It’s been a trying couple of months for the world of high fashion. Two of its most noted photographers are facing serious allegations of sexual predation, some of its most prominent designers have dropped out of New York Fashion Week, and there is, according to a recent New York Post op-ed, an existential panic gripping the industry.
“Indeed, the fashion world has never seemed more ridiculous, more out of touch, more irrelevant,” author Maureen Callahan writes. “If Hollywood is mired in a post-Weinstein existential crisis, the fashion industry is in a death rattle, owing as much to cultural concerns as commercial ones.”
First, the commercial concerns. Callahan bluntly states “Retail is dying, killed off by e-commerce and a post-recession preference for [all together now] experiences over things.” She also alleges that modern retail “is just painfully boring,” which she attributes to a number of factors, most significantly, the paucity of “must-have” items since the skinny jean swept the landscape in 2005.
Citing a shift in consumption habits, the demands of “inhuman production schedules” and a growing awareness of “the human toll in creation” that the industry requires, Callahan also posits that heads of industry are growing warier by the day — and less influential.
“Such exhaustion and anemia has had a trickle-up effect, rendering once-hallowed gatekeepers mere figureheads. Who really cares what Anna Wintour says anymore?” Callahan writes, saying that “bloggers and YouTube stars” now, in her mind, hold greater sway with “millennials and the generation behind them” than the old guard.
And in the process of the remaining gatekeepers ruthlessly consolidating their power, she argues, the industry at large has lost the creative diversity that was once its most bankable asset.
“Imposter syndrome, con artistry, bullying and starvation and sexual predation: There is no glamour to be had here. There never was, but it was nice, for a time, to believe.”
You can read more about it at The New York Post.
