I thought we were living in a state of perennial financial crisis, but I was obviously wrong, there is also a general lack of ideas and taste and an embarrassing superficiality. I have surfed the Internet, opened magazines and papers in the last few days and found plenty examples of what I would call "fashion dementia". Today the world of science celebrates the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, but some human beings are showing that, rather than positively evolving, humanity is definitely regressing, especially when it comes to fashion.
Tangible proof that people involved in the fashion industry are using less and less their brains came when a few days ago heavily pregnant singer M.I.A. wore a Henry Holland dress at the Grammy Awards and the British fashion press went crazy because, hey, she was wearing a creation by a British designer.
Now, let’s leave aside any silly comments about how good/bad she looked in it, the problem is of a different nature, it’s indeed a sartorial problem. You don’t need to be an expert tailor to spot the bad quality and bad cut of that outfit (even from miles away). But it's by Henry Holland and he's a genius, so it must look wonderful. I wonder why nobody has the guts of saying that Holland’s designs are not cutting edge at all, and they are also very poorly made. Please spare me. Please also spare me the T-shirts with nude designers illustrated by Sophie Stephens but with concept by Henry Holland. No, don’t worry, I don’t find them vulgar, but I think they're not ironic or fashionable. They're indeed pretty useless, like everything Holland does.
But the M.I.A. dress was only the starting point: fashion catastrophe followed as, in an attempt at copying The Telegraph's Hilary Alexander, The Guardian’s site recently added to its fashion page a few short videos. These brilliant ideas are usually generated during crisis meetings at newspapers when the editor tries to squash out of the journalists some ideas to attract more readers and somebody eventually comes up with the most stupid idea, but the editor, tired, distracted by other problems and running late, eventually goes with it. Now, I wasn't expecting them to give us a lecture in costume design and maybe reveal the construction secrets behind Audrey Hepburn’s empire line dresses in King Vidor’s War and Peace, but I would have expected something slightly more original, entertaining and maybe intelligent (am I asking for too much?). Sadly though the videos can be filed under the category “state the obvious”.
Most of the stuff online at the moment is under the heading “The Observer Woman’s Designer DIY Series “ and offers vital tips and suggestions such as Jade Jagger making a safety pin bracelet that most of us did when they were 11 years old (and weren't surely considered designer geniuses in the making), an, erm, "origami hat" by Stephen Jones, which is basically what Italian 3 year old children call (minus tassel) "cappello da muratore" (bricklayer's hat) and make at the crèche and Vivienne Westwood revealing how to make one of her dresses while suggesting us to wear our tablecloths (it hurts, though, to think that when some of us were in school and anarchically made dresses out of tablecloths they were ostracised and nobody spoke to them for months, but, hey, times change…). Then we have other wonderful gems such as Jess Cartner-Morley giving style tips and choosing the perfect trophy jacket (but with bad audio and a bad camera).
What’s the main problem with all this stuff? 1) there are so many bloggers who have been doing the same thing in a much more intelligent way that these videos are just useless; 2) if you want to know how to do a Vivienne Westwood dress and you can't afford it, you kit yourself with images, fabric, patterns, materials, etc. and you get down to do the business (this is what millions of women did when there weren’t too many fashion publications, but cinema icons would indirectly launch new trends on the big screen and ordinary women tried to copy their styles at home), you don’t really need Ms Westwood to come and tell you what to do, do you?
And what about the various newspapers/magazines/sites launching a section dedicated to “street trends” that consists in sending out a student/intern/somebody who should suffer with a camera and tell them to take pics of people who they think look cool. Let’s face it, most of us aren’t The Sartorialist, so for the sanity and good taste of the world, let’s stop this trend, and avoid taking the umpteenth picture of a young woman telling us she’s wearing a Topshop garment in a “quirky” way.
The main award for fashion dementia this week goes anyway to the soon to be released "Confessions of a Shopaholic", directed by P.J. Hogan and taken from Sophie Kinsella’s novel. Kinsella’s name is associated with two words I hate “chick lit”. I cringe at the definition "chick lit", these two words together have a suspicious aura for me as I once met at a Women in Journalism meeting in Glasgow a very immature woman, supposedly considered a young and talented “chick lit” writer who started ranting about sending her kid to a crèche where kids couldn't wear primary colours (what?).
Anyway, getting back to “Confessions of a Shopaholic”: here we have again Patricia Field trying to make a quick buck pretending she's a "costume designer" as she assembles outfits with designer items and vintage finds. The style result for this film that revolves again around the unholy trinity of fashion-job at a magazine-romance, is a sad crossover between Sex and The City and The Devil Wears Prada. Absolutely frightening. I just hope that Marks & Spencer won’t enlist Field to do a "Confessions of a Shopaholic" inspired collection this time as an embarrassingly pink skirt worn with layers and layers of multi-coloured underskirts would honestly offend my sensibility and prove too much to bear for my weak heart.
Fashion dementia arrived also in Italy, where Franca Sozzani put on the cover of Italian Vogue (March 09 issue) Pixie Geldof with the heading “So Young, So Cool”. What about getting one of those beautiful young girls you often meet in the street (but who aren’t professional models nor are the daughters of somebody famous) and put them on the cover with the heading “So Young, So Talented, So Unemployed, So Skint”? I guess that would probably be much more relevant to the world we are living in and to the Italian situation (and maybe it would also attract a younger readership to Italian Vogue?).
At the end of this long rant I essentially wonder why some newspapers, magazines or sites perpetuate one idea: women are essentially stupid and why nobody has ever thought about making 1 minute fashion videos about intelligent and rebellious style icons à la Nancy Cunard. Are they scared that somebody might click on them and actually be inspired by more intelligent things?
"Fashion is a serious thing," wrote in the 30s Gianna Manzini, a journalist who collaborated with early Italian fashion magazines such as Bellezza and La donna. “Fashion is a language, a witty manifestation of form,” Manzini explained in an article published over 70 years ago in La donna in which she also claimed that fashion is important as it can help us understanding the society we’re living in.
If what Manzini wrote is true, then fashion has probably become so silly and pointless because it's simply reflecting our superficial, disposable and dissatisfied society.
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