Every woman should have a red dress and a blue dress. When you put on a dress in one of these colours, you’re not just putting on a dress. You’re putting on centuries of cultural coding. You’re activating feminine archetypes. You’re signalling.

Red and blue have stories that should be told together – I highly recommend this book if you can find it in the library.

The Virgin Mary – as pictured by Da Vinci above, has been dressed consistently in blue for most of modernity. Her image is so ubiquitous, she is the reason why blue invokes virginity, purity, loyalty and nurturing. The Virgin Mary represents a real female who was chosen to play a supernatural role – and she’s not the only heroine who takes that path.

Mary Magdalene, on the right in a painting by Caravaggio, is traditionally depicted in red. Her story is complicated and confusing, and not much is known about her. Her account of the resurrection was mistrusted because she was a woman. A mysterious and mystical figure who was close to the saviour at the end of his life, she also carries associations with prostitution and carnality. In Christianity, blue is heavenly, and red is earthy.

Lewis Carroll’s character Alice is always pictured in blue – here in the Tim Burton incarnation. The colour is appropriate for a virginal character who is on a curious journey.

Another Tim Burton character from the movie Beetlejuice, Lydia, always dresses in black – except for the wedding scene. It’s an unholy, unwanted marriage. This scene in particular enthralled and terrified me as a child, and the dress is a vivid memory.

Another classic children’s story with a blue-clad heroine is Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. In a land of vivid colours (the original Baum books were full of tripped-out colour symbolism), Dorothy is a real girl lost in a fantasy world just like Alice. The similarity of their iconic dresses is pretty striking.

Nothing says “showgirl” like a red dress – and this slit-up-to-there example worn by Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell to sing “Two Little Girls from Little Rock” in the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is another indelible cinema memory of mine. This is a movie about best female friends, seeking money, love and adventure.

Thanks to Rachel, I got to see The Iron Lady yesterday (excellent film) and was fascinated with the very deliberate costuming. Streep’s Thatcher dresses in blue for the entire film – even glimpses into her closet show a rail full of various shades of blue. The only exception is when she loses the support of her party, she is dressed in red.

The screening we saw was put on by a group that promotes Conservative women running for office, and there was a very interesting, very capital-C panel afterwards with Thatcher’s biographer, a couple of male colleagues, and a female contemporary. The red/blue dichotomy was even visible on the panel, with the more moderate panelists wearing red dresses or ties and the more conservative panelists dressed in straight up blue.

… it reminded me of another conservative politician who very visibly adopted a red leather motorcycle jacket – Sarah Palin. Palin often wears red jackets – they suit her role as a ‘maverick’ rebel. (But with a charm bracelet, for real?) Ultimately, she has ended up being a polarizing figure who hasn’t been able to inspire – or demonstrate – loyalty.

The political connotations of these two colours are so prevalent, whether a politician wears one or the other is a significant signal.

True blue, on the other hand, is fecund with fidelity. Kate Middleton’s selection of a blue dress to announce her engagement probably wasn’t chosen simply because it compliments her natural colouring. Of all the blue dresses in the world, this was the one that dominated 2011.

Blue is a queenly colour – Marie Antoinette famously favoured it. In Coppola’s film version, the character of Du Barry the King’s mistress wore red by contrast. Another would-be queen who literally lent her name to a shade of blue? Wallis Simpson.

There are no fashion designers who have claimed the blue dress as their own – but red dresses belong to Valentino. Did you know that studies show that red dresses actually do draw more male attention? It might not be a cultural thing as much as a biological one. Red also creates banging brands, whether you’re Coca Cola or Valentino.

Walt Disney loved heroines in blue and his version of Cinderella is no exception. The fairy-godmother makeover comes complete with a classic blue princess gown to win over Prince Charming. Minnie Mouse, on the other hand, wears red.

“I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way,” says Jessica Rabbit. It’s true – that painted-on red dress she wears makes it hard to picture her as a good girl, even if she is. When wearing red or blue, it is good to be aware of the messages these colours send, because if you’re mixing messages it is better to do it with intention.

If you’ve ever doubted the capacity of clothing to transform, just try on a red or blue dress and see what kind of heroine you can be. The best part is, we can have both in our closets.

Fashion is the Cinderella industry. A cultural step-child – part media, part manufacturing. Part art, all commerce. It’s true – fashion doesn’t save lives – but why shouldn’t it be afforded the same respect afforded to other creative industries like music, film, or literature? Unlike most creative industries, fashion also arguably qualifies as a universal necessity. Yet it is routinely dismissed, usually by people who wear clothing.

One of the most poignant takeaways from The September Issue documentary was the visible frustration that Anna Wintour revealed, when she spoke of how her family doesn’t take her work seriously. It’s ridiculous that the most powerful woman in fashion is placed in a defensive position so frequently.

As Wintour said last year -

When women are in positions of power, and they’re featured in a women’s magazine like Vogue…they tend to be incredibly unfairly criticized. It’s an incredibly old-fashioned approach. Just because you’re in a position of power, and you look good and you enjoy fashion — does that mean you’re an idiot, or that it’s not seemly to be in a woman’s magazine? If a man is in GQ, they don’t get the same kind of criticism.

Deeply rooted cultural sexism is bad enough, but the greater irony is that fashion is frequently dismissed by feminists too. I recently found this fascinating video on sexism and friendship via Rachel. It did a great job of explaining to me how sexism is endemic within our language – how words with female associations are used as insults, for instance. These ideas go a long way to explaining to me why my “feminine” industry suffers from so much condescension. Then, at the end of the video during the question period, one of the professors, with apparent lack of self-awareness, advised her audience not to befriend women who were concerned with, to use her word, “frivolity”.

It occasionally happens to me too, and maybe you. You meet someone, explain what you do, and you instantly feel their respect for you evaporate. All of your accomplishments are reduced to mere “frivolity”. These snap judgements are often made by otherwise clever, educated, articulate people. For an intelligent person who works hard enough to enjoy some success in a competitive sector, it is maddening to be treated like you’re dumb by your contemporaries. It’s not like, when discovering someone is a journalist, you automatically assume they are an unscrupulous hack. But if you’re in fashion, the odd time you are put in the position of having to prove you aren’t a brainless bimbo… or a bitch.

Fashion is just as integral to human culture as any other creative industry. Sure, it’s just as corrupt as the rest of them. And yes, it has its fair share of mediocre players too. Still, music, art and narrative occasionally transcend, and so does fashion. Fashion people can be just as brilliant as they are beautiful – and their greatest creations play significant – and often unrecognized – roles in human history.

If you don’t understand or appreciate fashion, it would be nice if you could admit your ignorance instead of being condescending. Don’t bother trying to out-snob us. ;)

You can begin again. You don’t have to let your past, your circumstances, your name, even your face, hold you back. You can be anything you want to be… or at the very least, you can appear to be whatever you want to be. Maybe it’s the same thing.

Here are five inspiring women who re-created their image, and themselves, to achieve what they desired.

It may surprise you to learn that Marilyn Monroe is a heroine of mine. She represents the ultimate in self-creation through aesthetics. She was a brilliant, sensitive artist who deeply craved love – and who recreated her own image into a magnetic force that attracted adoration. To achieve this, she changed her hair, she fixed her nose, she adopted a new name. She art-directed herself, with stunning success.

Are you looking forward to The Iron Lady? I am. I didn’t know much about Margaret Thatcher before I moved here. The hate directed at her in this country is so incredibly fierce, I had to do some research. The most compelling artifact I found was Adam Curtis’ “The Living Dead – Part 3“. Thatcher is not only a self-creation – she attempted to re-create the country she led to suit her personal values as well. In a way, her ability to manipulate her own image was what allowed her to accomplish what once seemed impossible – becoming a female national leader. But when she imposed a similar process of transformation upon a nation, she failed. She is a great example of both the possibilities and the limitations of self-creation.

If anyone understands the intersection of aesthetics and power, it is Anna Wintour. Her iconic image is an exercise in hegemony – the look became more established as she became more established. She controls a position which historically is a tenuous, replaceable one – and yet, she is not going anywhere, anytime soon.

Ever since Christopher Kane sent his Spring 2011 show down the catwalk to the languid lilt of “Video Games“, the fashion industry fell in love with Lana Del Rey. The music industry – not so much. For some reason music media holds a preposterous prejudice against what it perceives as disingenuous. The irony is that Del Rey, rather than being a puppet from the pop music factory – is a self-recreation. Recovering from an earlier attempt at making it in music, she was renamed, injected a new face, and recreated her own debut. Her low-fi, home-made video was a hit, and now she’s a bonafide pop star. She’s like a role model for real makeovers.

The fairy godmother of self-creation for the internet age, Gala Darling recently reflected on 5 years of blogging. I’ve been reading her blog since 2008, and found her narrative of developing a career from scratch utterly fascinating. Her whole schtick is based on the idea of self-creation (or as she calls it, self love), for which she is an ideal example. Her hair, her name, her business, her attitude – are all intrepid inventions.

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I am a believer in second chances. I love the promise of reinvention that a new year  brings – a fresh page, another chance to begin. I love making resolutions. I love change. While I’ve never considered plastic surgery, I’m honestly considering the possibilities of a showbiz name. Why not – if it gives me a stronger shot at my dreams? In the internet age, we’re all self-creations to some extent – manipulating media to suit our own ambitions isn’t the exclusive domain of movie stars and politicians any more. You can Photoshop your own future.

To be fair, the re-invention game has its pitfalls. You can lose touch with reality, like Thatcher and Monroe did. Untangling image from essence can be a tricky psychological knot. Other human beings – especially it seems those from pre-internet generations or industries other than fashion – are mistrustful of those who seem too adept at transforming their own appearances.

Fashion always adores an aesthetic self-creation. You are free to appear as you wish to be seen, and if you can achieve that, you can do anything you want.

Of all the conventions of chick lit, my favourite by far is the quartet of queens – feminine foursomes. Like a deck of cards, each character has her suit. From Little Women to Mean Girls, from The Robber Bride to Sex and the City, this elemental formation of four recurs again and again.

Raised a skeptic, this has become my favourite kind of claptrap. I like the simplicity of the symbolism, the way it orders chaos neatly into quarters, and the way it provides a shorthand for describing essential personalities. Of course I identify with one even as I aspire to be all four. What about you?

The Queen of Diamonds is the female fire element. She is creative, combative, explosive. Beyond bright. A live wire. Fierce passions that rise and subside like lightning strikes. Intense ideas that burn bright and burn out. She signifies second chances, she loves a makeover, she lives to gamble, she deals in both delight and destruction.

The Queen of Spades is the female air element. She is an intimidating intellect. She articulates and manipulates. Her power is invisible, scentless, impossible to touch, yet it is a fantastic force. She has an untouchable quality – she’s analytical, dispassionate.  She is an authority in contrariness and control.

The Queen of Clubs is the female earth element. She is practical verging on prosaic. She is a nurturer, a manager, someone who makes things happen, someone who takes care. She is deeply sensual, super sexy, comfortable in her own body, feet firmly on the ground. She bestows abundance and obstinance.

The Queen of Hearts is the female water element. She is empathetic, emotional. Her romanticism is both refreshing and ridiculous. She takes the shape of her vessel, and easily escapes a tight grasp. She reflects those around her. She envelopes and evaporates, deserts and drowns. She deals in both despair and divinity.

I have been illustrating fashion full-time now for five years. Every once in a while I like to revisit the subject of how to hire a fashion illustrator. I often work with fashion designers, more than editorial clients, so as a guide this reflects that, though much of this information will be useful to any type of client for any type of creative work.

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“I need a fashion illustrator to draw my ideas!”

Cool! Wait, do you really? I get a lot of inquiries from people who want to be fashion designers and assume the first step is to hire someone to draw their ideas professionally. The truth is, a lot of established fashion designers do what they do with the roughest sketches you can imagine. Illustration is not a necessity, and in the early stages of a business it can be yet another liability. Hiring an illustrator before you’ve done anything else is a red flag that you don’t know what you’re doing and won’t be a reliable client.

I always refer these types of inquiries to Fashion-Incubator and Kathleen Fasanella’s book The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing. This is required reading for any wannabe fashion designer. Often fresh designers don’t really understand the scope of what they’re attempting to accomplish – this textbook lays it all out in plain language.

Ok, so you’ve read the book and you’re on your way. When do you need a fashion illustrator to draw your ideas? Here’s a few common scenarios:

1. You are making a persuasive business presentation or creating a sales document like a line sheet. Whether you’re selling to an investor or a buyer, if you’re in fashion you know that great images sell. Sometimes those images need to be illustrations.
2. You are communicating very specific design ideas to patternmakers, sample makers, and production. Sometimes language barriers and oceanic distances are involved, so very accurate, precise drawings are required to reduce the number of iterations involved in developing a finished design. This can save you money in the long run.
3. Your products require instructions for the consumer. Drawings have a simplicity and clarity that works well for instructional use, often better than photography and easier to reproduce, especially in black and white.
4. You want to use illustrations in your branding. Again, great imagery sells. So if it suits your brand, the right type of illustrations can lift your website, printed materials, and PR content to the next level.

How do you find the right fashion illustrator?

Look at their portfolio! When hiring a creative, a lot of people rely on their social network – they look for a friend of a friend who is an illustrator or a photographer or whatever. This is a terrible way to get the results you want – creativity isn’t a commodity. Two different illustrators working to the same brief can produce completely different  illustrations. You want to make sure that the illustrator you’re hiring has the ability to nail your vision. So checking out their portfolio is critical. Here’s what to look for.

1. You love their style. Their past work will be a good indication of their future work – so check out as many examples as you can. If you like certain images, bookmark them to refer the illustrator to later when you present the brief. Sometimes potential clients will send examples of work by other illustrators for reference material – my feeling as an illustrator when presented with this is “why didn’t you just hire that illustrator?” Being asked to imitate the work of another illustrator can feel borderline insulting/unethical. That doesn’t mean you should never use illustrations as reference, but if you do please make it clear that you understand the illustrator will interpret that material through the lens of their own style.
2. Their skills suit your project. If you’re looking for a technical fashion illustrator, you need to be working with someone who understands how clothing is constructed. If you’re doing children’s wear, you want to be working with someone who demonstrates flair at illustrating children. If you need an illustration that will be used as a logo, find an illustrator who understands the practical principles of graphic design. And so on.

So you’ve found the illustrator – or maybe several – you might want to work with. How do you approach a fashion illustrator with your project brief?

You do you have a project brief, right? A great project brief is a short document that has the following information:

1. A brief but detailed description of the scope of the project. What type of drawings do you need, and how many of them? What are they of? Do they need to be in colour or just line art? Front views only or back views too? Including a couple examples of reference images can be really helpful – the illustrator needs to know if the content they’re rendering is simple or complex.
2. An explanation of where and how the illustrations will be used. This will give the illustrator a sense of how visible or important the project is, which will help them accurately assess the value of the project.
3. A due date or timeline. When do you need the finished work by? Remember that rush jobs are very expensive – the more lead time you can offer, the better the rate will be.

This is the basic information an illustrator needs in order to develop an estimate. How much does a fashion illustration cost? It depends on these factors. So knowing that…

“Budget is totally an issue! How can I get the best deal?”

1. Let the illustrator set the schedule. As freelancers, our schedules vary wildly. If you give us the ability to fit your project in between other priorities, we can be more flexible with the rates.
2. Rethink the scope of the project. It would be great if you could afford 10 illustrations, but maybe you can get by with one. Perhaps you don’t need back views of every style. Perhaps line art is sufficient and you can forget about colour (cheaper to print, too).
3. Work with emerging talent. Working with students or recent graduates can be tricky as they won’t necessarily have a good sense of what they can do best and how long it takes. However, if you can give a promising young person a modestly paid opportunity you will benefit in good karma – and often excellent work – at a fraction of the price of a more experienced professional.

You’ve hired a fashion illustrator – awesome! What can you do as a client to help the project run smoothly?

1. Take the time to assemble and organize all your reference material. This is especially important for designer clients – create a folder for the project and subfolders for each specific style. Include as much information as you can to get your ideas across, both written and visual. Make sure your file names and your style numbers are all in order – it will make communicating about your project much simpler.
2. Respond clearly to correspondence. Good email hygiene goes a long way. When the illustrator gives you a rough sketch to review, take enough time to compile all your comments into one email, and understand that the project can’t move forward until you send them. Try not to send constant, ongoing updates or changes, especially by IM or other social networks. Keep all of the project-related correspondence in one place, keep it concise, and use appropriate subject lines.
3. Limit revisions. There is a statute of limitations on revisions before the illustrator starts adding them to the invoice. The first two points go a long way to reducing the amount of correspondence and iteration it takes to reach the finished work. The essence is all about knowing exactly what you want and communicating that clearly, sooner rather than later. Being aware of this saves you time and money, not only on illustration but in all aspects of life.
4. Pay promptly. A conscientious client makes an illustrator want to go the extra mile. If you pay the agreed amount at the agreed time, you’re a model client that the illustrator would want to work with again – and the work you receive will reflect that good will.

Any questions, is there anything I missed? Are you an illustrator yourself, do you have any comments to add?

In fashion, insider status is coveted by those who lack it and flaunted by those who have it. In a business that makes a shrine to exclusion, the idea of being omitted from a list or unseated at a fashion show is on a par with being excommunicated.

As someone who had the chance to walk inside the establishment, albeit in a second-tier fashion city, I subscribed to the insider glossy – being inside was good for business. I attended all different types of fashion events, took home bags of free swag, met more and more insiders, until I became a recognized feature on the scene in that city. Initially, the novelty of insider status delighted me – then I was pleased because I found I was gaining some recognition for my work and even some clients.

Everything was great. But weirdly, after just two years of this, I was beginning to recognize diminishing returns. I began to notice that I wasn’t meeting as many new people, simply because most of the same people were in attendance at these things. After I had established a core group of friends, events became less about exploring the unknown and began to become less exciting, more routine. How terrible to be jaded to generosity and special treatment so quickly.

The other thing that I began to be frustrated with was how this new layer of social obligation was obscuring the original objective of blogging. I was doing a lot of posts just because I felt I should. I felt my will-to-blog ebb and saw my traffic flatline. Last year, I gradually tried to take myself out of the loop, but it wasn’t until I moved to London that I truly got back “outside”.

Arriving in a new city where I was a bonafide outsider, I consciously decided not to ingratiate myself with the local PR companies and not to attend fashion events in a “professional” capacity. I quickly discovered that the intramural blogging league that had become so firmly established in Toronto also existed in London, and I didn’t want to risk being a part of it. I had come to see insider status as more of a liability than an advantage. On twitter, you can see it all go down in real time – fashion bloggers posting in lockstep following an event, the content being dictated by publicists instead of celebrating the individual creativity of the bloggers. Insider blogging has begun to resemble the rather faded, rote status of most printed fashion publications. I call it mid-level blogging. Being inside is toxic to creativity.

The most interesting stuff in fashion blogging (and fashion generally) is happening at the edges – the top tier and the off-the-radar zones are where it is at. Looking at professionals I admire like Cathy Horyn, Tommy Ton, Dries Van Noten, Tilda Swinton – these are insiders who know how to behave like outsiders – and their work is outstanding as a result. I love finding fresh, creative bloggers who haven’t yet been exposed to the insider treatment – their work is guileless, uncontrived, often uneven in quality – but far more fascinating than the middle-of-the-packers.

This past year in London I got my blogger swagger back. I rediscovered the reasons why I started blogging in the first place and I upped my game. I zagged where everyone else zigged – not many fashion bloggers write long posts, so I write longer posts. I endeavour to include as much original material as I can in every post, writing or illustration. Before I post anything, I ask myself two questions. Is it universal? The best way to bust the blogger bubble is to be relevant regardless of location. Is it atemporal? Will this post be interesting if you read it six seconds after it’s posted, what about six months, what about six years later? I consciously try to eliminate as many exclusions as I can. Because my social life is more varied than ever before and the stimuli I seek out are unique to my own proclivities, I am constantly discovering inspiration in unexpected places. I find my life more interesting now – and my blog reflects that.

The response to the changes I’ve made has been wonderful – but even if I didn’t notice any growth at all, it would have still been worthwhile because I love Final Fashion more than ever. I am finally writing the blog I’ve always wanted to read – because I am an outsider again.

Why is there a narrow, singular beauty ideal? Why are the current dominant attributes of beauty always about being very thin, very blonde, and very young? Flip through any magazine on any subject and the beauty ideal stares back at you. The highest earning models, the biggest pop stars, past and future, almost always conform to the ideal. There is an argument that it is a top-down dictation from the beauty industry, but if you look at consumer-driven sites like lookbook or tumblr, the same ideal is still rewarded with the most hypes and hits. Chicken or egg – is the public brainwashed or is the industry just delivering what the public wants to see?

Walk down the street and you’ll see that many women make significant efforts to approximate the beauty ideal in their own appearance – most of the blondes you see are bottle-blondes, everywhere you hear women endlessly discussing weight and how to lose it, and cosmetic surgery to cheat aging has become commonplace. Just as we are losing diversity in other aspects of culture, the beauty ideal is less diverse than it ever was. Worldwide, people of all races and cultures are buying into bleach.

Why is this kind of beauty above all others in fashion? My theory is that it reflects an idealized image of whoever is perceived to hold the most power. In this case, Northern European features have been internationally dominant ever since the Renaissance and the period of colonization that followed. Fashion is innately hierarchical – it functions on the premise that human beings want to be admired by their peers. Wealth and influence, therefore, are what dictates the mainstream beauty ideal. In times where the wealthy are fat, so is the beauty ideal. If a certain race is powerful in a particular place or time, their features will be considered more beautiful. It’s a totally unfair system – just like all the other systems our society currently functions on.

Various missions to promote diversity in beauty ideals are well-intentioned but likely futile unless they address the root source of the beauty ideal. Even then, aiming to change widespread notions of beauty is on a par with reversing income disparity. What will change the beauty ideal will be massive shifts in power structures – for instance if China becomes the dominant world economy, it is likely that the beauty ideal will shift towards Asian features. More mature-appearing female models become more popular if older women hold a greater amount of wealth – this trend happened both in the 1950s and the 1980s. Darker-skinned models benefit more from visibly powerful cultural indicators like the Obamas and Oprah than they do from polite bourgeois notions of political correctness.

There is a beauty feedback loop in place – an ouroboros forms when models like the ones above, who by genetic accident reflect the beauty ideal become some of the highest-paid women in the world. You could even say that there is a beauty bubble – perhaps it will pop.

or, eight types of fashion designers.

People often ask designers about their inspirations, and how they begin their collections. The question “why do you design” isn’t so often asked but is also one I find interesting. As there are different movements in art, different genres of films and endless categorizations within music, so it is with fashion.

As a bit of a mental game, I have been thinking about how I would categorize modern designers. What I’ve come up with is 7 categories. [Amendment: added one more on the suggestion of Sarah Nicole Prickett.] Most designers overlap several categories, so of course this is somewhat simplified. The categories are based on what I think the most dominant contemporary design philosophies are.

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Narrators.

Alexander McQueen. John Galliano. Jean Paul Gaultier. Vivienne Westwood. Yves Saint Laurent.

These designers treat fashion as theatre – drama or comedy. Their collections tell stories, each with a thrilling climax. Beyond that, their entire careers also read like narrative arcs. They are adventurers, besides being outstanding characters in their own right.

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Characterists.

Donna Karan. Thierry Mugler. Gareth Pugh. Christian Lacroix. Valentino. Gianni Versace. Oscar de la Renta. Yohji Yamomoto. Olivier Theyskens. Alexander Wang. Rodarte.

These designers create for a muse, either real or imagined – dressing a distinctive protagonist. Their clothes appeal to people who cast themselves in their own lives – whether Mugler’s pop androids, Wang’s downtown slummers, or Valentino’s romantic heroines.

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Personalities.

Tom Ford. Coco Chanel. Marc Jacobs. Halston. Victoria Beckham. Karl Lagerfeld. Betsey Johnson. Gwen Stefani.

These designers use themselves as their own muse. In addition to being talented in design, they are also always articulate communicators in multiple media. Because they also saturate visual, written and audio, their work has a way of seeping through the skin of fashion’s bubble to the larger population. They create vivid brands – though not always brands that outlive their creator.

This group is also adept at something else – personal transformation. Without exception, these are exceptional, rare human beings. They have to work hard to keep up with themselves, and they do.

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Aspirants.

Michael Kors. Ralph Lauren. Calvin Klein. Giorgio Armani. Phoebe Philo.

These are the zeitgeist sensors. They tap into what people want to, as Calvin Klein puts its, “be”. They design with a lifestyle in mind, not necessarily a realistic lifestyle, but the ones that most people want to live. They outfit humanity for its dearest dreams, whether we admit it or not.

Because they flatter universal human desire to be admired, they are brilliant at establishing international brands with longevity.

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Conceptualists.

Margiela. Hussein Chalayan. Viktor & Rolf.

These designers are modern artists. Their work belongs in museums, their shows are statements. They approach disturbing subjects and push the boundaries of what a human body can physically adorn itself with. Their audience are all aficianados – most of them also creators in some capacity. You have to be somewhat literate in history and construction to appreciate a lot of their work, but the barriers to entry are part of what makes these designers so exceptional.

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Postmodernists.

Schiaparelli. Jeremy Scott. Ann-Sofie Back. Walter van Bierendonck. Rudy Gernreich. Henry Holland. Rei Kawukubo.

These designers could also be included with the conceptualists, I think the distinction here is that the work tends to be fashion-referential and often cleverly so. They are the op-ed page of The Fashion Times – as such their work also tends to be of-the-moment and not always enduring. They also demand a bit of pop culture and design intelligence to adequately absorb them.

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Technicians.

Christopher Kane. Vionnet. Mark Fast. Issey Miyake. Jeremy Laing.

I’ve already discussed technicians here – their starting point is the possibilities of materials. They are innovators, experimenters, the scientists of fashion. They influence the next generation of designers.

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Artisans.

Mr. Pearl. Angela Missoni. Paul Smith. Christian Louboutin.

These designers focus on developing a narrow specialization. They maintain tradition and continuity in design and construction. Tailors are the purest form of artisans. Many menswear designers favour a design process based on tradition. Certain brands like Burberry and Hermes demand a designer who can treat the past with respect.

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Of course this is just one way you could think of it. Does a particular type of designer resonate with you?

London’s fashion schools are internationally renowned for producing some of the most talented, famous modern fashion designers. Less often mentioned are the thousands of also-grads. The tons-to-watch every year produce some of the most fascinating fashion shows, full of earnest hopes and dreams and ambitions that often overwhelm the models who have to carry so much yearning. The visual onslaught is blinding in a way – it gets very difficult to sort out the strongest visions in a sea of potential.

Most striking to me as a North American is how education styles heavily influence the favoured approach of young designers. I went to a school that focused on justifying a market strategy – this was reflected in the type of grad collections we showed. Here, the emphasis is on innovation via technique. At the RCA, for example, they have two exhibitions throughout the year – one is called “Work-in-Progress” and displays a vast array of experimental swatches and effects. When you watch the final exits on the runway at the end of the final term, each collection is a riff on the techniques each student developed.

Having seen several grad shows and variations of  “Ones to Watch”, I can’t help but notice how the emphasis on technical effect overshadows any conceptual messages or narratives, obscures the personality of the designer, and most tragically, inhibits the currency and wearability of the garments.

I’ve discussed the differences between brand-driven designers and designer-technicians before. While technically focused designers often end up being influential to other designers, they almost always fail to develop a lasting legacy and the license-able name that goes with it. People don’t wear techniques – they wear fashion, and techniques alone don’t do what fashion needs to do – confer status. Technique-driven design is fascinating to hard-core fashion nerds, but it is not a route to riches. It is ironic that so many young hopefuls come to London to go to these star-making schools and yet the instruction they receive sends them down the path of obscurity.

I’ve illustrated this post with a few examples of great designer-technicians, both historical and current. At the top is Madame Grès, the Parisian couturier whose intricately pleated, sculptural designs defied ready-to-wear and consumed vast swathes of silk jersey.

Fortuny‘s legacy is set in the pleat technique that bears his name – despite the fact that he authored other textile innovations, most notably with printed velvet.

Madeleine Vionnet was a pioneering modernist in fashion. Just as modernism in architecture is more about exploiting the possibilities of modern materials than embellishment, Vionnet’s designs drew their essential qualities from the properties of fabric. She also worked with visual artists like Erte for prints and created more conventional work, but her legacy hangs on the bias for eternity.

Vionnet’s successor to the bias crown was New York couturier Charles Kleibacker, whose technical mastery resulted in seemingly seamless construction. The simplicity of his designs are so subtly tasteful, they do not loudly proclaim the way their creator revelled in the elemental nature of cloth. His understanding of the creative process informed his role as a professor and curator in later life.

Canadian-born, London-based designer and Central Saint Martins graduate Mark Fast is the most prominent modern technique-driven designer. His designs are based on the possibilities offered by knitting machinery – and the effects are often unusual and intricate up close. Taking a longer view though, the longevity of the machine-made aesthetic is, pardon the pun, a stretch.

Fast has the potential to switch to a brand-driven career – he’s handsome and personable, he’s got a great name, yet the Spring 2012 collection seemed like he is still struggling to escape the technique trap. Explorations into other techniques like crochet are distracting from the real challenge – defining the identity of the Fast female. A collaboration with leatherwear brand Danier earlier this year was a more promising move towards establishing a non-technical Fast philosophy that resonates with the zeitgeist.

Mary Katrantzou is a Greek-born, London-based, Central Saint Martins educated designer whose bold engineered prints have caught the gaze of the eyes that matter, and as she goes into subsequent seasons under the scrutiny of the fasherati she’s dealing with the same dilemma as Fast.

I saw the Spring 2012 line by recent CSM graduate Phoebe English at Ones to Watch, and was struck at the technical singularity of the entire presentation. Every single garment was made of distressed, cartridge-pleated canvas. The question I was left with was “why?” The garments were – as English put it – clumpy. I couldn’t sort out a story or an idea, beyond the sample-swatchiness of it all. Where does a designer take such a narrowly conceived collection? What is it for? It seemed like a one-off.

A bit of research revealed a surprise for me – English’s previous collections were also technique-driven – but each with a completely different technique! Her MA collection was an attention-grabbing, visceral exploration of the possibilities of human hair. As she told i-D, she is at the mercy of her chosen materials:

There were a few different original references, but most of my influences came directly from what my samples could do and how they actually worked. Then I began thinking about how I could engineer them to work as garments. As the dresses are so frenetic I wanted to use one universal tone to unify and control the composition of the collection. The looks behave in such a wild manner in places and the black was a device to balance and unify their frantic kinetic nature.

I can’t help but be curious about what a kind of career English will build by leaping from one wildly different, materials-based process to another, from season to season. In a way she personifies the current state of fashion education in London. In a world which continues to reward personalities like Alber Elbaz and zeitgeist sensors like Pheobe Philo, the technique trap suggests that the future of fashion design isn’t being taught in school.

Not so long ago, I was discussing a fascinating fashion-and-female-centric topic with a very smart woman, Rachel Hills, on a beautiful afternoon in Soho Square. The result – I am quoted in an article in the current issue of Cosmopolitan Australia, adding counterpoint to the discussion of It Girls.

Both Rachel and I have given some thoughtful exploration of the It Girl phenomenon on our blogs in the past. Some further reading:

• what it is for – it girls and fashion
• To Alexa or not to Alexa?
• Some questions I have about erotic capital.