dealing with the F word

Fashion’s July is the month that starts with the sparkles and then sends everyone to Slim Aaron-esque summer vacation.

I am not referring to the 4th of July, but couture and, being Couture, it happens in Paris.

Angelo Flaccavento wrote a punkish article on Business of Fashion on the status of Couture and how it’s been somehow occupied and populated by aliens, that is the ones that don’t belong to Couture, but tag-along. It’s a bit like the phenomenon of Art Basel Miami Beach: from being an art show, to one of the most lucrative and successful art shows world-wide, to: everybody hops on the caravan and everything is dressed up as an excuse to create a party around it. And you see things of Fellinian envy.

“Couture is couture - fashion to the nth degree and the last remaining remnant of the old world concept of fashion as a language and privilege of the elite.”

— "Identity Theft at Paris Couture" - Angelo Flaccavento, Business of Fashion

Couture gives “validation”, couture is couture, “fashion to the nth degree and the last remaining remnant of the old world concept of fashion as a language and privilege of the elite.”

It’s a moment of change in Fashion, gender blending and that awkward almost blurring vicinity between ready-to-wear and couture, which is what Flaccavento is sensing after his week in Paris. Couture is old-school, based on rules that are crystallized in the past, it's slow, it's unique, not replicable or Instagrammable in a #ootd

If fashion were a religion, couture would be its god, the tipping point of Mount Olympus, very much noble and aristocratic and less democratic, if the parallel would hold. 

Nevertheless, for a fashion hard-core extremist like me, confined in the steamiest and most un-glamorous corner I could ever be left at, I need beauty, I need Fashion with the big F, my “eye has to travel” like editrix extraordinaire Diana Vreeland said perfectly in her own special and creative language.

To make everyone up to speed, a couturier is a créateur de mode appointed by the French Chambre Syndicale de la haute couture and designated by France’s Ministry of Industry, a very specific denomination, it’s like the equivalence of a D.O.C. wine or being “Made in Italy” or being an OBE, it doesn’t happen overnight and when you are, you are. There are 8 Italian designers out of 98 and all I am going to do now is to share my absolutely favorites.

Some facts (you may know or not) in chronological order:

1.   Valentino’s duo, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli after many years at the helm of the house, split. Rumors were circulating for a while, since the March runway shows, but it was announced the same day the couture collection was shown. Piccioli remains the sole creative director, Maria Grazia is out. They brought the brand up to the limelight, hard workers, skilled, tenacious and capable to maintain the high standards of the Emperor himself, Mr. Valentino Garavani.

2.   Christian Dior, orphan for a few seasons of a creative director after Raf Simons left, tadaaaahhh, has a new creative director, the first woman in the history of the house, and guess who it is? Right: Maria Grazia Chiuri: all the best #girlsrock

3.   Fendi showed the collection in Rome, because first they are from Rome and second this year they are celebrating the 90 years of the atelier. Models and furs seemingly walked on the waters (aka, a see-through plexiglass runway) of the Fontana di Trevi, in a fairy tale reminiscing of Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” . Karl (Lagerfeld, as you will get used at how in fashion we call the masters by their first name) even tossed the three coins. It must have been magic, that’s all I can say.

On another note, you may have seen some images of Dolce & Gabbana who threw their version of couture Alta Moda, closing off an entire neighborhood of Napoli: they are not couturiers. 

A taste of taste: from that Oscar de la Renta black dress to Bill Cunningham, and back

This is how this post started:

“After all I’ve watched since the 1960s of the women’s movement, it bothered me that women are told that the ultimate expression of dressing is red-carpet worthy”

he said.

“There is something powerful about a dress that is exquisitely tailored and perfectly correct.”

continued William Norwich in an interview with NYT's Dan Shaw talking about the inspiration behing his second novel, “My Mrs. Brown”.  The story of a woman who lived in Rhode Island as a maid and, stricken by an out of the ordinary black dress she peeked in a client’s closet, initiates a trip to the City to look for her version of the same dress, no matter how much it will cost her. Because it’s never too late to find [fill in the blank] ... the Prince, happiness, joy, peace, the job of your life, or, above all, yourself. After you found yourself, just please remember to never feel overdressed and keep your chin high.

Taste is like truffles, must be enjoyed in small doses and it grows on you. 

Today’s fashion’s “business-as-usual” is a "loud" photo-shopped sponsored in-your-face #OOTD after another that somehow has come to overtake and abandon to oblivion a more genteel sophisticated slow-pasted personal style. It may be generational. 

Fashion is in our way of life, style is our lives, whether you live and work for the fashion business or not, style is what says who we are and helps us shape who we want to be. Virginia Wolf is known to have said that no matter how much clothes are sneered at and considered frivolous, “they change our view of the world and the world’s view of us”.

And then, while I was writing, Bill Cunningham dies in NYC at 87 and the post took a different direction, unexpectedly.

The ultimate gentleman, discreetly documenting the real runway that always will be, the street. Not even the father of street style, because that street style we know is commercial, staged, artificial, with no passion other than the temporary happiness money will procure you. Bill says, in the documentary dedicated to hi, “there’s nothing cheaper than money” that is what Cunningham was all about, that’s why he was a one-of-a-kind rare bird of paradise.  

Him and his bicycle, his blue jacket during the day for the “Off the Streets” page and him and his suit or tux when needed for his social page, a frugal and simple life, a reserved, intimate person whose soul, creativity and imagination would peak at the corner of 57th & 5th Avenue, the heart of New York City. There’s a parallel with Mrs. Brown’s life, off the limelight yet lightened up by that Oscar de la Renta black dress.

We live in loudness, arrogance, we are surrounded by vulgar disrespectful presence, “I post ergo I live” people feel alive only if they are visible, no matter if what they showcase is real or purely constructed. Life is not propaganda, thinks Norwich and women exist even when they are over 40, it takes introspective, it takes looking at yourself from the balcony as if you were a passer-by, then looking at your wardrobe and finding out maybe that what you are wearing doesn’t really reflect your YOU now.

View fullsize

What’s the take-away?

Let’s just remember that “beautiful things don’t ask for attention”. We have all been a Mrs. Brown and the time to go to the city and find THE dress is always now, not "one day" and that corner of 57 & 5th is a fleeting one, one snap away. We will always "dress for Bill" with a genuine smile. 

Have you ever had a black dress you have dreamed of all your life? or a boyfriend or a job ... something or someone to stamp that big smile on your face and everything is gonna be alright.

The 2016 State of Fashion: a Manifesto

What’s Fashion anyways?

View fullsize

I get the question quite often from people that live what I see as a disconnect from what the runways are and what trickles down to the department stores.

They are outsiders, yes, but what does Fashion look to someone who is not ingrained in the industry and doesn’t speak Prada?

Fashion is a dream, story-telling, is transmitting a feeling, an emotion, an experience meant to a like-minded audience.

Fashion is performance, reminiscence, hint, teasing, a whiff of an aroma, a smell loaded with memories and translated on the collection, runway or presentation.

Fashion is believing in a story and telling it as it is.

Fashion is loving despite the oddities.

Fashion is process, not massive production, it doesn’t have to please everybody.

Fashion is luxury, not fast food nor instant gratification.

Did social media break the system?

Are runways supposed to break the Internet?

Do we still look at Fashion as the dream?

Is New York fashion week finished? Leandra Medine of Man Repeller thinks that it all started when Fashion Week became a trend, and as any good trend, they come and go. What do we do until the cycle comes back? Live in clothes, she suggests.

In a more straight-forward manner, NYT’s critic extraordinaire Cathy Horyn  questions the authenticity of Fashion in the era of social media. She draws almost a graph, the higher the social media bru-ha-ha the higher the level of insanity or absurdity. And honestly, were I a designer, especially a first-timer, I wouldn’t want to be having to hire a bitch of a publicist to help me shrug from my shoulders  the label of “absurd” signed by The New York Times.

The fashion-buying public is aware of where presentation ends and branded content begins.

In New York, more than any other fashion week, we have assisted to an exaggeration of social media content. To capitalize on social media buzz, brands have opted to switch the seasons starting September when the fall collections would be presented and February would go for spring.

We have seen alternative ways of introducing new ranges, like the Studio-54-themed at DFV or bigger louder lavish ones like Kanye’s or Rihanna, but must agree with Mrs. Horyn on one simple point: the spectacle, the mise en scene, the Hollywood draconian production was smoke in the eye to the industry trader, the buyer, the journalist that is not impressed by the show, but by the quality, workmanship, attention to detail, fil rouge that something that grasps all the senses, despite of the wallet.  Voila’, I couldn’t leave it unsaid

There was a general vibe that wasn’t camaraderie, the see-now-order-now-wear-now was the talk of the town, but may have killed that allure and building desire of waiting those 6 months to have something beautifully confectioned.

To say it with Karl Lagerfeld: it’s a mess 

Now, I don’t live under the leaf of a snow-pea, Fashion is a dream, but it's a business with marketing and sales, or it’s a bad dream. We Must Sell and we must cater to the consumer spending public.

So are the brands embracing the instant-buy system promoting a democratization of fashion?

View fullsize

Luxury comes from passion and inspiration, it’s a state of mind, creative and inspired work that caters to a few. And it’s good that way. Brands like Burberry or Tom Ford are trying to cut the gap between the heat of the catwalk and the in-store purchase.

To say it with the words of Francois-Henri Pinault, the CEO of Kering Group, the see-now buy-now immediacy ‘negates the dream of luxury’. 

Killing the traditional system of 6-month wait after the catwalk, is simply not feasible and would bring the end of the magic of fashion, the world of suspence.

Besides, where do we leave the wait and appreciation for something that needs time to be made?