A Few Fashion Items of Note
Well! I started this Substack, and immediately got busy with other things (the Google doc I’m writing this in is labeled “Blog post 2.15.24”). Life happens. In no particular order:
Sustainability
I’m a huge fan of Dana Thomas, who writes an excellent Substack. If you’re not familiar, she’s covered fashion for many years (for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and British Vogue among others). Thomas wrote two of my favorite fashion books which—I had no idea until recently—are part of a trilogy.
The last book in the trilogy came out in 2020, which is why I hadn’t heard of it; the pandemic kicking off seems to have killed book promotion for anything that came out that year. I was delighted to discover that there was an entire Dana Thomas book that I’d missed. I devoured Fashionopolis last week.
Thomas writes about how unsustainable and destructive the business of manufacturing fashion is; toxic fabric dye kills rivers and poisons people, the demand for cheap offshored labor leads to abuses of clothing factory workers ranging from wage slavery to sexual assault to outright murder-by-negligence (factory collapses and fires), and the fast fashion industry, well, that particular thing has been covered sufficiently for everyone to know exactly why it’s bad.
Denim jeans are particularly bad, due to the quantity of water it takes to “age” them, and the number of tiny fibers that workers in these factories inhale. Thankfully, it’s not all terrible. Thomas delves into better models, citing denim factories in the American South which protect workers from airborne fibers, and use less water by way of investment in modern equipment. Certain companies are even using indigo dye, vs. the more common environment-destroying aniline dyes.
Fashion Week(s)
I’m grateful that the second half of Fashionopolis offers a little bit of hope. I’m fascinated by fashion. It’s my sports. I still don’t understand how American football works (please do not explain it to me), but I can name every one of John Galliano’s influences (what up, Leigh Bowery1). I’ve been watching the latest set of global Fashion Weeks, and how fashion is being covered and where—much of it is on Substack, more on that in a moment—and I’ve detected a malaise.
Broadly, there are so many former magazine editors of various levels who are now writing independently, and/or working as stylists. Many are on Substack. Edward Enninful is leaving British Vogue, in part because he can make far more money with less stress as a stylist (my somewhat-educated guess), and in part because he was possibly pushed out. I am a fashion fan, not a Fashion Person, and I don’t have the access necessary to speculate with any accuracy from my seat in the high bleachers. But this trend seems bad.
I believe that the major fashion magazines may decline into nonexistence, whenever Anna Wintour decides to retire from her perch at Condé Nast. I’ve seen Vogue transform from a doorstop-sized September issue—that shed pages because the binding glue was taxed to its limit—to something more like a shiny grocery circular. Personally, I haven’t read Vogue in years, though I did subscribe to the British version for a bit, when Enninful took over (I liked what he did with it).
What does this mean for people like me? Very little. I take inspiration from Instagram and Substack and sometimes YouTube, at this point. Most people in America are just trying to find clothes that fit their budget, they aren’t superfans like I am. But along with the rest of the decline of journalism—which is terrifying, given the prospect of losing a crucial means of educating the public—the loss of major fashion magazines removes a forum for fashion criticism, which I’ve always enjoyed reading, even though magazines are notorious for favoring advertisers (a thing which is now happening with fashion journalists on Substack, which…people have to make money somehow).
I’ve also noticed (have you?) that the move to diversify fashion coverage and fashion staffers at the big magazines has only happened at the point when the old fashion journalism platforms are imploding. Finally there are Black and Brown people running things, when the things being run are decidedly on their way out. If only this had happened back when early-oughts Vogue was featuring a different (white) New York City socialite every month. But of course it didn’t.
Oversized
Speaking of trends, oversized everything all the time has been with us for a while, at least on the major fashion social media platforms. If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, go look at @copenhagenfrow on Instagram. Yes, basically it’s that: big pants, big squared-off cropped jackets, chunky platforms. Very comfortable! Very much a thing since the pandemic trailed off, and people emerged from their homes maybe a little bit bigger than they used to be. But it’s also a reaction to the skinny jeans/skinny everything trend that had been in force for a long time.
Fashion is nothing if not a pendulum that swings from extreme to extreme, so I assume that we’re about to see a return to body-con, or perhaps tights and A-line tunics, who knows?
What I want to say, though, is that fashionable women who subscribe to this trend are pretty much dressing like men (or like old Celine) which is very interesting to me, given that menswear is far more sustainable than women’s fashion is. I read a lot of menswear bloggers. The focus that they give to things like welted shoes and the details of construction in a suit is refreshing. This is what women’s fashion should be about, really: buying a thing meant to last, and to be stylish (vs. fashionable) for years to come. And I hope that whatever the next trend is, that we hold on to a bit of that. I think we need to.
If you’re interested in Leigh Bowery, there’s a documentary floating around on Vimeo. And if you’re interested in what John Galliano has been up to, I recommend Dana Thomas’s scathing take on the latest Margiela show (the majority of the fashion press has been a-flutter about this show; they never stopped loving the Galliano of that era). My distant, uninformed, and wholly personal opinion of Galliano is that he’s a complicated person who said some bad things, and while I respect how beautiful his work is, it has never spoken to me in the way that it does to others; I’m a McQueen girl. That said, I very much look forward to watching the upcoming Galliano documentary.