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I thought this was an interesting argument about how ready access to images leaves less to designers' imagination.
Full article on Business of Fashion.
TEL AVIV, Israel — The first suspicious signals surfaced just over six months ago. A plaid short skirt at the Moschino fashion show joined a stray stud from the Versace collection. Both of these were soon incorporated in a number of other collections, both high-end and high-street, culminating in the Autumn/Winter 2013 collection for Saint Laurent Paris. Accompanied by a deafening soundtrack of blaring guitars, any lingering doubt was decimated: the current fashion mood was unmistakably 90s post-punk, or grunge.
Fashion retailers are now racing to align themselves with this nostalgic movement with extraordinary enthusiasm. Indeed, examining the Fall collections of several popular brands, one discovers a scarily similar blend of flannel shirts, black jeans and studded boots. For designers, many of whom grew up during the late 90s, this represents a seemingly pure form of nostalgia, which may serve to explain why they are flocking towards the trend.
But to tell the truth, this glance back towards the 90s gives me a severe sense of discomfort. As opposed to the manner in which 80s fashion derived its sculpted shoulders from the 1940s, mixing in its own sharp angles, and unlike Madeleine Vionnet’s turn-of-the-century neo-classical dresses, which incorporated new bias cuts, the 90s revival apparel appears to be too true to its origins. Today’s grunge looks identical to the original grunge (enabling Hedi Slimane, Saint Laurent’s creative director, to recruit Courtney Love, one of the decade’s irrefutable symbols, as his presenter).
Like other realms of design, fashion always moves forward with one eye on the past, constantly re-examining proven aesthetic codes. That being said, the striking similarities between fashion from 20 years ago and that which is being produced today are not coincidental. The technological advancements of fashion documentation over the last two decades, especially in the realms of digital media and broadcast channels like MTV, have affected fashion itself....
CONTINUE READING HERE
Full article on Business of Fashion.
TEL AVIV, Israel — The first suspicious signals surfaced just over six months ago. A plaid short skirt at the Moschino fashion show joined a stray stud from the Versace collection. Both of these were soon incorporated in a number of other collections, both high-end and high-street, culminating in the Autumn/Winter 2013 collection for Saint Laurent Paris. Accompanied by a deafening soundtrack of blaring guitars, any lingering doubt was decimated: the current fashion mood was unmistakably 90s post-punk, or grunge.
Fashion retailers are now racing to align themselves with this nostalgic movement with extraordinary enthusiasm. Indeed, examining the Fall collections of several popular brands, one discovers a scarily similar blend of flannel shirts, black jeans and studded boots. For designers, many of whom grew up during the late 90s, this represents a seemingly pure form of nostalgia, which may serve to explain why they are flocking towards the trend.
But to tell the truth, this glance back towards the 90s gives me a severe sense of discomfort. As opposed to the manner in which 80s fashion derived its sculpted shoulders from the 1940s, mixing in its own sharp angles, and unlike Madeleine Vionnet’s turn-of-the-century neo-classical dresses, which incorporated new bias cuts, the 90s revival apparel appears to be too true to its origins. Today’s grunge looks identical to the original grunge (enabling Hedi Slimane, Saint Laurent’s creative director, to recruit Courtney Love, one of the decade’s irrefutable symbols, as his presenter).
Like other realms of design, fashion always moves forward with one eye on the past, constantly re-examining proven aesthetic codes. That being said, the striking similarities between fashion from 20 years ago and that which is being produced today are not coincidental. The technological advancements of fashion documentation over the last two decades, especially in the realms of digital media and broadcast channels like MTV, have affected fashion itself....
CONTINUE READING HERE
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