In recent posts we looked at what happens when fashion designers decide to explore on the runway key issues such as preserving the planet or mass migration.
Indeed activism and politics seem to have become inspirations for quite a few fashion designers out there, even though the good intentions often get lost behind the will to expand a business and increase sales.
During the menswear shows in Milan, Ports 1961's Creative Director Milan Vukmirovic stated he wanted to send out to people a message of peace and love.
He therefore opened his runway with a model wearing a sweater with the symbol of the Black Lives Matter movement - the clenched fist - matched with a pair of navy pants emblazoned with the word "#Resist".
Then followed graphic sweats with the slogans "Only Love Matters", "Every Color Matter" and "Love" T-shirts.
Variations were introduced through further inspirations including Jean Michel Basquiat, the early '80s hip-hop scene in New York, African crafts and marine moods.
There were indeed beaded necklaces, jackets and sharp trousers decorated with a pattern borrowed from tribal masks, while colourful striped shirts reinvented the classic summer look.
Jackets and trench coats were enriched with intricate beadwork and African patterns on retro sporty tops seemed to work, even though they weren't exactly that new (remember other collections inspired by Africa, such as Junya Watanabe's S/S 16, and before that Givenchy and McQueen's S/S 14?).
Vukmirovic was clearly on the side of diversity and against attacks to unity and love, yet he didn't sound honest at all.
It is indeed all fine to show your support to a movement or a political idea, but, when it happens, it should go beyond the mere catwalk show.
As some of you may remember, Missoni's A/W 17 womenswear show closed with sweaters with the Pink Triangle and the Venus symbol, while models were the anti-Trump protest-style pussy-eared beanie hats. In that occasion the fashion house also promised to donate proceeds from the A/W 17 collection to the American Civil Liberties Union and the UN Refugee Agency.
On Ports 1961's runway symbols were used more with commercial undertones than with a genuinely political intent.
Vukmirovic appropriated the "Black Lives Matter" slogan and tweaked it a bit, while he may have delivered his message of love, unity and resistance in a less passive way, creating maybe a unique shirt with his own slogan (rather than remixing somebody else's...) and donating the profits to a specific cause.
After all, good intentions are not enough: it is indeed easy to encourage people to resist from the safety of a runway, but it is way more difficult to physically side with those in need in real life. So, if fashion designers want to help with a cause, they're very welcome to do so, but with a more concrete effort rather than with a slogan borrowed from someone else and printed on their clothes.
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