The original youth street style was all about poor kids dressing up rich. This observation, while watching this show, got me thinking about modern street style, and how it has flipped- rich kids dressing up poor. I was impressed by the pride that the Teds who were interviewed demonstrated, and how the modern attitude of hipsters is such a striking polarity – denial and distancing. It got me thinking about the relationships between money, youth culture, attitudes and perception. Is there a pattern here?

Like all fashions, youth tribes tend to fluctuate between rebellion and affirmation. Let’s take a look.

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Rebellion – the Teds. Poor kids dressing up rich.

Teds were working class, blue collar workers, but on the weekend they cleaned up good, dressing inspired by the wealthy leisure class of the Edwardian era. Teds were, and are, proud. The style statement was upwardly mobile – they dressed to show that they were just as good as the upper classes.

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Affirmation – the Mods. Rich kids dressing up rich.

Mods were proudly middle class. They didn’t want to just dress up on the weekend – they wanted, and got, the kind of jobs that allowed them to dress well every day. Mods have a lot of pride, reflecting how satisfying it must have been to achieve middle-class comforts unknown to any previous generation. That said, they provoked a lot of antipathy from other contemporary tribes, probably because taking pride in privilege is invariably perceived as snobbish.

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Rebellion – the Hippies. Rich kids dressing up poor.

Hippies weren’t proud to be privileged. Even though they owed their considerable leisure, education, and liberty to the military industrial complex, they actively rebelled against their parents. Besides some major parties, they did have a major role in popularizing social justice, racial equality and sexual freedom. None of the other style tribes could claim credit for playing any kind of role in real political change.

That said, most people who look, act, and talk like hippies reject the label rather than taking pride in it, and the modern perception of hippies tends to be dismissive. I think this relates to “nostalgie de la boue”. This refers to when rich people romanticize poverty, for instance when Marie Antoinette and her ladies and waiting would dress up as milkmaids for fun and pretend to milk cows. Nostalgie de la boue provokes lingering distaste because it tends to be condescending and contrived. No matter what, rich dressing up as poor is disingenuous, and the result is that members of the tribes in this quadrant tend towards distancing and denial of their own membership.

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Affirmation – the Punks. Poor kids dressing up poor.

Of all the tribes, punk strikes me as having the fiercest kind of pride, which makes sense because their style statement is an elaborate affirmation of authenticity – they embraced rejection, creating embellishment out of trash. These contradictions makes them an outlier on my axis diagram.

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Affirmation – the Casuals. Rich kids dressing up rich.

Casuals were, like the Mods, proudly middle-class. The difference was a focus on sport and leisure rather than white collar work. Casuals take the hit from fashion circles for popularizing workout clothes as street wear and leading logo fetishization. Despite that, they display genuine pride – and share with the Mods an external perception of snobbishness.

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Rebellion – the Chavs. Poor kids dressing up rich.

Chavs are essentially a further development of Casuals but without the money. From the outside they are almost universally mocked as the style statement is a tasteless exaggeration of the already borderline Casual ethos. Yet, they are essentially the last of the indigenous British style tribes, a modern iteration of the Teds, but without the redeeming factor of labour.

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Rebellion – the Hipsters. Rich kids dressing up poor.

Modern youth suffers, if you can call it that, from an excess of advantage. When I walk through my gentrified neighbourhood in East London, there are upscale shops like Labour and Wait that sell tools and household cleaning items presented like precious objects, and the streets are full of boys wearing slightly too artfully paint-splattered jeans and un-scuffed work boots holding iPhones in their soft, un-calloused hands.

Nostalgie de la boue: we fetishize “functional” work because our own so-called work is so ephemeral and indulgent. Hipsters fixate on the trappings of manual labour with the same fervour that the Teds romanticized the clothing of a lost leisure class.

Hipsterism is fascinating to study and comment on for a lot of reasons. The self-loathing quality of it is quite striking. So much of its rebellion is turned on itself – a tangled Ouroboros of reactionary impulses that others have discussed at length. For the purposes of this post, I’ll limit the commentary to this: hipsters are hyper-aware that they are disingenuous brats, and unlike their counterparts the hippies, they have no redemptive qualities.

I say this as someone who admits to harbouring more than a few hipster traits. I have a blog and an indefinite 21st century job description, and sometimes I catch myself describing what I do in unnecessarily self-deprecating language.

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So, is there a pattern? So much modern style movements reflect attitudes towards social mobility – but somehow, social mobility itself somehow still suffers from a weirdly feudal bias, like we’ve never been able to shake the birthright business. Rich>Poor and even Poor>Rich still have inauthenticity problems to this day.

Rich Dressing Up Poor suffer from the most complicated psychological contortions. Because they’re both highly educated and downwardly socially mobile – it doesn’t make a lot of sense relative to history, which is what makes the phenomenon so interesting.

Modern style tribes, Hipsters and Chavs, suffer from strong disdain – I think what they both have in common is a lack of meaningful work combined with hyper-access to products and information. They are spoiled and it is not endearing, though I feel sympathy for both groups. Their (our) future is so complex and uncertain, I don’t want to begrudge them (us) whatever indulgence they (we) enjoy now.

Future style tribes will likely be a reaction to hipsterism, which on macro terms will be precipitated by an end to prosperity. I think the next iteration could be a modern counterpart to punk – the aesthetics of scarcity. Cynical, perhaps? Is it weird that I consider the possible emergence of a new style movement an upside of a major recession?

Thanks to the generosity of friend (and sponsor) Gail McInnes of Magnet Creative, I was able to attend a conversation (part of the Hot Docs festival) between fashion media superstars Robin Givhan and Jeanne Beker. The conversation began as a discussion of fashion in film, but expanded to touch on almost every major story that relates to fashion today – from model diversity to fashion bloggers to fast fashion to the recession. It really was a privilege to hear Givhan speak – she is a personable and thoughtful woman who obviously takes great pleasure in her work, and the way that she has pushed the envelope on her own craft (she is the first fashion writer to be awarded a Pulitzer) is so inspiring.

I’ve decided to include scans of my notes from my tiny Moleskine and a brief recap of what I found to be the most interesting observations, in case you’re curious.

Givhan started by briefly sharing a favourite fashion in film moment – the way that the lead character used a business suit in Hotel Rwanda.  The striking thing about this was the way that a suit is an international shorthand for authority – and also how clothing is related to human dignity.

Then she sat down with Beker and the conversation began – relatively quickly launching into the changing fortunes of fashion journalism. Givhan shared a revealing joke – “I love fashion bloggers,” she said, obviously aware that the crowd was full of them, “until they turn on you, and they inevitably will.” Much laughter. She went on to explain a bit about her ambivalence towards the new players in fashion media.  She wants to know who is paying these bloggers, and what rules they are playing by.  I guess I could add, as one of them, that this is something we are very curious about as well.

Givhan also pointed out that democratization of fashion leads to complaining.  In the case of model diversity, Givhan suggests that this story has developed with the growth of online, consumer commentary.  That in an age where fashion is no longer rarefied, it has to deal with the demands of a much large group of constituents.  Explaining the industry’s slow reaction to the blowback, Givhan suggested that the selection of models is subject to intense peer pressure between agencies, casting agents, and designers. Also on the retail level, that the provision of size diversity is self-fulfilling – bigger women don’t try to patronize designer clothing, so designers continue to provide to existing, wealthy thin clientele.

She didn’t say this in so many words, but it occurred to me as I listened: that perhaps in an age where money is no longer a barrier to exclusivity, size exclusivity becomes further entrenched. This is my editorializing here – I think no matter what, fashion is inherently elitist and status driven.  If it can’t exclude with cash, other tactics will fill the vacuum. Thus – the persistence of the idealization of thin in the face of so much protest.  The fact is that no rational argument – be it religious, political, or industrial – has ever halted the progress of even the most unappealing fashions, any more than legislation can halt the ever increasing ranks of obesity. It is almost arrogant to think that we are able to control such things.  But that’s me talking, not Robin Givhan.

Speaking of forces beyond our control – there was some discussion about how the recession is affecting fashion – from more grown-up looks and a focus on wearability.  Beker brought up the growing trend towards sponsorship for young designers – something offering young designers the financial support they need to produce fashion shows.  Givhan brought up the flip side – how sponsors like NAFA and Swarovski artificially construct trends – such as Fall 2010′s love affair with fur.  Does sponsorship abet or inhibit the creativity of young designers?

When I asked my question during the Q&A (I love asking questions at panel discussions), it was about fashion weeks and their rampant growth – how much bigger do they get, how many shows does there need to be, and is it possible or desirable to have an orderly downsizing?  Beker is a fan of the spectacle – obviously from a television point of view, bigness of individual fashion shows is a good thing. Givhan expressed a desire for a shorter week – but neither of them speculated on when and how the trend towards fashion weeks turning into fashion months would end or how.

At the end of the talk, Givhan brought it back to the beginning like a total pro and reiterated how fashion is important because it relates to human dignity – that somehow the veneer of civilization is a story so clearly expressed by the superficial layer of clothing we wear, a sensible contradiction I have enjoyed thinking about all weekend.

The first real hot ticket in Toronto this year, in my opinion, was the @Style panel discussion, part of the international event Social Media Week.  You had to get up pretty early to grab a spot on the RSVP list – naturally I’m a lark and signed up on 5:30am on January 29th, third on the list, seconds after Susan Langdon tweeted about it for the first time.

Four speakers, invited by Jyotika of exshoesme, brought four very different perspectives to the effects of social media on fashion.  At first I was a little skeptical – other than Cherie Federau of Shrimpton Couture, none of the speakers are bloggers – and even Cherie is primarily an online retailer, not a blogger.  So what sort of insights could an audience populated mostly by fashion bloggers expect?

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The first speaker was Susan Langdon of the Toronto Fashion Incubator (full disclosure – TFI is a sponsor of Final Fashion).  Susan introduced the new Social Media Guidebook (available here) that the TFI commissioned, and that I had a small part in contributing to.  The guide is made for fashion entrepreneurs who are unfamiliar with the current social media landscape and want to be able to use the tools available to help their brand. I haven’t seen the book in full yet so I can’t comment on it other than the brief overview Susan gave us; while the bullet points seem a bit jargon-y (what the heck does authenticate even mean?) the interviews with many interesting bloggers and entrepreneurs would be well worth the cost of admission.  The questions I answered for the guide were good ones and I gave very candid answers.

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The second speaker was Cherie Federau of Shrimpton Couture.  I was looking forward to hearing Cherie speak the most – the scribbly notes in the moleskine above are from her presentation (I don’t own a mobile, and I don’t live-tweet, ever). Of all of the speakers, I identify most closely with Cherie – not only do I admire her as a tremendously successful online entrepreneur, she is also enthusiastic and genuine with a great sense of humour.  Cherie is self-taught by trial and error (like me) and abides by a similar philosophy of relating to people online – essentially, be open to the world, stay on top of your correspondence, be a decent human being, and be true to yourself. Cherie’s talk offered the most real, applicable advice to living and working online.

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The third speaker was Dr. Alexandra Palmer, costume curator of the Royal Ontario Museum.  She began her presentation discussing buttons on 13th century jackets – and I was wondering what the connection was (because surely it wasn’t to buttons on mobile phones).  Over the course of her talk, her insight became a bit clearer – that the application of technology to fashion is what makes new fashions possible – for instance, the development of stretch fabrics made the innovation of pantyhose possible, and pantyhose in turn made it possible for women to wear miniskirts in the 1960s.

However, when it came to the application of social media technology to fashion, Dr. Palmer seemed dubious of the advantages – she expressed cynicism that the greater speed and dissemination of trends could do anything for the development of modern fashion, that somehow the overwhelming preoccupation with speed represented a sense of loss and “waste” to her. She drew some thoughtful parallels between social media and the development of the Jacquard loom, the first computer, which put many weavers out of work. She also discussed a bit about how technology is affecting the modern retail business – such as how prolific communication makes retail innovations like pop-up shops possible.  Another revelation on retail was about how shopping for clothing is so dependent on tactility – and how now bricks and mortar stores are being used by customers to try on clothing, and online stores are used to find the best price.

During the question and answer session at the end of the talk, I was able to ask Dr. Palmer whether she had any insights on how the invention of the printing press effected the fashion industry, and whether there are any parallels from that period of history now.  Her response was somewhat surprising to me – though she acknowledged that printing sped up the trend cycle, she dismissed that the technology of printing had a significant effect on fashion, which seems unlikely. Now I am more curious about this than before. Dr. Palmer is an esteemed historian and I have enjoyed reading her admirable work on costume history, but on media, she seems uncharacteristically uncurious.

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The fourth and final speaker was Lisa Tant, editor-in-chief of Flare Magazine. Lisa is the only EIC of a fashion magazine in Canada who is a prolific tweeter with a significant following online. She can seem surprisingly unguarded on twitter sometimes – just over a week ago she got some flack for “Sobbing to think that a 13 year old gets a front row seat to cover couture. No justice in this world.” which she obliquely alluded to in her presentation by saying that its best to avoid being “cute or sarcastic” on social media. I couldn’t help but find it a bit ironic that Lisa Tant would be telling a room full of fashion bloggers about social media the very next week – seating assignments really do seem unfair sometimes – and wondered if I could think of a slam-dunk question to ask her, but somehow I couldn’t.

Watching Lisa Tant speak, she seemed much more lucid and insightful than she appears on Twitter, which I think does reveal a limitation of micro-blogging. The major message I got from Tant’s talk was how magazines are concerned with the broader strokes of culture and celebrity – while what is important for bloggers is a sense of individual personality. Flare can be commended for recognizing the work of Tommy Ton before he became a phenomenon – but for the most part it seems like the publication is concerned with using the existing momentum behind individual brands – such as Lady Gaga and Perez Hilton, to drive the growth of the Flare brand.

This supports my own conclusions when it comes to the new-media vs. old-media discussion – that mastheads are becoming less valuable than individuals. Flare as a brand is not only hampered by its very corporate-ness (unsupportive Rogers policy tries to discourage the use of social media), it is more and more dependent on the brands of individuals to drive its own brand. Online, Tommy Ton is a bigger brand than Flare – and his fans will follow his work whether its under the Flare masthead, or Style.com, or on his own site.  I think that editors and old media say that the holy grail online is speed (Tant says “readers expect immediacy”) but the real prize we’re all after is actually an individual brand (Tommy often posts photos months after they are taken).  I think Tant knows this whether she says it or not – her own personal influence is getting pretty close to equal in numbers to that of Flare’s – I would even argue that it is more valuable in qualitative terms to Flare, and especially to Tant herself.

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All in all it was a terrific, thought-provoking morning, and the various perspectives provided some fascinating contrasts. If you attended, what did you think? I’m up for a discussion.

Last year, things changed so unexpectedly in life and the world, it seems a bit foolish to go making predictions for this year.  But that is just the kind of fool I am.  So here it is.

Fashion weeks have lost their relevance and will die off. This is a pet prediction for me and so far I have always been wrong, but this time may be the charm.  My reasoning – the law of fashion is that popularity is the predictor of death for any trend.

To say that fashion weeks have grown popular is an understatement – its a freakin’ 300 ring circus out there.  In New York City last season there were over 300 shows, both offsite and at the tents, in a week.  How many shows out of that number were actually directional enough to warrant fashion coverage?  What fashion media outlet has the personnel and resources to sort the wheat from the chaff, especially when so many of them have to attend advertisers shows whether they are newsworthy or not?  Its a juggernaut that is often more despised than anticipated by the fashion community, and if they had the collective will to strike, they probably would – but they won’t, with a superfluous surplus of bloggers typing away in the tents.

Beyond that, there are now fashion weeks all over the world, each vying for the attention of local media.  In Canada I’ve already lost count of all of the fashion weeks.  Toronto Fashion Week and Montreal Fashion Week – perhaps Canada has the talent to sustain two quality weeks, barely.  But two fashion weeks in Ottawa, two fashion weeks in Vancouver?  What for?

When everyone is doing it, the value of each fashion show is reduced.  Runway has lost its exclusivity and therefore its meaning.  The time is ripe for a market correction, and I would look towards the fashion forward to lead the way.

This year we have seen some powerful designers drop out of New York’s Mattel Fashion Week.  Betsey Johnson.  Vera Wang. Other designers have opted to scale back their shows and tighten up their invitation lists.  If the big name designers can’t hack the bottom line, it stands to reason that the upstarts will hesitate to make the leap of faith.  Showing can be a death knell for a designer with a lean marketing budget.  This past year in Toronto I saw two designers fold right after showing at a fashion week – Arthur Mendonça and Janet Hill – whatever PR they generated is rendered worthless and evaporates.

Clever designers will figure out other ways to get their names out there and make sales – whether it is focusing their resources on connecting with buyers and media directly or broadcasting to the world via the internet, there are so many inventive options for the entrepreneurial out there that the idea of showing at any fashion week seems unimaginative and old fashioned.

What about the media?  Mass layoffs are happening at magazines and newspapers. The rumour mill has it that IMG will not be as generous with media passes for bloggers this time around. Invitations for the big shows will be fewer and fiercely fought-over.  It will be a test for the PR industry to sort out which media outlets have the relevance to make them seat-worthy.

These are all pretty obvious observations.  What is my prediction?  I predict that besides the flagship fashion week in New York City, North American fashion weeks will struggle to find enough talent willing to show.  That the big name designers (and upstarts) who choose not to show will stand a greater chance of surviving the recession.  Only once the value of fashion weeks has been corrected by the market will the cachet of the runway show recover.

Do you have your own prediction about the future of fashion weeks?  Are you a fashion week believer and think I am all wrong?  Discuss, dissert, or discredit me now.

This macro-economic shift is registering some interesting changes in fashion and language that I think bear remarking upon.

1.

Depressionista?  I Object! Finally someone speaks out over the rampant misuse of the so-called-suffix “ista” – this time used in the service of Wal-Mart, the “Hot New Store“.  The use of fear to incite a stampede of consumerism is a low point for fashion blogging.  Dare I coin the word PRopogandista?

I have been reading a lot of “Recessionista” posts that exhort people to purchase more cheap stuff, with nary a mention of the thriftiest of lost arts, mending.  Mend not Spend!  Extend your wardrobe for nothing.  The feeling of pride and satisfaction is far greater than the rush and regret of shopping.  Try it.

2.

Speaking of words past their due date, NOW announces “The End of the Hipster” which provoked a lot of discussion on the internet, and presumably in real life, before everyone suddenly lost interest on Thursday afternoon.  There is a lot of distancing language being used by the Hipster Spokespersons in the article.  This is the kind of revulsion only the collapse of a recent fashion can inspire.  While I welcome the new post-ironic age, I’m already anticipating the Hipster Revival of 2010.  Also worth checking out is the fashion spread (dare I utter the word Hipsterista?).

Ok, I took the quiz to make sure, because I suspected I may in fact be a hipster.

Are you a HIPSTER? My Result: You wish! OK, you dress like a hipster, act like a hipster and listen to hipster music. But you just don’t have the whole package. Sorry, keep trying. You are not a hipster. Quiz School Take this quiz & get your result

I think it was my proclivity for the East End of Toronto which did me in.  What’s your score?

Valerie Steele came to Toronto again to launch her new book Gothic: Dark Glamour at ILORI.  I have met her twice before and had not been able to get over my fan-girl nerves.  I have read almost every one of her books while I was a fashion student and consider her one of my fashion heroes.  I have visited FIT to see her exhibits every time I have been in New York City.  I did see the Gothic exhibit in New York earlier this month (with Philip and Gilda) and was, as always, wonderfully impressed with her work.  In person she is enthusiastic, friendly and now that I have finally relaxed a little – easy to talk to.

I asked her what inspires her to select her next project.  She told me and Adeleine (who took this photograph and is also an incredible person to meet) that she tries to anticipate what fashion’s next focus will be.  While she was working on Dark Glamour, she attended this Dior Haute Couture show.  John Galliano’s designs struck so close to the themes she was exploring, she was hopping up and down in her seat.  In fashion there is no greater validation than seeing your instinct for what is next come down the runway.

What infectious joy for fashion her work inspires in me!  I look forward to seeing Valerie Steele’s upcoming exhibits, and seeing her in person again.

I just got an invitation to Ottawa Fashion Week! Its sponsored by CIMA. I hope I have time to go, since any excuse to go to Ottawa is a good one – there are a lot of good friends and good restaurants there, but I have no idea if they have good fashion. They do have at least two fashion bloggers that I know of, though I haven’t met any Ottawa fashion people personally, and I don’t recognize many of the names on the schedule.

Ottawa Fashion Week event will be an exciting opportunity to celebrate the birth of a fashion community in the national capital, promising a spectacular exhibition of fall and winter collections, unforgettable night events to follow, and the chance to rub elbows with some of the best and brightest from the media and business community from Ottawa and across Canada.

There are more fashion weeks in Canada than you can shake a stick at these days. Not only do we have Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, there is another fashion week in Vancouver called BC Fashion Week, a Calgary Fashion Week, an Edmonton Fashion Week, and of course the Lethbridge Fashion Weekend. (Lethbridge, Alberta – Population 81,692) Thanks to Passion Instilled Fashion for assembling the list.

Toronto has its own fair share of Fashion Weeks and Weekends – L’Oreal, FAT, Ryerson, Elle Show, The Clothing Show, FDFT – and the Week of Style is now upon us.

Canada’s hottest, most anticipated, and most audacious fashion event will be Moose Jaw Fashion Week in 2012. If you are not there, you will be very, very square.

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BONUS LINK – Halifax International Fashion Week

The fashion industry’s fourth wall is collapsing.  Marc Jacobs left a comment addressing a post on Cathy Horyn’s blog about an incident of facial expression at the Louis Vuitton show (scroll down to number 40).   Could this be the beginning of the end of the designer mystique?

Horyn’s next post responded to Jacob’s comment and amended her previous statement.

It might not seem remarkable, but that little exchange makes public relations the monkey in the middle and has implications for how the fashion industry, and really, every industry, is changing.

I noticed the other day that Kanye West has a blog now.  Whether it is him or his staff hitting the post button is not important – West has figured out that on the internet, getting your version or vision out there is your prerogative.

Especially if you are a celebrity.

Or a fashion designer.

Or a journalist.

Or…

I expect to see a lot more participation on the internet from some perceptive, talented, and even famous people out there.

The internet is an extension of your nervous system that connects you to other people’s nervous systems.  It is both personal and universal.  It collapses time and space.

It is incredible!

Now is a good time to invest.

Reviewing some of my favourite fashion copy cliches reminded my of that one time… back when we had the TAB party.

One of the privileges and pitfalls of being a fashion blogger is the PR pitches. Most are spam, but some incite genuine curiousity… as Chanel reminds us, never be too quick to delete… sometimes it really is good enough to be true. Or, as the TAB party taught us… well, what did we learn here?

Anita got the email from TAB saying that if we had a TAB party and posted it, we could win a trip to New York. So Carolyn, Anita and I agreed that we would party together, TAB style. See how blogging makes you the tool of corporate America?

Besides the fact that the drink itself is a vile, artificially sweetened artificially pink jolt of mystery herb and caffeine, the “TAB party” kit was an array of branded bits of plastic and parlor games with a sinister subtext. The line that sets the tone for the material we were supposed to have fun with can be seen on the top left corner of the magnetized frame around my face -

“Fake is for last night, not handbags.”

The quote on the right says -

“If it doesn’t fit, it was ugly anyway.”

What is the message here? “I try on ugly clothes that don’t fit me, I’m sexually unfulfilled and conspicuously consuming, at least I have my fuel to be fabulous?” This is a drink for unhappy people. Thank you Coca-Cola.

We didn’t even finish the first can the aftertaste of the message was so bad. So we uncorked the real fuel for fabulousity… of the alcoholic variety. And I thought I had seen the worst ever example of female-focused ad copy.

That was until I got the gift bag from Chick Advisor’s Shop Crawl, which was a really awesome event. They had lots of cool sponsors like Kiehl’s. The gift bag had a cute bar of soap called Transition Man for literally washing that man out of your life. I thought that seemed okay, Transition Man didn’t take itself too seriously. Good gift for the recently broke up, maybe.

But the product copy that matches the TAB party favours in terms of contempt for customers is Sunsilk ThermaShine, which asks on its bottles -

“Hair Duller Than Your Last Date?”

“Dull hair ATTRACTING DUDS?”

I just want to ask that shampoo who it thinks it is talking to. I have not tried the shampoo yet. Somehow I think it would make me feel dirtier instead of cleaner.

They tried to send me to Hairapy, I said no, no no.

Does attempting to make people feel bad about themselves and their lives really sell more stuff? Did I just sell out by writing about it?

At the Fashion-Incubator, Kathleen asks What Will Become of Us? Great comments, and gets me thinking about me and my generation…

This is one of many outstanding comic strips at xkcd.

These days I am thinking a lot about fashion illustration, entrepreneurship, information, personality, networks, entertainment, minimalism to the point of survivalism… and truth. What will become of us, indeed… well I have an idea of what I am going to do… actually many small ideas.

The Toronto Fashion Incubator has to move to make way for condos. By chance I spoke with Susan Langdon, who reassured me that the TFI is dealing well with the inconvenient situation – taking the opportunity to move up. Currently there are only 4 resident designers, and I notice all of them seem ready to move up to the next level in terms of getting their own spaces, so the TFI will have the chance to turn the situation to advantage. I look forward to seeing the TFI continue doing the good work they do for the next generation of fashion designers in Toronto, and I hope to help too, in some way…

Last time I looked at Threadless the cheque they gave their artists was a lot smaller than $1500. I am going to be doing this and I already have an idea, I mean it this time I am really going to do it!

Cute incoming linkers – Patterns, Fabric and Thread, Oh My! – Clichés á la Mode – Fashion Graduate.

Here comes the backlash – cheap chic and celebrity designers have peaked and are officially on their way out. The end of these trends will create millions of refugee fashion victims…

See what families around the world eat every week. I am fascinated by visual representations of consumption. Look at images of real life in the past, I try not to forget how unprecedented our present is.

In the fashion industry, we are at the cusp of something. Luxury houses are going public, which strikes me as a strange stumble that will make fashion’s veteran players a lot less relevant. I am reading Joseph Abboud’s wonderful biography Threads right now. He talks about how buyers once relied on independent instinct, and now crunch the numbers of the past in a vain attempt to predict the future (or else they are fired). The culture of fear and greed and boards of investors kills fashion leadership. (Or does it?)

Designers like Gianni Versace made fashion alive, and interesting, even if the appeal was narrow. Now, Versace the corporation, without genuine human personality, hedges its bets. Compare the old pictures of Linda and Naomi laughing and leaping in exhuberant, loudly extravagant but enjoyable Versace clothing with modern images of a waxwork-worthy Madonna frozen in luxurious yet unwholesome Versace environments.

Why does it seem to me like even the the legacy of the superstars of fashion is on the verge of victimhood, and fashion’s history nothing but relics without relevance? 1994 might as well be 1904, but I still look back, trying to tease out patterns from the past, trying to answer the question what will become of us.

The possibilities are endless. Time to get back to cutting and sewing.