WWD Asks "Is Fashion An Endangered Species?

Lanvin Pre-Fall 2011; photo by John AquinoDots| Writing a thought piece for WWD, Bridget Foley asks Is Fashion An Endangered Species? Her key points include:

1. Social media’s making of a fashion event of “any starlet in a cocktail dress” and a “culture of self-proclaimed critical experts, some apparently knowlegeable and definitely influential in that proverbial high school seizure-of-power way.”

2. Designers will stoop to almost any level to get exposure and are afraid of public criticism. “But if the threat of yuk-it-up, mean-spirited criticism loomed a little less large, some of them might opt for frocks a little less boring,” Foley writes.

3. High-low can be fatal. There is no need to please the masses, because the fashion games plays on insecurities:

Last time we checked, Fashion was not a social services agency, but a for-profit multibillion-dollar global industry that preys on insecurities about physical appearance. Elitism is an essential part of the shtick.

4. Constant, instant spitting out of me-too fashion does nothing to advance the craft. In the fray, ‘elitist fashion’ is getting lost.

5. Advertisers and media outlets care only about “most emailed”, “most viewed”, most Facebook fans, most Twitter followers. True cream of the crop rarely leads in these categories.

Comments

[CDM]

*chuckle* Fashion is a species unto itself? Hmmm. Interesting. I wonder when fashion branched away from human, or have they always been separate? Is fashion genetically stable? If it isn't genetically stable then the question goes begging: does fashion degrade into human, or does human degrade into fashion? Can the two still interbreed? If they can interbreed I wonder what the progeny would look like. Do they eat the same kind of food? Nah, they don't eat the same kind of food. Just look at the commercials, obviously they don't eat the same kind of food.