Sex is one of the few things that we usually do without any clothes on, part of the remaining fragments of our lives that we still keep private, if we choose. If we’re lucky, sex becomes more about feeling than seeing, and transcends being about superficial displays of beauty and status.

Yes, of course, like everything else, beauty and fashion is connected to sex, but perhaps not in the way it would seem. This post describes two ways I break – or make – the connection.

One. Fashion is not sexy.

Recently, I was watching an interview (OK, he’s very talkative so it was more like a monologue) with the fashion designer J.W. Anderson on SHOWstudio, whose knitwear is featured in the Teen Vogue photo above. He was talking about the universality of blue jeans and t-shirts for men. To paraphrase, Anderson said that most men wear the anti-fashion uniform because almost all of us want to sleep with people in jeans and t-shirts. That’s why selling innovative fashion is an uphill battle. Jeans are just what’s sexiest, for almost everybody. It is the biological imperative that keeps us dressing alike.

Dressing differently is more about status than sex.

Most people don’t want to sleep with men in suits – men who wear suits in their dating profile photos aren’t as successful at getting responses. And then there’s the anecdotal cliche of the terminally single fashion female. If you’re trying to attract a partner, to appear formal or trendy is a liability – that’s the crux of the whole Man Repeller joke. High fashion models are barely legal, asexual aliens. There’s something about fashionability that says: look at me, don’t touch me.

Two. Overcoming being the body.

We all have a primal urge to continue our species, and women have a critical role as bodily vessels. This is why beauty and and body snark alike are the feminine counterpart to politics and tabloids. Imagine fashion as the feminine counterpart to sports.

Whenever women are criticized and measured by their appearance, instead of their ideas, their merit, their work or their actions, this is not a rational, civilized impulse. This is base animal instinct. I’ve observed almost every kind of person doing this, regardless of gender or orientation, myself included. The biological imperative can only be overcome by sheer intellectual effort.

To extricate a woman’s physical body from her body of work, she needs to still be working after she hits menopause. Once a woman loses her childbearing potential, the human race’s collective interest in her – fuckability – subsides and she is allowed to just get on with doing her work – and well, because she has decades of experience. We stop looking and we start listening. Watching this process happen to Hillary Clinton made me notice how profound this shift must be.

Being the body is part of the female experience. Once you graduate from the animal reproductive agenda, whether by age or by fashion, you stand to gain freedom from the tyranny of appearances you wouldn’t have had any other way.

Hierarchies are what fashion is all about. The driving force behind all change and innovation in fashion is the desire to appear better, somehow. Or, different – fashion serves us endless variations to satisfy our never-ending desire for novelty. Concepts of equality don’t jive well with fashion, which is why fashion and social justice are such uneasy associates.

There are two essential choices when we dress ourselves. Sometimes we dress to emphasize our distinctions from our fellow human beings. Higher heels. Better bag. Custom made. Avant garde. Flair.

However, most human beings dress to emphasize equalities, most of the time. We follow trends, we don uniforms, we all wear blue jeans and Chucks. Suits. Dress codes. Most human beings in the western world dress to appear more alike, not different.

Often, we do both or either. What we lean towards though, does seem to reflect our essential view of the world. One example of this division can be seen in the simultaneous emergence of the punk music scene in New York and London in the 1970s.

Emblematic of the nascent New York punk scene, The Ramones dressed in tight blue jeans, t-shirts and black leather jackets – the ironically ubiquitous post-war uniform of rebellion. Punk in America was steadfastly anti-fashion – it wasn’t cool to dress differently from one another. This sameness is reflected in almost all aspects of American style and stems from revolutionary roots, showing how all men are created equal, and of course, to distinguish the New World from the old one. Although the American dream that anyone can achieve whatever they want can be interpreted as an extreme form of individualism, the actual philosophy is one of equality and the result is that American style is essentially homogenous.

Concurrently in London, The Sex Pistols exhibited a very different visual display of punk – it was a scene where the importance of fashion superseded even the music. The uniform of rebellion was subverted, everything was customized, and the idea was to appear as different as possible – one common comment from contemporary observers was that they had never seen anything like it before.

It makes sense that the European version of punk would be much more about emphasizing aesthetic diversity. In England, different classes of society have always dressed to express inequality. This historical hangover is why fashion thrives with such intensity in Europe, and why innovation in Western fashion trends develops more frequently in London than anywhere else.

Of course there is natural bleed-through and contradiction between these opposing forces which make sorting out an individualist sartorial expression from a collective one more complicated than you’d think. Hierarchies will assert themselves in hypocritical ways even when the superficial appearance appears to be collective – whether it is subtle tweaks in a Savile Row tailored suit, an expensive pen in a Mao suit pocket, or an artfully distressed pair of expensive Dolce & Gabbana jeans. Fashion dies hard.

Although I would like to think of myself as intellectually individualist, I’ve noticed that my own personal style is far more collectivist. I tend to dress to blend in rather than stand out, and I have a casual classicist preference that is quintessentially indicative of my North American roots. This also, not coincidentally, extends to my illustration style, which seems to appeal to American clients much more than European ones. I recently realized, or admitted to myself, that my work, like my closet, skews much more towards mainstream than avant-garde.

I’m curious… do you dress more individualist or more collectivist? Does it reflect your personal philosophies at all, or what part of the world you live in?

Whenever I attend a fashion illustration exhibition, or otherwise find myself in the company of fashion illustration enthusiasts, I hear variations on this sentiment: “fashion illustration is having a moment“! My inner reaction is always: is it, really? What does this mean, exactly?

A moment.

To me, “having a moment” in the context of fashion means that for a period of time, fashion shines the spotlight on your particular specialty, attention shines on the work across all media, rates inflate, and superstars emerge – that is, names become recognizable even to outsiders. Photographers had a moment in the 1950s and 1960s. Designers had their big moment in the 1970s and 1980s. Models had their moment in the 1990s. Currently, bloggers and fashion editors are both having their moment. Outside of these “moments”, the practitioners of their respective crafts carry on doing their thing, and a few outliers will make a name for themselves on an individual basis, but for the most part careerists receive relatively modest levels of scrutiny and interest.

I think fashion illustrators had their moment in the 1940s. That was when Bérard and Gruau were superstars – their artwork was featured on magazine covers, and their work even influenced designers rather than the other way around. At that time, fashion illustration was everywhere – mail-order catalogues, advertising, home sewing patterns – a lot of hands were needed to create all those drawings. When I was in school, I voluntarily studied fashion illustration texts from the 1940s, in which it was clear that fashion illustration was treated as a common, appropriate profession for young ladies to occupy themselves with between graduation and marriage. Fashion illustration paid, sometimes quite well, as Elizabeth Hawes documented in Fashion is Spinach.

So, no, I don’t think fashion illustration is having a moment right now, or will anytime in the near future. That’s just wishful thinking. The current state of fashion illustration is a tiny niche on the periphery of fashion’s consciousness. Even within the industry, the names of fashion illustrators aren’t well known. When you tell people outside of the fashion industry that you are a fashion illustrator, the reactions are always quizzical. Which is fine – you can’t make a moment, even if a moment can make you. Just know that if you pursue a fashion illustration career now, your chances of become rich and famous doing it are virtually nil. Even fashion illustrators at the top of their game right now live in middle-class, relative obscurity.

A career.

Despite reduced circumstances, fashion illustration still carries on. There are about half a dozen well-known, respected fashion illustrators with names that are recognized, at least within the industry. For some reason, most of them live in London. Beyond that, there is a small cohort of full-time working fashion illustrators struggling to make a name for themselves (I include myself among this number), and a much broader population of amateur, and part-time fashion illustrators who often combine their work with other professions. There are also the more general illustrators who also occasionally do fashion work.

Fashion illustration is currently making the media/technology shift along with the rest of the creative world. Along with illustration as a whole, fashion artists are increasingly creating careers online. Personality has always been an essential component of creating a name for yourself, and the up-and-coming cohort of the future-famous (moment withstanding) tend to also be bloggers – most notably Danny Roberts, Kathryn Elise, and of course Garance Dore. As the internet has become the starting point, the role of the agent or editor as the mediator in launching an illustrator’s career is waning.

There are two main ways to build a career as a fashion illustrator. You can create an original body of work and sell it as originals and prints, either through galleries or online. This type of career is more on the “art” end of the spectrum. Or you can assemble an online portfolio, based on which freelance clients will hire you, as I do. This is more aligned with the “commercial” side of the business. Or you can do both. There is a third, more obscure stream you can sail down too – but I’ll get to that at the end of this (long) post.

A trend.

One thing I find fascinating and unique about modern editorial and commercial fashion illustration is its susceptibility to micro-trends. Illustration is very rarely used in major fashion magazines now, and for some reason when it is it seems that certain styles tend to be ubiquitous for short periods of time. In the late 1990s as computers were just beginning to be used as a tool, vector spot illustrations were suddenly everywhere. Though Jason Brooks actually works in Photoshop (example above), he has become the most well-known example of this slick style. When editors became tired of the digital look, there was a reactionary shift back to classic painterly effects, notably David Downton and Stina Persson.

This lovely 2004 ad campaign for Choice by Calvin Klein was illustrated by the multitalented Charles Anastase. Anastase used photo-realistic pencil rendering, done so tightly that every hair was articulated. This was a major campaign and I remember seeing and remarking upon it at the time because fashion illustrations are so rarely on billboards. It would have been great if it had inspired more brands to commission illustrated campaigns – but instead it inspired a host of photo-realistic pencil-rendering fashion illustrators. This has become the most common style of fashion illustration, and now in 2012 it is dangerously near saturation.

It is very difficult to differentiate the styles of illustrators who use this technique unless they combine it with some other element (like Richard Kilroy‘s linear effects). There are also copyright and ownership issues when the illustrations are based on fashion photography, not to mention the identity of the models. In a way, the proclivity for this style of shifting analog illustration towards photography mirrors photography’s own migration towards illustration with digital dependency on photoshop. Perhaps it indicates a future category of imagemakers, the photostrators? Still, my heart goes out to the illustrators whose careers are based on this style, which is not likely to keep fashionable favour forever.

Never mind the medium, no fashion illustrator is immune to the ends of trends. The main thing that differentiates fashion illustration from any other type of illustration is its currency. A fashion illustration’s essential quality must always reflect the attitudes and tastes of its time – as a result fashion illustration dates very quickly and fashion illustration careers are rarely long ones unless the illustrator is remarkably adaptable, like the great Antonio.

An idea.

The other aspect of fashion illustration that differentiates it from the rest of the illustration industry is that it also plays a vital, creative role in design development. As an illustrator who also creates ideation sketches, design drawings and technical flats for designer clients, I have a very personal interest in fashion illustration that is used for practical purposes. To me, these are often the most fascinating types of fashion illustration, and I find it poignant that such a huge swath of drawn material is not for public consumption. It bothers me that when fashion illustration is discussed, its hidden industrial role is so often ignored.

This is why fashion illustration will never be eclipsed by photography. Sketching plays a secret, significant role in fashion: the genesis of an idea.

I have been a committed, or addicted, fashion blogger for over six years now with the archives to prove it. There is no point in downplaying or denying it – I love this blog and I put a lot of heart, and time, into it. I never did unpaid internships to get into fashion – instead all my free time and priceless hopes I pinned on this URL.

So here we are. Perhaps indirectly, I’ve become a fashion illustrator. I am fulfilling a childhood fantasy. I absolutely adore what I do, and I feel like I still have a long way to go, lots of things to make and say and do.

Great, right? It is. Here’s the thing about a blog-based creative career – it is a capricious occupation. Don’t be fooled by the edited facade we throw out there; it’s just glamour. Sometimes things get sticky. Projects get cancelled. Payments are delayed. You have a quiet week. A quiet month. Times when opening your email feels like scratching a lottery ticket.

So, how about the blog then, what can it do to pull some weight? I’ve tried a few things – my experiments with sponsorship are on the public record. My early efforts integrated quite a bit with the content of the blog, and after I tried it, I didn’t feel like it was the right direction. I wanted Final Fashion to be universal and as free as possible from obligations. I wanted to treat the blog more like art.

A while ago, I had the opportunity to sell a post. I rarely respond to these opportunities, but I had an illustration project cancel that week so I was thinking about money. It turned out that the client was high profile, the rate they offered was excellent and the content they wanted me to post was pretty cute. This time, I treated it like a fashion ad in a magazine, or a commercial on a TV show. Disconnected from the rest of my content.

I bought another week in London, thanks to the goldmine of fashion blogging. After just six years of mostly-unpaid labour. If Vogue can sell off bits of itself, why can’t I?

Was it worth it? I have no idea. Final Fashion is not a shopping blog or a personal style blog. It seemed like a few regular visitors found it a bit jarring, and most took it in stride. When I solicited reactions, some readers thought it would have been better if I had included more of myself in the sponsored content somehow. This came as a surprise to me – sponsored content on fashion blogs is often a little too integral for my taste. Especially on the personal style blog end of the spectrum, professionalization is beginning to heavily distort content. Now it seems like the genre is about to enter some kind of existential crisis.

As a niche fashion blogger and independent creative careerist who has mixed feelings on monetizing, here are my personal thoughts on how to sell out and still love your fashion blog.

• Never rely on your blog for income. Depending on the blog will inhibit your ability to be creative, it will also make it more difficult to take time away from the blog when you need to. Beware inadvertently turning your role into a media salesperson and content-generator, when your true calling is elsewhere. If a serendipitous sponsor opportunity comes along, by all means take it – but treat it like mad money, not rent.
• Set a high bar for how much a post sells for, keep the independent:sponsored content ratio as high as possible.
• Selling out is not a sin. Almost all artists have to navigate this challenge in order to finance the pursuit their craft, and the snobs who say otherwise are anti-creative. Sponsorship is not universally bad or good – but like any business choice, it has tradeoffs. Be careful.
• The more of your blog you sell off, the less the blog is yours. If your ego is as heavily invested in your blog as mine is, you know what a personal endeavour this pursuit can be. Value your authorship, and keep your independence.

Three hundred years ago, the guillotine divided men from fashion. Ever since, the individuality of modern man has become an above-the-collar issue. The Great Masculine Renunciation underscored great modern ideals like equality, social mobility, and the worthiness of work. The sacrifice that the abandonment of fashion symbolizes is less often considered.

Last year, I explored the idea of whether fashion is – or could be – feminist. Reflecting on the problems of reconciling the mixed messages that result from combining gender equality rhetoric with sexually distinctive clothing, I theorized that fashion as a feminine domain might have something to do with the visual nature of male sexuality. Since then my personal point of view has changed. I’ve come to believe that gendered clothing has way more to do with class than sex.

Before the French Revolution, fashion was divided by class, not by gender. Aristocratic men, like King Gustav III of Sweden and his brothers, above, approached fashion and grooming with the same level of expression, indulgence and care that their female counterparts did. Instructions for arranging men’s hairstyles of the time seems excessive and complex even to modern women. The use of fashion highlighted the leisured lifestyle of the nobility, and lower classes had no access to the time and money style demanded.

The political revolutions of the 18th century were reflected vividly in the clothing of men. While the power rested with the nobility, the bourgeois adopted the pretentions of aristocratic fashion. As financial and political power began to shift to the new middle class, any assumptions to aristocratic style became subject to mockery, and the tide turned. Even those to the manor born began to dress in a way that emphasized equality and fraternity.

The renunciation of fashion occurred simultaneously with another renunciation – of emotional expression. As men symbolically abandoned the excesses of physical aesthetics, and their clothing became more rational, practical, and understated, so did acceptable masculine displays of feeling. Male romantic heroes became notoriously inaccessible. Modern men’s clothing is often directly derived from military uniforms – evoking regimental, rigidly ordered ideals of masculinity.

Like women, men also had a small dress reform movement moment, which was similarly mocked and diminished in its time. Men also long to escape from the gendered expectations and demands of society through aesthetic expression. In modern times, women have won the option of adopting masculine attire if they desire without fear of diminishment. Men have not yet achieved that freedom, as this photo project demonstrates.

Fashion dies hard. Even after men attempted to discard fashion, fashion still had a sneaky way of sticking around. The most cited poster boy of masculine renunciation is the prototypical modern dandy, Beau Brummel. Denied the frivolity and artifice of the Macaronis of centuries past, Brummel instead achieved sartorial one-upmanship by applying excessive restraint, thus introducing irony into the world of fashion. The limited scope of acceptable masculine expression has encouraged aesthetically-minded men to develop an unhealthy obsession with extreme minutiae most famously parodied in American Psycho.

Just as middle class men once switched the script by asserting sartorial authority of practicality over courtly indulgence, the achievement of gender equality will be underscored not by women adopting clothing considered masculine, but by men adopting styles currently considered feminine. Because the instigation of all fashion is predicated on changes to power structures, this will happen simultaneously as women achieve greater authority and financial clout. We’re seeing the beginning of this now, as men gain more expressive freedom – at the risk of being judged by the same harsh aesthetic standards as women.

You would think that in fashion, vanity would be the deadliest sin. Of course it isn’t – it is the highest virtue in our world. We brag about vanity, we flaunt it, we compliment each other on it. Not greed either, it is not uncommon to hear “excessive” as an effusive, un-ironic compliment. We take pride in taking pride, rewarding big egos. Sloth is enshrined in the cult of “effortlessness“. Lust glosses over every advertisement.

Fashion is not bashful in declaring its unholy adoration of of unwholesome decadence, no wonder these themes are a common indulgence in magazine spreads. While it may pay lipstick-service to it, fashion doesn’t concern itself too much with the stylish possibilities of virtue. Though it is true that fashion deems gluttony abhorrent, it is by no means the worst infraction a stylish citizen can make.

No, the sin that we deny, the one we speak of in furtive, hushed tones, like addicts in denial, is Envy. Every fashion friend that I’ve had the privilege of an honest conversation with has revealed their own battles with jealousy. These rare, candid confessions elicit a kind of catharsis, because envy is the one sin we can’t share on social media. We all have to deal with it alone.

What is it about the fashion/envy axis that causes so much heartache and fear? It is because envy is the mirror image of desire. Desire, in every connotation of the word, is what fashion strives for. Flip the coin, same value: what we envy is what we yearn for.

We’re gluttons for our feeds these days. Observe what internet missives out there irk you have in common. If you’re anything like me, it’s because those updates touch on a tender spot. Almost always, the essence is: I want what she’s got. Why her and not me? We’ve all felt it, alone. It makes us act in peculiar ways. It infiltrates what we say and do. A little, every once in a while, is totally normal. A lot is devastating.

As fashion careerists, we’re in the business of desire, so envy is a recurring professional hazard – both for the envious and the envied. Figuring out how to flip it is valuable for your mental health, and your success. Because our most heartfelt wishes are unique to all of us, everyone’s strategy to deal with desire’s dangerous counterpart should be different. But because it’s a common thing we all share, my own philosophy might be worth sharing too. Here’s what I try to do.

Give yourself a break. We all feel jealous sometimes.

Edit your social media feeds to remove envy-provoking content. There’s no point in punishing yourself, following is always optional. To be honest, there are certain individuals that I enjoy following a lot who occasionally produce green-light updates for me. Depending on how resilient I’m feeling, I’ll un-follow and re-follow them. Since I can’t hide it, I’m pretty sure they know what it’s about – I’ve have some followers who behave like that too.

Achieve your desires. As you begin to gain confidence and accomplishments, you’ll notice that envy begins to fade away. Conquer desire, conquer envy. So always go for what you want. If you don’t know what you want, examine your envy. Is there a theme, a common flashpoint? Take your focus away from the envy, point yourself towards the desire, and go for it.

If you are the object of envy: be humble, be empathetic, and above all carry on doing whatever you’re doing. If you are inciting envy, it is because you are also lighting desire on fire. You’ve struck a vein of fashion gold. Run with it.

We’re four years into fashion blogging’s California Dream. In 2006, fashion blogging was obscure and virtually ignored. In 2008, the mainstream fashion media turned a handful of street style and personal style bloggers into stars. Brands jumped in on the hype and blog campaign budgets burgeoned. For a while now it’s seemed like even minor bloggers can score major partnerships and c/o has become common. Going pro began to seem like an easy route to fame and fortune and self-help sources set the standard. And standard was what we got.

Gold rush mentality is for imitators, not innovators. Thus, the current state of fashion blogging: a future archive of indistinguishable individuals wielding SLRs, and a rotation of affectations in lieu of the new. The division of attention is yielding diminishing returns for middle-of-the-packers – brands are bailing in favour of celebrities, the industry is losing enthusiasm for blog coverage, readers are disgruntled and comment culture has devolved.

Starting a fashion blog in 2006 was delusional because no one was doing it… launching a fashion blog in 2012 is even more delusional because everyone is doing it. If you’re in fashion, you should know which edge of the curve is worth entering. Which means that every fashion blogger with any sense is wondering what’s next for our medium.

Style blogging is not dead. Street style photography is as old as photography itself – it won’t die, and there will be successors to the current crop. The well-dressed girl with the mysterious power to sell us whatever is on her back is as old as time and as today’s it girls turn into women, tomorrow’s it girl personal style bloggers will replace them.

Extraordinary talents like Rumi Neely and Tommy Ton will always find an audience. In the past decade, what happened was that technology created a gap, briefly allowing more ordinary talents a taste of notoriety while the media establishment struggled with transition. Now, the tide is reversing; instead of blogger-turned-professional, we have entered the era of professional-turned-blogger. As established venues for their work disappear, experienced creatives are out of necessity, getting over their technophobia. They are in the perfect position to benefit from the rise of individualized media at the expense of a masthead. They bring their skills and reputations with them, significantly raising the top standard of work we see online.

The result is that the barriers to enter fashion, which were artificially low for the past five years are returning to their usual place – high. Amateurs aspirants who managed to slip in through the internet’s side door now have to rely on some combination of hard work, talent, connections, money, beauty, good timing and luck to stay inside fashion’s good graces. Just like everyone else.

Since I posted about some of my favourite fashion queens, I’ve been alerted to a couple of outstanding omissions and discovered a couple new favourites. While not all of them are necessarily fashion-y, all of them have a keen sense of majesty and thrilling stories about how they used their power. Here they are.

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Queen Nefertiti played a symbolic role in a religious revolution. Otherwise, very little is known of her life or death. Her bust, discovered in 1912, has become an indelible modern image of feminine majesty, just as her alleged torso evokes idealized fertility.

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Eleanor of Aquitaine is remembered as an icon of courtly love, but her real life story (as I learned thanks to BBC’s She-Wolves) was much more interesting than fairy tales. As one of just a handful of fierce Medieval Queens who lived in an era where power had to be physically fought for, Eleanor’s role as a monarch was dependent on being the mother of an heir, and very precarious despite her considerable intelligence and ambition.

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Queen Nzinga of the Ndongo, like Hatshupset, avoided the question of gender by crowning herself King. With a wily way of playing her opponents off of one another, she secured her kingdom in the turbulent era of early colonialism, playing an ambiguous, notorious role in history. The most famous Nzinga anecdote has her imperiously perching on a servant’s back when no chair was offered to her.

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Empress Elisabeth of Austria is perhaps the most fashion-y queen of them all. Thanks to Lorna for properly introducing me to her! Brilliant, eccentric, and vain, “Sisi” remains forever beloved for her cult of beauty. Her hair took four hours a day to maintain, during which she would study, she had a very unusual diet and perhaps even an eating disorder, was dressed in exquisite House of Worth gowns, and when she aged she ceased allowing her image to be reproduced.

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Are there any more amazing fashion queens out there? I love discovering more!

The origins of my interest in fashion were survey texts I found in the library of the small town I grew up in. Most fashion history books tend to be organized one decade per chapter, simplifying the chaos of costume history into clearly demarcated digits. Often they include cute little charts on silhouettes and hemlines like the one above. I loved the neat little rows of figures, and without a doubt that deep, early impression formed the format I would adopt as an illustrator.

As I discovered fashion at the end of the 1980s as an eight year old, the tidy division of decades was beginning to break down. The sharp-shouldered silhouette dissolved in the 1990s. I remember looking forward to the end of the century so I could see the 20th century laid out in a row of 10 clearly defined figures, but of course by the time that happened, I was old enough to realize that the 1990s didn’t fit the formula. There was no single silhouette that somehow contained the essence of the decade.

Having exhausted the survey-texts of my hometown library, in 2001 I started fashion school and began systematically working my way through the fashion, textile, sewing, art, design, illustration and photography sections of the library, as well as the periodical archives. I got my tuition’s worth out of those stacks. As I did this, fashion’s patterns began to get more and more complex.

Still, there’s something satisfying, if superficial, about summing up a decade’s definition. Silhouettes have stopped standing in for decades and now signify more abstract concepts. This post is about how I think of the last four decades, and the character of the designers that emerged in each one.

The louche 1970s silhouette of bell bottoms and blowouts does seem to suit a decade of deconstruction. There was a great relaxation of sexual signifiers – men and women both grew their hair long, abandoned structured clothing and embraced colour and pattern. Casual came of age. The last modern western youth culture drummed the postmodern death knell with punk. Exhausting modern street style, designers and rock star trendsetters alike turned to importing inspiration from the past and abroad. The frenzy of appropriation increased the momentum of the homogenization of international fashion culture.

In contrast, the designers who wove their labels in this decade are autobiographical auteurs. Giorgio Armani, Diane von Furstenberg, Betsey Johnson, Calvin Klein, Jean Paul Gaultier… and at the end of the decade, Gianni Versace.

The 1980s was the last decade that did have a stereotypical silhouette – sharp-shouldered supermen and women. It was the last time media was still monolithic enough to brand a decade with a catchphrase. There is an essential straight-forwardness  to the 1980s that we will never recapture. Rich people looked like rich people, and that’s what fashion was for. Fashion was still a small scene and mysterious at the beginning of the decade. It parlayed that glamour into the big business fashion has become.

By the end, it was celebrified, corporate, and at the peak of its power. Supermodels. Branding, a pretty straight-forward way to commoditize. Money was cheap. The many designers that established their businesses in this decade became rich and powerful and continue to dominate decades later, with huge companies. Heavy hitters from the class include Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, Miuccia Prada, Yohji Yamamoto, Dolce & Gabbana, Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, and Michael Kors.

The 1990s, the decade that defies easy visualization, was fashion’s intellectual phase. It evolved from a straightforward business into something much more complex and self-aware. For the first time it was the subject of rigorous critical and academic attention, and schools became very important and influential. Thus, the dialogue between designers and media became much more sophisticated. Braindead branding was abandoned and designers began to challenge the boundaries of fashion using narrative and spectacle.

Just as the television monolith exploded into a multi-channel universe, so did fashion. The demand for increasing theatre and provocation sped up. Youth cultures were practically stillborn before they were absorbed, and the world was plundered for every available aesthetic. That’s why there’s no unifying symbol for the decade.

In retrospect, the brainy 1990s was an amazing decade for fashion and produced many diverse, compelling creators. They have not yet been able to build the massive empires of their predecessors, though. Alumni include Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, Anna Sui, Isabel Marant, Jeremy Scott, Viktor & Rolf, Roland Mouret, Rick Owens, and Junya Watanabe.

The 2000s was a difficult decade to enter fashion. The success and storytelling of the last two decade’s designers inspired a lot of us to apply to fashion school. At the same time, like every industry, fashion was facing the challenges of a media transition and the consequences of an increasingly complicated world. Again, there is no way to nail down a single silhouette to tie the aughties into a neat knot.

Money has become much more expensive, just as media has become cheaper. Fashion has become more about media than the other way around. The scarcity of resources, and the division of attention has produced a very harsh environment for new names on labels. Perhaps it’s no surprise that designers of this decade now often turn to uncontroversial, technique-based design or celebrity dressing. Fashion seems like it has become more muted, or maybe we’ve all just become jaded from too much visual stimulation.

It’s hard to tell which designers from this decade will be able to establish long-term careers. My bets are on Alexander Wang, Proenza Schouler, Christopher Kane, J.W. Anderson, Gareth Pugh, and Zac Posen.

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Who knows what’s in store for the 2010s? We live in interesting times. The only thing that’s certain is that I can’t draw an outline around fashion anymore.

When I read about this UN expert stating that Rodarte’s Fall 2012 “Australian” inspired collection was offensive, I was… confused. The designers had licensed the images from the artist, so it wasn’t like they had done anything illegal or hateful. I couldn’t imagine the Rodarte sisters in their studio plotting to nefariously decontextualize Aboriginal art. What is cultural appropriation, anyway? And why am I so culturally insensitive that I can’t even tell when appropriation is offensive? Is there something wrong with me?

I don’t like to jump to conclusions so these questions led to a long line of online inquiry… and at the end of a long weekend reading all sides of a relatively new and controversial subject, I still feel ambivalent about it. A lot of what is written about cultural appropriation on the internet is very difficult for a new initiate to the subject to get into – much of what is available is accusatory and angry and doesn’t offer any clear directives. It seems like this kind of rhetoric builds a barrier to understanding what exactly the issue is, because it took me quite a while to find a demystifying description, and I don’t think most people would take that kind of time.

To get my problem out of the way first – I think the reason why I am culturally insensitive is twofold. One – I enjoy offensive stuff. To me, fashion needs friction to be interesting. The edges where fashion offends are where new fashions form. As such, I tend to view stuff that others perceive as offensive with detached curiousity. Two – I’m white, atheist, and have been raised with many privileges within the world’s most dominant culture. I have no experience of belonging to a distinct race, religion or culture, so my ability to truly empathize is limited. I have to be deliberate to be conscientious.

So, why are the Rodarte sisters culturally insensitive? Many critics suggested that the designers should have known better in the aftermath of the 2010 M.A.C. collaboration controversy, where the names of the cosmetic colours referenced a town in Mexico most famous for systematic violence against women. In that case, they released an official apology and retraction, and M.A.C. pulled the line and donated projected revenues to appropriate charities. Like many followers of fashion, it was the first time I learned the story of Juarez.

In all of the coverage of the controversy, I didn’t find anyone who asked why the inspiration referenced was so dark. The collection itself was, in my opinion, one of Rodarte’s career highlights – I even created a paper doll inspired by it. To me, Rodarte’s design identity belongs in the same category as artists like Lana Del Rey – let’s call it American Decay. Sadness and dissolution are part of the beauty. The sisters take a lot of their inspiration and identity (even their name) from the southwestern United States where they grew up and are still located. The Mexican border is close to home, and their natural proclivity as narrative designers towards creating sad beauty explains why they were drawn to Juarez because of, not in spite of, its tragic story. The distressed Quinceañera dresses created an indelible impression and were well received.

All of these are reasons are why Rodarte Fall 2010 was a successful collection in a creative sense – it told a story that obviously resonated with the artists – and in turn, their audience. The risk of cultural insensitivity in this case was well worth the artistic result. The makeup collaboration however, is by its very nature a commercial endeavour. This is why it diminished its source material, instead of honouring it.

So why did the Fall 2012 “Australian” collection also diminish its subject? To the critical eye, the pretty dresses with their printed motifs seem innocuous, even boring. As far as collections go, it was less successful in creative terms. Why would the sisters choose to source such distant reference points that resulted in a predictable, dull collection? Why did they choose to use the idea of Australia, rather than visiting the country itself?

Fashion designers tend to resort to appropriation once they’ve exhausted their own autobiographical resources. Yves Saint Laurent launched into a long series of appropriations in the seventies as his creative faculties were in decline. After abandoning the Dior tradition of using abstract “lines” labeled with letters of the alphabet, YSL found success culture-mining local European street style, the world of art, and his own childhood in Morocco. After that, then what? In his case, it was Orientalism.

Fashion is ever-hungry for novelty. While many designers start out using their own experiences as launching points, the ability to turn that into something new and unusual on a relentless six-month schedule is creatively exhausting for even the best and brightest. While it may seem like cultural appropriation is the lazier way out – and it is in the sense that infusing novelty from a diffuse dominant culture is near-impossible – you just wouldn’t accuse fashion designers of being lazy if you knew one or tried to be one. It is one of the most demanding creative professions both in terms of time and money. Why did the Rodarte sisters not take a trip to Australia? They probably would have loved to – what is most likely is they didn’t have the time – and if industry gossip is true, they don’t have the budget either. Fashionable appropriation just isn’t as great a money-maker as it was when Pierre Berge launched Opium in 1977.

Cultural appropriation is a risk that fashion designers take – sometimes garnering success and acclaim, and sometimes provoking offense and controversy. In either scenario, they’re staying in the game, where the rules state that boring the media means getting ignored by the media. So if designers can’t co-opt other people’s culture, what else can they do?

Tom Ford is the ultimate example of a designer who has remained true to his autobiographical antecedents. When he’s criticized, it’s for always doing the same thing regardless of what label he works at or how many seasons he’s presented riffs on the same self-centered obsessions. Because he’s Tom Ford, he doesn’t apologize. Ford is not in fashion to push it forward, it it is more important for him to trust his creative instincts. Most independent designers don’t have the sheer power to be able to get away with this kind of obstinate consistency and stay relevant.

The other option for narrative-driven first-world fashion designers is mining the many subcultures within the dominant culture rather than citing indiginous and endangered cultures. There are a vast array of examples of wild style tribes available in the margins of the mainstream – but that doesn’t mean that controversy is avoided by doing so, and the aesthetic variety is limited to post-modernism.

Perhaps these are the reasons why in the last decade, in terms of design, the major trend is towards creativity via technique rather than subject.

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I like a cultural free market, because I want fashion to be as fascinating as possible. I think that it’s good for designers to risk offense. Offending people and provoking criticism has positive consequences for cultural awareness, whether indirectly by publicizing examples of oppression or directly by questioning the modern validity of traditional cultural practices. The risk of so much dismal rehashing of stereotypes is worth it for allowing the shocking possibilities of irreverence and audacity.