Fashion and its Disconnects

Fashion is a peculiar field. It is one of the most deeply and explicitly commodified forms of art, but also the most artful form of mass consumerism; a site and symbol of luxurious exclusivism, but also one of the most universal forms of cultural expression. The media, even designers continually play to the notion of fashion as a global, worldwide business, yet in many respects it still operates (and is a tied to) traditional craft industry. It is difficult to package and sell any high artistic expression to a mass audience; yet this is the business of fashion editors, buyers, marketers, and buyers season after season, year after year. We don't view fashion as art because we're not supposed to. Artistic items are things to be treasured; fashion is as an item to be consumed, used, and discarded until the next trend comes along

To judge fashion on artistic merits rather than market whims , it must be framed as such. Sometimes this is achieved through the lens of historicism- prosaic peasant costume, the clothing of Chanel, Paquin, Dior, Yves Saint Laurent and other fashion houses which were perfectly wearable in its time now relegated to the archive, fodder for countless museum retrospectives. Contemporary fashion is viewed as art only when it is the sort of thing that most people would never wear- designers such as Rick Owens, Gareth Pugh, or Alexandre Herchovitch, who receive media attention only because they push at the limits of bizarre. We only take fashion seriously when it takes on the mantle of fine art: part of a gallery display or a museum retrospective when deemed 'conceptual'. Yet when it claims these monikers, we no longer want to buy it for its ostensibly intended purpose: adornment.

Among American designers, the disconnect between designers' artistic intentions and the fashion media was recently apparent in the presentation of Marc Jacobs Spring/Summer 2008 line, shown in September 2007.¹ Jacobs showed a gaggle of models in various states of undress, with large slits cut in their clothing or sheer panels exposing undergarments. The models looked crazed, wearing no makeup, hair teased in huge, frizzy, knotty bouffant hairstyles, underwear exposed, some wearing conical party hats or merely wrapped in large swaths of fabric. The shoes were constructed to look as if they were too small, or hastily put on backwards. A film projector showing the models walking down the runway in their underwear coincided with the models' live catwalk show. Maurice Ravel's "Bolero" played on a background loop.

The show caused quite a stir- but not because it offered a scathing critique of luxury, public perception of fashion, or celebrity. It was the novelty of the spectacle and the models in various states of undress that made fashion headlines. His lingerie ensembles were immediately pegged, even by the New York Times, as "the new sexy". The next day, Style.com offered,"the effect was just as often gawky and awkward as it was provocative…One thing's for certain: He's moved on from last season's bourgeois austerity." Jacobs himself said of the collection "I don't know, maybe its because of news of Britney and all this other stuff."

Jacobs' collection was a visual feast of irony, satire, and wit. The social critique was as transparent as the models' clothing: apparent, in your face, plain. However, the editorials and fashion spreads in the subsequent months grouped the clothing into coherent seasonal themes and trend groups such as "lingerie dressing", "purple", "prints", and the supremely oxymoronic "surrealist touches." None of the coverage of Jacobs' show in any way touched on the runway spectacle that made a farce of the runway as theater, and the fashion world in general. Media coverage seemed intent on proceeding, business as usual with uninspired Vogue editorials and Spring's mainline trends.

Journalists, editors, buyers, and others who comprise the mythical "fashion world" attend the shows, wear the clothes, do the interviews, decide what is covered, what ads are run, and what appears in stores. Why then play to the significance of designers that don't matter while lessening the significance of those that do? Like any art form, fashion reacts to the times; I would even argue that because of the speed with which it is shown and produced it is more reflective of our times than any other established art form. However, with each season media coverage renders the fashion world more and more banal, clichéd, even irrelevant. Without true, meaningful discourse the artistic expression and designer vision is lost; compromised by design houses' own need to sell goods.

Of course, if everyone who was interested had access to the runway show- the purest expression of the designer's vision, then the media would be irrelevant. Access is pivotal to how we consume fashion; it's a problem for journalists as well. Journalists who "cross" a powerful designer by critiquing designs in print risk being banned from fashion shows. In a New York Times article early this year, Cathy Horyn admitted that she was indefinitely banned from Carolina Herrera, Helmut Lang, Dolce and Gabbana, and Armani for unfavorable reviews. It is no wonder these "embedded" journalists refrain from a frank discourse given the fear of being shut out.

At the same time, the lines between the fashion media and the fashion business have becoming increasingly fuzzy over the last 10 years. In magazines like Lucky or InStyle, it's increasingly difficult to distinguish between the advertisements and the editorials. Anna Wintour uses the pages of Vogue as leverage when featuring young designers or encouraging established houses to hire young talent. Many magazines use socialites and starlets, who are often the recipients of free designer goods, to report on fashion trends. As the media becomes increasingly intertwined with the inner workings of the fashion world, critical eyes are ever harder to find.

Television, the internet, blogs, fashion themed social networking sites and the like have forever tarnished the idea of the genius designer operating above the influence of society. However, in this milieu perhaps it is time to return to a concentrated critique of the designer's vision. By realizing what designers communicate through clothing, we can in turn craft a new language of criticism that isn't about one trend or another or even one designer or another, but about what fashion means to us today.

An aspiring recessionista, Katie Sabo lives in the Bay area of California.