I miss Paris Fashion Week. And I don't.

There's too much of everything at the world's biggest fashion week

You probably noticed that it was fashion week last week in Paris, unless you’ve been living under a rock or don’t have Instagram (if it’s the second one then I’m jealous). Dries Van Noten bowed out after 38 years in the business. Rick Owens did his usual theatrics. Pharrell continued to blur the lines between fashion and celebrity at Louis Vuitton. A$AP Rocky even debuted a collection.

I didn’t go, but I’m sure there were just as many celebrities, photographers and rich kids as there always are. I still do fashion week in Copenhagen every now and then, but generally speaking, my fashion week era is very much in the past. Whenever the men’s shows come around, I feel a bit of fomo, a bit of sadness, and a bit of sympathy. I miss it. But I also don’t. 

Back in my old job as the fashion editor at Highsnobiety, I’d do the European men’s circuit every season. So twice a year, I’d be flying from London to Pitti Uomo (in Florence) to Milan to Paris. It was something like 22 days of non-stop, back-to-back fashion — shows, presentations, showroom appointments, pop-ups, dinners and parties. I somehow kept on top of it all while still doing my actual job.

Compared to the fashion weeks at the beginning of the circuit, which have somewhat-realistic schedules, Paris is a relentless, grinding marathon. You’re rushing all over the city to fit everything in — maybe Balenciaga is showing at the Bois de Boulogne at 2pm, but you need to be back in Le Marais for 3:30pm for an appointment before OAMC shows at Palais de Tokyo. 

The thing with Paris is that you are constantly reminded of how tiny and insignificant you are. Because it’s the biggest event of the industry’s calendar, literally everyone is there — the rappers, the creative directors, the K-pop stars, the supermodels, the footballers, the billionaires and the billionaires’ children. No matter how successful you might think you are, you’re still a tiny speck of dirt compared to whichever A-lister sits a few meters away from you. It’s a lot, it takes a very real toll on your psyche, and it’s a big part of why I ended up so exhausted and burned out after five years in the heart of the industry. 

I met so many great people at fashion week, and Paris was where they all came together — you’re bumping into interesting people non-stop, even if you only have five minutes to spend with each of them. I miss catching up with everyone over a beer outside Café Charlot or La Perle. The tiny Margiela store with a motorbike helmet wedged between two walls. And around the corner from that, the tiny Rick Owens store with the giant Rick Owens statue inside. Killing some time in Le Marais, just soaking up the fact that it’s the most important time of year for the world’s biggest consumer industry, and you’re right there in the thick of it. It might be the most intense week of your life, but still, you’re getting paid to run around Paris and look at clothes — it’s stressful, but it’s still awesome.

The best of all was always the shows. Not the corporate luxury stuff, but the real fashion. Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Yohji Yamamoto, Haider Ackermann, Lemaire, Rick Owens — you get to see the world’s best designers flexing their creative muscles right in front of your face. It was amazing and I miss it.

Looking back, I get the feeling that I stepped away from it all at a high point — just before the pandemic, when there were still moments of inspiration in Paris. It’s sad, but those days seem kinda over now. With less and less creativity to be found, the mask is slipping off the face of the industry. Instead of losing ourselves in avant-garde genius, we’re staring this enormous, greedy machine in the face. As Angelo Flaccavento points out in his review for Business of Fashion, the most powerful message from Paris is “the sheer scale of it all”.

Fashion is supposed to be about meaning — clothes are supposed to be striking some sort of chord with us, appealing to us on some sort of emotional level, but it’s hard to find anything of real meaning in the industry these days. Or at least any kind of meaning for someone like me. The corporate luxury houses ruling over Paris aren’t for us, they’re for the 0.1%.

It’s not Tik Tok’s fault or Pharrell’s fault or Kim Jones’s fault. The industry is just following the direction the world’s going in. Meaningless capitalism getting bloated and fatter and uglier. The collapse in smaller brands, independent media and multi-brand retail isn’t some sort of unique crisis — you’ll find the same struggle in music, film, art and literature, too. 

The excess of the industry is impossible to reconcile with what’s happening in the real world. We’re on the verge of another American election, living through the hottest years on record, trying to build a future for ourselves in the midst of skyrocketing inequality and the collapse of a common sense of truth. You can feel the cognitive dissonance practically screaming through your phone screen. It’s called weltschmerz in German. Sadness that the world is the way that it is.

I feel for people still working in fashion. You have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to stay sane in an industry that doesn’t reflect your values. I quit instead, but I was young and could afford to take the risk. When I catch up with the news from my desk in Berlin, there’s a rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic feeling to it all. I miss the excitement and thrill of fashion week, but I also don’t. Life is different now. Writing about the world’s chaos and miseries isn’t exactly fun, but it brings me a lot of purpose — something you won’t find in Paris.