Despite the title of this post sounding a bit like the title for a fictional story à la Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it actually doesn't have anything to do with fiction.
This post is indeed inspired not by fiction but by a few thoughts I've been pondering about over the weekend, when I had what I could only define as "fashion blog nausea".
Despite being devoted to the main topics of this blog – art, fashion and style – a part of me hates and rejects some behaviours connected with these universes, from the elitist attitude some art galleries display to the fascistic suggestions about style that so-called trendy magazines give out or the demented attitude that many bloggers (I myself included) have generated of taking pictures of themselves showing how cool our wardrobes/tastes/styles are, but actually ending up displaying egos as big as Berlusconi's.
So over the weekend I sat down and started thinking for a while about different things related to the fashion industry. Three events made me mainly stop and think for a while: an email I received from a a talented friend who got a master a few years ago from Central St Martins and whose career hasn't gone exactly how he had planned, despite receiving visibility from the media and a few major acknowledgements; the recent announcement from Christian Lacroix's fashion house of filing for bankruptcy just a few days ago and the next Graduate Fashion Week, starting Sunday 7th June in London.
Thinking about my friend's situation and Lacroix's case I started wondering how young people coming out of universities with a degree in fashion design can actually emerge and establish their business in our troubled times. Now, please don't be silly and answer "their talent will make sure they get noticed", because we all know that in some cases talent is not all. If you want to establish your name in some fields you need money to promote yourself, while you also need the support of a mentor and of the media, things that can be summed up in four words, "a bit of luck".
I'm not here to scare young people who want to start a career into fashion or who are enrolling in a university or college to study fashion related subjects, but, let's face it, if Lacroix goes bankrupt – and we all know the quality, talent and craftsmanship behind such a fashion house – how can young designers who are less experienced and in some cases, less talented, stay afloat?
Many young designers who get out of university are quickly absorbed by big clothing chains, others find placements or consultancy work at famous fashion houses, most of them struggle anyway to establish their own name and set their own labels and shops. The majority of them ends up working for a well-established fashion house, renewing, revamping and maybe relaunching it, but is not able to launch – often for financial reasons – their own brand. Example: in Italy we are still waiting for the next Armani or Versace. Two reasons why this has happened? Lack of confidence towards young people and lack of money/funds to invest in the creation of solid fashion empires.
What worries me, though, is the creation of thousands of fashion graduates who may turn into redundant entities. A few years ago there was a boom of people studying medicine and law in Italy, a sad boom that created at the same time third rate doctors and lawyers that ended up causing a mighty mayhem in hospitals and courts or excellent candidates destined to remain unemployed due to a job saturation in these particular fields.
I wonder if this will also happen in the case of fashion designers: what if universities, colleges and academies suddenly churn out too many graduates and the latter don't get any chances of being absorbed into a saturated fashion industry? Would it be possible to avoid this by simply creating less 'fashion design' degrees and more specialist courses that could also help people to become experts in particular fields (textiles, pattern cutting, etc) or could we maybe encourage young people to forget about expensive university degrees and suggest them to get an apprenticeship with a genuine craftsman if they really want to get into the fashion business? (in the past if you wanted to be a tailor you would start working at a tailor's workshop, you didn't pay a university to teach you how to sew). Last but not least, could we maybe redirect into other fields the talent and energies of people enrolling into fashion courses thinking that this world is all made of parties and celebrities, making them understand that being a fashion designer often involves starving, rather than partying, for quite a few years?
There's an annoying trend that has been going on in the fashion industry, a trend that developed already a few years ago in the music industry: in the past bands would sign up with a record company that hoped they could produce, maybe around the third album, an excellent masterpiece. As the world of music became more focused on younger and good looking bands and on quickly becoming famous making lots of money, record companies became more interested in squashing out of bands a great first album and then fire them once they weren't able to produce another number one hit. In a nutshell, while there were bands that were allowed to grow up in the past, we have artists nowadays that haven't been allowed to develop and find their way. In fashion we have created the same thing: the younger the graduate, the most extravagant and bizarre the design, the better it is for the fashion media, thirsty to prove there are new and exciting things out there.
It's a shame, though, that after seeing them in June, interviewing them in the July issue, doing a photo shoot with their creations in the August issue, the fashion media kill them by September if they haven't launched one of these stupid collaborations (say a T-shirt) that is so fashionable nowadays with a) a prominent designer; b) a prominent charity; c) a prominent celebrity; d) a prominent blogger.
The effects of this routine can be pretty deadly and, rather than creating a new generation of healthy fashion designers, simply creates a generation of "one photo shoot wonders" interviewed, chewed and quickly digested by the fashion media.
What about doing maybe just one interview, then follow up their work and interviewing them again in six month's time to see if the suspected geniuses have actually managed to find their feet and produced something truly beautiful? Why not letting them grow and develop rather than featuring them once in a magazine, then waiting for the next batch of graduates to get their degree only to glorifying 3 or 4 of them and suck their blood like vampires?
I think there is no ready-made solution to the factory of "fashion design" graduates, but maybe we could turn all this "graduate" business into a sort of healthier business by spotting true talents and allow them to grow, rather than putting the spotlight
on them, glorifying their work and then abandon them as if they were a cool trend suddenly turned unfashionable and therefore undesirable and sadly wait for the next "crop" (oh what a horrible world) of graduate designers to turn up at the umpteenth graduate fair.
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