Up until 10-15 years ago, in pre-Instagram/Pinterest board times when fashion designers didn't have any fresh ideas they would go on a research trip of some kind. Quite often the trip wouldn't actually be to some faraway destination, but they would turn to shops selling vintage items including garments, accessories, books and magazines; those who could afford it (think Miuccia Prada) would also comb exclusive vintage places to spot rare items they could buy, edit, remix and reissue. But there was a key point in all this remixing and re-editing: these designers would try and look for older pieces, garments made 20 or 30 years earlier to make sure most consumers had forgotten them (mind you, this doesn't mean we're excusing them for engaging in this exercise…).
Fast forward to our times and you get this relatively new and rather annoying trend consisting in copying stuff from two seasons ago. The trend was generated by the fast rhythms of the fashion industry and by the fact that, quite often, those very few reviewers left around have developed a short attention span caused by the fact that they see so many images and catwalk shows that, at a certain point, they tend to forget what they may have seen 3-6 months ago.
Take the latest collection by young and underground brand Vaquera: for their Pre-Fall 19 collection the design trio moved from a laundry inspiration derived from the fact that most of their clothes are dry-clean-only (or at least that's what the labels of most contemporary pieces says even though it is often not true…).
The collection included voluminous dresses with slogans such as "Dry clean only", a sock purse reminiscent of Martin Margiela's glove purse, a hood with a Vaquera dry cleaners logo, a button-down shirt with a print of dry cleaning slip and accessories such as berets with washing instructions.
The theme of the collection was "Garment Care Season" and it would have been original if Jeremy Scott at Moschino hadn't done it already for the Italian house's A/W 17 collection.
As fashionistas may remember the latter featured a sock bag with a coin-purse clasp, a dry cleaning cape overlay (that, selling at £560 or $737, was more or less an overpriced plastic sack emblazoned with a dry cleaner message…), shirts and tops with prints of laundry receipts or with washing instructions. Now, Scott has a record of pilfering and remixing from other designers, so his idea in this case probably came from previous Franco Moschino collections, but Vaquera's pieces look like re-edits of Moschino's A/W 17 designs.
It is surprising and a bit depressing that young designers are producing such derivative collection as that proves they haven't even bothered going to steal things from more obscure places (and there are obscure places out there, you just need to find them…).
So far Vaquera showcased very derivative collections that mainly borrowed from older Margiela's stuff, and while it is unfair to pilfer from a collection made 20 years ago, it seems ridiculous to replicate items seen on a recent runway.
What's surprising in these cases is also the fact that such collections are often reviewed without spotting connections and derivations.
Compared to this, pilfering from obscurity à la Miuccia Prada seemed a much more interesting exercise as at least it showed a certain degree of commitment to research, while this is plain laziness.
Looks like it is about time to radically rethink fashion or maybe to tell the industry to "fashoff" as Franco Moschino did in the late '80s-early '90s.