SILENCE OF THE LAMBS: THE FASHION MEDIA PROSTRATES ITSELF BEFORE CHANEL AND LOUIS VUITTON
by Eugene Rabkin
"Vestoj and StyleZeitgeist have teamed up in a dialogue and series of critiques of recent events in fashion media to raise more wide-reaching questions about the state of contemporary fashion media – and what that says about our industry at large. In our second installment of this collaboration, we examine the recent political faux pas of the Chanel and Louis Vuitton resort collections, and the fashion media’s sycophancy.
A while ago I wrote about the need for divorcing fashion from politics, and I mentioned that often fashion is incredibly tone-deaf when it comes to current events. The recent Chanel and Louis Vuitton pre-collection shows – displaying clothes for the ultra-rich in the poverty-stricken Cuba and Brazil – are only reinforcing this view. As expected, virtually no one in the fashion media – pretty much everyone who covered the events was flown in, put up in a hotel, and wined and dined by the brands – dared to speak up. The shows got overwhelmingly positive coverage, even from seasoned journalists at major newspapers who are usually not afraid to speak their mind.
Chanel staged its show in Havana, shutting down a section of the Prado boulevard, its main thoroughfare, and paid for 700 people to come see it. It was billed as a “celebration of Cuba’s cultural richness,” but few Cubans were actually allowed in – they were cordoned off behind a police line a block away. As usual, the show was reserved for the international rich and the global fashion press elite, and the whole thing had a strong whiff of neocolonialism. The dissonance between showing ultra expensive clothing, complete with a beret reminiscent of Che Guevera’s, in a country where most people struggle to find basic goods was not lost on “the natives.” Unsurprisingly, the Cuban intellectuals lashed out, “It would be hard to overturn a revolution, much less Cuba’s revolution, by closing the Prado boulevard to show off the cruise collection of a famous French brand,” wrote Sergio Gomez, a Cuban columnist. “But the way in which these events are interpreted, in the context of a process of change that will define the destiny of 11 million people, can subvert the social consensus that the country has maintained for more than half a century.”
In his review for the Business of Fashion, Tim Blanks wrote that “the fundamental incongruity of the moment was lost on no one.“ And yet, there was not a peep out of the fashion press about the aforementioned incongruity, with very few exceptions. Even then, someone like Vanessa Friedman of the New York Times – who was not flown in – refused to take Chanel to task, wondering out loud, “Who is to say those benefits do not far outweigh the moral ickiness of promoting very expensive clothes for the very few in a country where no one can buy such clothes?” Who? Well, why not you, a fashion critic for a major newspaper?"
Read the full article on StyleZeitgeist Magazine
by Eugene Rabkin
"Vestoj and StyleZeitgeist have teamed up in a dialogue and series of critiques of recent events in fashion media to raise more wide-reaching questions about the state of contemporary fashion media – and what that says about our industry at large. In our second installment of this collaboration, we examine the recent political faux pas of the Chanel and Louis Vuitton resort collections, and the fashion media’s sycophancy.
A while ago I wrote about the need for divorcing fashion from politics, and I mentioned that often fashion is incredibly tone-deaf when it comes to current events. The recent Chanel and Louis Vuitton pre-collection shows – displaying clothes for the ultra-rich in the poverty-stricken Cuba and Brazil – are only reinforcing this view. As expected, virtually no one in the fashion media – pretty much everyone who covered the events was flown in, put up in a hotel, and wined and dined by the brands – dared to speak up. The shows got overwhelmingly positive coverage, even from seasoned journalists at major newspapers who are usually not afraid to speak their mind.
Chanel staged its show in Havana, shutting down a section of the Prado boulevard, its main thoroughfare, and paid for 700 people to come see it. It was billed as a “celebration of Cuba’s cultural richness,” but few Cubans were actually allowed in – they were cordoned off behind a police line a block away. As usual, the show was reserved for the international rich and the global fashion press elite, and the whole thing had a strong whiff of neocolonialism. The dissonance between showing ultra expensive clothing, complete with a beret reminiscent of Che Guevera’s, in a country where most people struggle to find basic goods was not lost on “the natives.” Unsurprisingly, the Cuban intellectuals lashed out, “It would be hard to overturn a revolution, much less Cuba’s revolution, by closing the Prado boulevard to show off the cruise collection of a famous French brand,” wrote Sergio Gomez, a Cuban columnist. “But the way in which these events are interpreted, in the context of a process of change that will define the destiny of 11 million people, can subvert the social consensus that the country has maintained for more than half a century.”
In his review for the Business of Fashion, Tim Blanks wrote that “the fundamental incongruity of the moment was lost on no one.“ And yet, there was not a peep out of the fashion press about the aforementioned incongruity, with very few exceptions. Even then, someone like Vanessa Friedman of the New York Times – who was not flown in – refused to take Chanel to task, wondering out loud, “Who is to say those benefits do not far outweigh the moral ickiness of promoting very expensive clothes for the very few in a country where no one can buy such clothes?” Who? Well, why not you, a fashion critic for a major newspaper?"
Read the full article on StyleZeitgeist Magazine
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