There has been a very interesting trend at the opening of the menswear shows: rather than preview features about the collections and maybe interviews with designers to highlight their inspirations for what regarded the main themes, shapes and silhouettes or colour palette for the A/W 2016-17 designs, there has been an emphasis on digital channels and new ways of promoting the collections. The news about J.W. Anderson mainly revolved for example around the fact that the show was going to be streamed on gay dating app Grindr, better known until last week not for its fashion connections, but for being a great tool for one-off hookup chances.
Fashion-wise the show revealed that the designer hasn't moved on from his gender-fluid trademark style, but opted to safely remain in the realm that he established in the previous season (well, if it's so successful why should he move on?) when he started sending down on his runways men in ill-fitting blouses and bustiers and fashion critics thought that was incredibly revolutionary and brave.
Anderson's tale for the A/W 2016-17 season included satin pyjamas in pastel colours; nylon tracksuits and vests with pockets shaped like clouds; a floral bed jacket matched with cream coloured knitted trousers and juxtaposed to a camel coat with a studded collar worn by a model with bare legs; and leather or knitted tracksuit trousers matched with boxing boot-style sneakers.
While Perspex chokers gave the collection an underground club vibe, knee-length rabbit fur gilets (black with red spots; white with blue spots) reproduced a cartoonish version of more regal ermine coats, and there was a certain childish glee in the toy raygun print on one ensemble, in the luridly shiny vests with distorted prints (for that touch of twisted innocence?) of Bonzo, the white, chubby British cartoon dog created by comic strip artist George Studdy in the 1920s, and in the snail motifs embroidered, printed or appliqued (in their glow-in-the-dark rubber version) on garments as if they were stickers.
He may have shown the collection on Grindr, but the large sticker-like snails on the clothes, though apparently inspired by labels applied onto luggage and to be interpreted as meaningless symbols, looked as if they were borrowed from Line, the Japanese messaging app with super large emojis, or digital "stickers" of cute cartoon characters such as Brown the bear and Cony the bunny (well, large fake stickers applications are already a trend accessory-wise, but they have been intruding also in the A/W 2016 menswear collections – see for example James Long's A/W 16 designs).
Fashion doesn't need to make sense, but the collection proved J.W. Anderson quite often struggles to tell a coherent fashion story (yet this is a problem many young designers seem to have as they tend to mix, mash and burn too many ideas and references all in one collection...) and, while many editors praise him exactly for this reason, his garments suffer from this lack of direction superficially disguised as eclecticism.
While they may be manufactured in luxurious materials (see the camel coat or the perforated black leather coat in the A/W 16 collection), the garments often end up looking as part of a wider experiment with gender fluidity or as mere weapons of rejection of social norms (yet, there aren't many social norms he is rejecting, since, at the end of the day, the main point for Anderson like for any other designer is first and foremost that of selling).
Anderson's show played on loop for 24 hours on Grindr and in interviews the designer seemed more keen to reach a huge number of people - seven million of them to be more precise (the number of Grindr users) - than in inviting them behind the scenes of the collection to highlight the value of specific fabrics and textiles. It is as if the designer weren't interested in the quality aspect of his own collection, but in the numbers; at the same time, he never complains about the speed of fashion, but simply accepts it as a necessity, that's why the conceptual equation "speed dating on Grindr" plus "models rushing down the runway" seemed to work pretty well.
There was actually another designer in London inspired by Grindr (and Robert Mapplethorpe's 1979 photograph portraying Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter) - Sebastiaan Pieter. The Dutch designer printed the site's "HH" (High & Horny) status on t-shirts, and included in the collection a sweater with "Cruise" across it to maybe reconnect with a past in which smartphones didn't exist.
You may argue that these collections are to be filed under the A/W 2016 label, so the fashionable allure of of specific apps and sites à la Grindr will become more relevant in the next few months, but the fashion industry is ready to accelerate things: Diesel's artistic director Nicola Formichetti has indeed announced that, after the #DieselReboot, the casting campaigns on Instagram, and Glitch-ing an invitation to a fashion show, the brand's Spring/Summer 16 campaign will appear on Grindr, Tinder and Pornhub.
The new Diesel adverts tick all the right digital boxes: they play well with online language and feature custom Diesel emojis; the slogans will undoubtedly resonate with teenagers as they poke fun at shopping addicts, the selfie culture and social celebrities. Diesel also seems to be willing to take the piss out of itself, with ads such as the one portraying Joe Jonas and Kiko Mizuhara with the caption reading, "We have more followers than @diesel" .
Launching the underwear line campaign on Pornhub was inspired by the fact that, according to Formichetti, porn unites us (am I allowed to add, unless you're a woman forced to perform extreme gagging oral sex?).
There may be a few things to consider, though, for brands that decide to choose the same marketing stretegy (apart from the fact that teens will stumble on porn images that may have a serious impact upon them while Googling words such as "Diesel campaign+Pornhub" and this is something tremendously important when you consider how mainstream porn is geared towards male sexual desires...): let's think about how the music industry has changed in the last few years. Most artists nowadays sell digital singles or albums, and while there is a resurgence of vinyl, very few people buy the actual products, while most people tend to illegally download things for free or swap files.
Fashion is going towards the same direction, but it's not realising it: sooner or later people will simply satisfy their fashion needs by watching, sharing and even downloading the latest cool digital campaign and maybe even dress themselves in digital clothes and take a selfie in expensive garments they may not be able to afford as if they were in a paper doll game.
Besides, most of these apps are designed for fast and quick hook ups and casual sex, so while their nature may go well with the fast rhythms of fashion, they may not automatically generate a loyal consumer (besides, how many people will get angry when, while looking for a keen user on Tinder, they find a Diesel model pretending to be a user and eventually discover they've just wasted their time engaging with an ad?).
It may be that the digital world is making us lose wider and more realistic perspectives: there is actually a very scary word that many marketing people and creative directors use when they refer to viewers – "eyeballs". That's very interesting as it refers to a part of the body detached from the brain and implicates the visual aspect is more important than any other thing. Or is it?
Consider this: all the buzz around Alessandro Michele at Gucci has generated a new hysteria around the brand, but the hysteria has still got to be transformed into tangible sales. What happens if all this digital frenzy fails to generate sales? This remains a mystery, at least for the time being.
Having infiltrated into Grindr, Tinder and Pornohub, the fashion industry maybe has just got to move onto Line (you can bet a cartoon fan such as Jeremy Scott is already thinking about it...). Line's 181 million monthly users are mainly located in Asia, so there's an entire market there to conquer. Or maybe they should start a "Fashion Line", so that instead of typing messages and sending a Brown bear or a Cony bunny sticker, we could all send large and impressive stickers of Karl Lagerfeld raising the middle finger or of Anna Wintour sitting on a toilet. Guess they would probably be more engaging than all the trite stuff the fashion industry is feeding us at the moment, delusionally thinking it is adventurously exploring unchartered territories and bravely breaking boundaries.
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