Fashion’s glory days are gone. Get over it

We’ve got bigger things to worry about than a lack of creativity

Hi again! I’m wrapping up the year with a big-picture look at where we’re at in this crazy industry. I’ve only been on Substack for three months and I’m amazed at the amount of subscribers I’ve got in that short time. If things carry on the way they’re going, it’s looking like I’ll be able to support myself entirely from my writing at some point next year. Thank you to everyone who’s started a paid subscription, you’re the best! 

In a piece written earlier in the year for The Cut, legendary fashion critic Cathy Horyn summed up the creative dead end the industry finds itself in these days. Horyn, who’s been covering runway shows since the ’90s, described “a feeling of sameness, that things are stuck in place”. What was once a place for avant-garde thought is now a conveyor belt of expensive merch and obnoxious status symbols.

As Horyn points out, Louis Vuitton was a $1.3billion business when Marc Jacobs took over — now, as Pharrell drops million-dollar bags and shuts down Paris to show on a bridge with Jay Z, it’s doing close to $22billion. And as the industry has exploded in size, its imagination has shrunk. You might see some smart ideas on the runway, but at the end of the day Balenciaga sells hoodies, Margiela is a Tabi boot factory and Prada is a collection of metal triangles. In the notes for Balenciaga’s show back in March, Demna described how “fashion has become a kind of entertainment” (I wrote an op-ed on why that’s bad, for Business of Fashion). Sidney Toledano, CEO of LVMH’s fashion division and former CEO of Dior, even admits to Horyn that marketing people have “invaded” all the big houses. That probably explains why Tik Tokers and Youtubers get the best seats in Paris. 

Critics love to complain on podcasts and essays and Twitter that nothing’s new anymore, that it’s all just marketing and hype, that brands only care about the bottom line and non-stop growth. And that’s absolutely true. But also, get over it. There’s never going to be another McQueen or Gaulthier or Margiela to glide in and save us from the it-bags and cruise shows, because fashion is big business now. Bernard Arnault, who owns Louis Vuitton, is on and off the richest man in the world, up there with Musk and Bezos. Do you think he misses the good old days?

Tweeting about how everything was better in the ’90s won’t do anything to help the middle-class professionals in the industry, who have much more boring things on their mind, like job security, student debt, skyrocketing property prices and flatlining wages. For so many of us, the most important question isn’t “when is fashion going to be good again?” — it’s “how are we doing to build a career without burning out or going broke?” 

Earlier in the year, I talked to some students on the Central Saint Martins fashion course, and some of them weren’t even sure they could afford to carry on studying, let alone get an unpaid internship. A job in fashion is becoming a luxury in itself. And that’s before we even think about the climate emergency and democracy’s slide into fascism. When this is the world we have to live in, who cares if Dior was better 20 years ago?

To me, the most exciting things in the industry aren’t brands anymore, they’re movements.

I find inspiration and energy with my work on The Fashion Act, which is bringing together a coalition of brands, activists and environmental orgs to demand that sustainability, transparency and fair wages become a requirement for major brands across the industry. As I wrote in an earlier piece, the Fashion Act has the potential to be a truly transformative moment (if you’re a brand / person / anyone who cares about a fairer and more sustainable industry, you can get involved here!).

Then there’s the Black in Fashion council, a collective of industry professionals who are staring fashion’s deeply ingrained racism in the face and deciding to do something about it. Meanwhile, the Conde Nast union is organizing to demand better pay, more secure jobs and less burnout at the media empire behind Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. Nothing quite sums up our new collective mindset like media workers marching to Anna Wintour’s house while chanting “Bosses wear Prada, workers get nada”. This kind of organizing is a hundred, a thousand times more meaningful than reminiscing on Margiela’s time at Hermes.

And when it comes to the brands, the most compelling ideas are coming from people bravely trying to grapple with fashion’s many problems in their own small way — whether it’s Mfpen making suits from other brands’ leftovers or Story MFG and Brother Veilles, who built their business with craftspeople, not sweatshops. Then there’s the rise of charming micro-labels like Tony’s Shirtmakers and Henry’s, who are building small businesses from a handful of beautifully hand-made products. These projects won’t save the world, but making great products in a better way sends a powerful message to the rest of the industry.

The truth is the old fashion industry everyone misses was always a ridiculous fantasyland. If you’re depressed that it’s a playground for the mega-rich these days, well take a look at this line from Cathy Horyn’s first piece for the New York Times, back in 1999: “Dodie Rosekrans, the San Francisco art patron and couture stalwart, recently bought a full-size guillotine covered with the Chanel logo for her home in Venice”. Yes, fashion is filled with nepo babies and obscene price tags (more on those here), but the truth is it always was. 

What’s different now is that people are learning to work together. If you look in the right places, you’ll see that a new collective mentality is emerging, leaving the elitism and hierarchy behind to dream of a better future.

The Old Fashion mindset = elitism, materialism, hierarchy 

The New Fashion mindset = collaboration, activism, transparency

The huge reach of the contemporary fashion industry means it's the perfect place for us to come to terms with the world’s many crises. You can see that when models talk about police violence, brands throw themselves behind sustainability regulation and influencers raise money to support people when the government won’t. You see it in 1Granary, a publication run by students at Central Saint Martins that’s pushing out more relevant content than anything coming out of the Conde Nast towers.

And that’s what’s so exciting about the industry now. We have enough aesthetics already, what we really need is solutions.