Pretty good article here:
Alber Elbaz Leaving Lanvin as Fashion’s Slippery Slope Claims Another Designer
This plus Faust's article had me thinking, it's not so much that the fashion system is broken as this is the new way of business in every sector. Those of us in academia know too well the shift from long term marriages (professorships) to short term underpaid contract work (adjunct). Basically everyone gets screwed except the people at the top who can keep refreshing their brand as needed without having to commit to giving a director longterm creative license. I agree with Friedman's assesment that the product and design suffers when the designer doesn't have the commitment or stability to build a design vocabulary with a brand. Just like teaching suffers in academia when adjuncts know they are nothing more than a hired mercenary who may or may not be coming back the next semester.
"That is, the current situation in which brands treat designers as “work for hire” — stewards that set a course for a style ship for a time, but who can be replaced as necessary while the ship itself sails on — and its inevitable corollary: that designers start to see themselves the same way. The result transforms the relationship from that of a marriage, where you pledge to love and care for each other through sickness and in health, into a dispassionate contract-to-contract arrangement."
Alber Elbaz Leaving Lanvin as Fashion’s Slippery Slope Claims Another Designer
This plus Faust's article had me thinking, it's not so much that the fashion system is broken as this is the new way of business in every sector. Those of us in academia know too well the shift from long term marriages (professorships) to short term underpaid contract work (adjunct). Basically everyone gets screwed except the people at the top who can keep refreshing their brand as needed without having to commit to giving a director longterm creative license. I agree with Friedman's assesment that the product and design suffers when the designer doesn't have the commitment or stability to build a design vocabulary with a brand. Just like teaching suffers in academia when adjuncts know they are nothing more than a hired mercenary who may or may not be coming back the next semester.
"That is, the current situation in which brands treat designers as “work for hire” — stewards that set a course for a style ship for a time, but who can be replaced as necessary while the ship itself sails on — and its inevitable corollary: that designers start to see themselves the same way. The result transforms the relationship from that of a marriage, where you pledge to love and care for each other through sickness and in health, into a dispassionate contract-to-contract arrangement."
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