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  • Faust
    kitsch killer
    • Sep 2006
    • 37852

    Hype 2015

    OP-ED: 2015 – GUCCI, VETEMENTS, AND HYPE
    by Eugene Rabkin


    This year is drawing to a close and a lot has happened in fashion, most of it not so good. I am not talking about the departed: Raf Simons from Dior (good for him), Alexander Wang from Balenciaga (good riddance), and Alber Elbaz from Lanvin (good lord!).

    I am talking about the arrivistes: namely, Gucci under Alessandro Michele and Vetements under Demna Gvasalia. And not just about them, but about the reaction on the part of the fashion media to their work.

    These two brands under these two designers have been the most critically acclaimed developments of 2015. The adulation that has been bestowed on them by fashion journalists has been bewildering. I am not talking about fashion magazine editors whose job it is to like everything and whom no one takes seriously anymore. I am talking about that rare breed of writers who still have a modicum of critical thinking left in them.

    Now, Gucci and Vetements are two different beasts. Gucci is part of Kering, a huge fashion conglomerate with serious marketing muscle and a honed PR machine. Kering has mastered the careful engineering of a brand turnaround, most prominently by bringing Hedi Slimane to Saint-Laurent in order to, in one critic’s words, make dumb clothes for the world full of dumb people. The transformation was so phenomenally successful that it came no surprise that the floundering Gucci was next.

    And so it happened that Frida Giannini was fired and Alessandro Michele, the designer who worked under her, pushed forward. Which is fine – sometimes fashion houses need a shakeup. This time though Kering opted out of hiring a prissy star designer and relied on their marketing power to ramp up the hype machine. And it worked splendidly. Cowed by Kering’s advertising power, fashion editors lined up to praise a resort collection of ugly grandma gear presented in New York as a pre-collection. More inexplicable were praises bestowed on the collection by major fashion critics. Could it really be that fur-lined slippers are the best thing that happened in fashion this year?

    I hate to be uncharitable towards my colleagues, but I think one reason for the overwhelming pile of praise they bestowed on Michele’s mediocre collection was the fact that they were flown in to New York at Gucci’s expense. Fashion journalists are underpaid, but are supposed to lead fabulous lifestyles. Increasingly, a handful of houses that can afford to do so, stage pre-collection shows in far-flung locales, shuttled editors to and fro in business class, put them up in posh hotels, and wine and dine them, all on the house. It’s hard to write a negative review after that, an act of ungratefulness of sorts.

    Unlike Gucci, Vetements is presented as fashion’s underdog, a bunch of scrappy talented young designers schooled in Antwerp, the cradle of fashion’s creativity, and reared at Margiela, the king of the fashion avant-garde, and who are taking on the bloated, boring fashion system with their unconventional, cerebral designs. I thought their first two collections were interesting, though they presented nothing that Margiela has not done already many years ago. Still, it felt relatively fresh in the new-is-the-well-forgotten-old kind of way.

    Sadly, Vetements is getting boring quickly and the hype surrounding them is not helping. You can only do so much with reworked clothes. There is something missing here, a continuity of direction. Maybe the time and place is not right for continuous rehashing, or maybe the label is quickly getting bogged down in a one-trick-pony mentality, but Vetements lacks the depth of Margiela’s thinking, along with his ability to turn what could be seen as mere tricks into something lasting.

    The hype around Vetements has reached its pinnacle earlier this year when Demna Gvasalia, the head of the collective, was hired to helm Balenciaga (Kering strikes again). And though it is obviously a classic case of Kering jumping on the hype bandwagon, the fashion press dialed-up ebullience to the n-th degree. Alexander Fury, usually an insightful and brilliant critic, wrote not one but two gushing articles in the Independent about the appointment, claiming in one that Gvasalia’s appointment is “triumph of design over marketing hype.”

    What’s going on here? Are the fashion critics simply this gullible, easy to please, and cowardly in the face of potential advertisers? In part, yes. (Example: Remember that Louis Vuitton art foundation building in Paris roundly praised by fashion critics? Well, it was roundly disparaged by art critics, whose magazines don’t depend on LVMH advertising.)(CONTINUE)
    Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

    StyleZeitgeist Magazine
  • petricor
    Junior Member
    • Mar 2015
    • 21

    #2
    Bravo, sir. Thank you.

    Commenting on the pervasiveness of money and the subsequent erosion of ethics is disheartening, but fair.
    Identifying quirkiness and observing its short half life is insightful.

    A question from a novice, we've seen irony and quirkiness in mmm and cdg in the past. would it be fair to say that the difference between their quirkiness and the new quirkiness we observe is the sincerity(?) with which it is being deployed?

    Comment

    • Faust
      kitsch killer
      • Sep 2006
      • 37852

      #3
      I wasn't thinking about sincerity - I'd be heart pressed to say that Margiela and Kawakubo were sincere. What I mean is there has to be a deeper agenda and a more lasting statement than mere quirkiness. Both Margiela and Kawakubo have that in their subversiveness, in their cerebral approach to fashion, in their anti-glamor stance.
      Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

      StyleZeitgeist Magazine

      Comment

      • Ahimsa
        Vegan Police
        • Sep 2011
        • 1879

        #4
        Excellent article Faust.

        I found this old interview with Karl extremely on point:

        WWD: Do you see the quality of journalism increasing or decreasing?

        K.L.: There are not so many who know how to write decently about fashion and who have the technical knowledge and culture. The others are very basic: They want to be trendy. They think trendiness is more important than knowledge.

        We're largely looking at a surge of both designers and writers with no knowledge, skill, or reference. We have people not knowing how to write, about designers who don't know how to design.


        I've been recanting as of late my initial praise of Vetements. Much of what I've seen in the latest buys have me unimpressed as they seem a bit tired to even someone as young as myself.
        StyleZeitgeist Magazine | Store

        Comment

        • ES3K
          Senior Member
          • Oct 2008
          • 530

          #5
          Originally posted by Faust View Post
          This year is drawing to a close and a lot has happened in fashion, most of it not so good. I am not talking about the departed: Raf Simons from Dior (good for him), Alexander Wang from Balenciaga (good riddance), and Alber Elbaz from Lanvin (good lord!).
          /\ you can't describe these three departures any better. One of the best article intros ever, I'd say.

          And regarding the new Gucci... I was really wondering why it gets so much praise from critics, "ugly grandma gear" hits the spot.
          That aside, I think it'll sell quite well -- what hits the stores is the same concept as SLP, wardrobe basics and printed/embroidered bombers, sweatshirts etc, pleasing sound hipsters.

          Comment

          • Matias_Zurich
            Junior Member
            • Nov 2015
            • 8

            #6
            "(Example: Remember that Louis Vuitton art foundation building in Paris roundly praised by fashion critics? Well, it was roundly disparaged by art critics, whose magazines don’t depend on LVMH advertising.)"

            It seems to me that you have never bought any art magazines, because if you did, you would see double page ads by Céline, Dior, Saint Laurent in pages of Art Review and Art Forum for instance, the leading art publications.

            Comment

            • Faust
              kitsch killer
              • Sep 2006
              • 37852

              #7
              True enough. But the key word is "depend."
              Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

              StyleZeitgeist Magazine

              Comment

              • C.R.E.A.M
                Member
                • Feb 2015
                • 53

                #8
                "make dumb clothes for the world full of dumb people".

                Ahahahah. Don't know which critic wrote that, but he/she couldn't be more right.

                Anyway, good piece Faust. Let's see whats next for 2016.

                Comment

                • gregor
                  Senior Member
                  • Oct 2014
                  • 603

                  #9
                  this kind of harks back to zams whole piece on a reboot. hype is a really dangerous thing that drives far too much of the industry nowadays, and gucci and vetements, neither of which i am a fan of at all are good indicators of.

                  vetements falls flat because even though i can see who the clothes appeal to, i don't find that audience to be genuinely appreciative of the conviction behind the clothes they wear. vetements has no attitude that speaks to me. it even feels like a designer collection for a high street retailer; a bastardization meant to appeal to the masses by doing away with what made it so charming in the first place. margiela had cool clothes, but margiela also had a unique, anti-fashion attitude that vetements is anathema to. clothes without soul are not worth buying to me. any piece of clothing, regardless of it's visual facets can have soul, but not vetements, and certainly not gucci.

                  Comment

                  • nathaliew817
                    Senior Member
                    • Sep 2014
                    • 137

                    #10
                    I disliked Vetements at first, felt like they were hyping too hard and well, just remaking old Margiela.

                    The hype maybe forced them to make clothes that people wanted *old Margiela* while abandoning the reason they started their brand.

                    However, maybe they just need to evolve a bit more.
                    V A N II T A S

                    Comment

                    • Matias_Zurich
                      Junior Member
                      • Nov 2015
                      • 8

                      #11
                      i really am not sure to what extent art media rely on LVMH funding, as more and more exhibitions seem to be sponsored by their brands, like the current one at Palais De tokyo in Paris, for example..The december issue of artpress magazine had a page depicting a photo of the foundation louis vuitton to introduce their digital version...
                      It's true that the mainstream fashion people are just interested in the logo attached to it, i remember the way they were drooling over fondazione prada...

                      Comment

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