineer whose clothes often concealed their complexity.
Linda Loppa, head of Florentine fashion school
Polimoda and former director of the fashion department at Antwerp’s
Royal Academy of Fine Arts, wrote via email: “It only appears on
the surface that the Margiela concept can easily be replicated, In
fact, the garments are not simple. The patterns require a lot of
skill; the tailoring a lot of knowledge and attention to
detail.”
In 2002, Margiela sold his company to Renzo Rosso’s OTB Group,
which also owns Victor & Rolf and Diesel. Then, in December of
2009, he left the brand. And today, we have H&M x MMM. Two
opposites have met. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees the
paradox.
By all means, if you are willing to buy into this collaboration,
please do, just don’t think that you are buying ‘fashion’ or a part
of Margiela’s legacy — what you are buying are assembly-line
knockoffs that you will discard by next year. But if this has
become your idea of fashion, I urge you to reconsider.
