Review and consideration of the presentations and fashion shows that have taken place in Milan: which direction should fashion go in order to remain a positive expression of the Italian industry?
There is a difference between the fashion industry and the clothing industry
The clothing industry is the commercial production of garments and wearable items. Usually, the clothing industry takes ideas from the fashion industry, selecting the marketable ones and simplifying them – sometimes simply copying them – to put them into the sales network in large-scale distribution and discounting.
Today, the clothing industry finds itself accused of the most infamous charge: consumerism. The clothing industry could also be referred to as the mass market fashion. The relationship between the fashion industry and the clothing industry was explained easily, but effectively, in the movie The Devil Wears Prada by talking about a cerulean sweater – and still, back in the day, the concept was scripted for Ms. Sally Spectra. Craftcore
Consumerism in the fashion industry
The fashion industry exists when creative research is applied to the manufacturing skills, producing ideas that can be considered novelties. It shall also be accused of consumerism – where these ideas are expected to be released at least twice a year – and even more, upon closer observation, such an accusation exists, insists and persists when the fashion industry mixes with the clothing industry. This is what has been happening lately, for too long, in Milan.
Fashion, clothing, consumerism
Fashion today can only exist if it conveys a message, a narrative, a commitment. What sense can there be in producing synthetic, colorful, stretchy – that means: plastic – clothes at a time when we are coming out of a pandemic and living through a war? When the supply of raw materials and energy is an issue that is making us shake on our knees?
Fashion should lead the Italian manufacturing industry – textile, metal, tanning and countless others – in finding new ideas. Utilizing local and natural raw materials and not choosing polyester to make everything more stable. Fashion should make us understand how creativity can react when forced to invent itself without elasticity in every knit. It could make us understand how everything can be new, modern – contemporary and current – when shades of hues are less phosphorescent but more textural, when fabrics are no longer smooth and soft like water or mud, but rough like the wool of Italian sheep. Fashion without creativity in crafting is just clothing. Clothing today is consumerism, when consumerism is perhaps the lowest expression of common living.
The cultural and civic value of fashion and craftcore
Fashion is the rhythm of the time we live in: it lives when it can move ahead of the times, it disappears when it moves late. It sounds like an axiom, instead it appears as a contradiction, because fashion managers have to balance company accounts, reason about instant sales and think short-term. Managers in the fashion system today work on numbers and results to present for a three-year evaluation: if they are good, they will change companies by moving up.
When all of this is consistent, the financials are good, but some of these managers decide to present a clothing company by calling it a fashion house. As a result, both the numbers and the perception collapse. One cannot remain indifferent: besides remembering how textile companies are a significant item for Italy’s national GDP, it is the system that suffers the most. A system called ‘Made in Italy’.
The definition of fashion and the concept of trend
There is another word that perhaps can be better used: trend. ‘The trend of the moment’ is a phrase that sounds like something out of a women’s weekly magazine devoted to makeup and lipstick, when in fact it possesses substance. The trend is the emulative sequence – simply put: if it works, so do I – that leads both clothing companies and fashion houses to present replicas, copies, reissues and repurposes.
Sometimes what happens is what we saw at Gucci in the show with the twins: the repurposing of the archive, in this case, Tom Ford’s signature years. Underwear bands coming out of low-waisted pants, tuxedos and blazers over jeans. One could say it’s a reinforcement of brand identity – needed after the last few years of misunderstanding.
Craftcore: The fashion that generates the trend of the moment
The Gucci fashion show, in revisiting Tom Ford’s ideas, follows the ‘trend of the moment’. The trend was generated by Hedi Slimane for Saint Laurent almost a decade ago: back then, hardly anyone understood.
It stood firm in its field for a while: the 1970s silhouette, black, androgyny, tailoring applied to the body. Then, he evolved to a point of seriousness in reaction to the raging of street style . Slimane remained steadfast in his rigor. Anthony Vaccarello entered and reworked it – less sophisticated, more understandable.
Street style downgraded itself to a commercial phenomenon, compromised by overspreading on Instagram, ridiculed into a self-congratulation for boys eager to delude themselves into being famous. Far opposite: Daniel Lee’s Bottega Veneta appeared. Today, what Saint Laurent offers, you find a season later, everywhere.
Glenn Martens’ stretch suits for Diesel and the beginning of craftcore
Last year the phosphorescent, stretchy, double-layered jumpsuits signed by Martens. Now we see them at Prada: one has to wait almost halfway through the release to encounter a volume that can be called an updated identity by Prada. Looking at Diesel last year and everywhere else today, these volume-less, formless tunics, made of plastic for chemical colors. I still don’t understand the point.
On a different path, Glenn Martens finds the center of his work for Diesel. An almost obsessive speculation on denim and the color blue. Denim is not consistently positive. It almost always presents a component of spandex mixed with cotton; the Indigofera Tinctoria that produces the blue is not a plant that can be grown in Italy (few fields are experimental). So we cannot say a short supply chain.
The good point is that Martens has put craftsmanship at the center. He has strained every inventiveness pushing on this material, denim. It may be the epitome of craftcore, that is: when craftsmanship is at the center of creative effort.
The meaning of craftcore
Maria Grazia Chiuri still recounts the fashion show in Lecce, when she hired all the local bobbin lace workers (tombolo) and she developed an entire fashion show for Dior on this tradition. One had to wonder what tied Dior – an iconic name for French aesthetic culture and Parisian attitude – with Apulian lace.
The answer was as simple as it was obvious: Maria Grazia Chiuri. With that show, she reiterated that Dior was a brand. But that the person who designs Dior is a woman of Italian tradition. Craftcore – bringing craft, manual and manufacturing skills to the center. Starting with manufacturing rigor to which creativity applies – this is the current step in the fashion industry.
The use of synthetic threads – craftcore
We find it in New York at Bode, which is based on a short supply chain in the city. Bode’s concept produce everything locally in NYC, working with workshops along the avenues. Here the embroideries produced with synthetic threads, the unnatural colors, but the asset of the short supply chain is emphasize: it is a first concrete sign.
In Milan we observe Vitelli, whose knitwear uses only stock remnants, recycled, and discarded fabrics. While some of the weaving was done on hand looms. Again, plastic and synthetics remain, but at least one asset is confirmed.
This is precisely Fashion’s responsibility. To develop experimental craft techniques and make what now appears difficult – almost impossible – to produce to become desirable. In craftcore, manufacturing and craftsmanship stimulate, electrify, disrupt thanks to creativity. This must be fashion today.
