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By Eugene Rabkin
"When last year the Belgian designer Raf Simons was finally officially appointed as the creative director of Calvin Klein, the American brand known for its minimalist aesthetic, the fashion world was elated, and those of us in New York doubly so. The New York fashion scene has long been starved of creative talent of Simons’s caliber. And while the departed and highly underrated Francisco Costa has quietly done a brilliant job at the helm of Calvin Klein’s womenswear, he was never given the sweeping authority to oversee the entire brand. Simons will be doing everything, including crafting Calvin Klein’s overall aesthetic direction. But whether this will be a glorious return to Klein’s own minimalism remains to be seen. The even bigger question is whether minimalism can remain viable today.
That contemporary fashion, especially that caters to the young, is now largely driven by Instagram is no longer a subject for debate. Instagram allows designers to speak directly to the audience not only through their work, but through their lifestyle. One of the first designers to recognize this was Ricardo Tisci at Givenchy. He also quickly began tailoring his faux-goth aesthetic towards being Instagram-friendly, abandoning subtle details embedded into the clothing in favor of graphic prints on t-shirts and sweatshirts. These were immediately recognizable, becoming a branding exercise that cleverly stopped short of logomania. These products became wildly fashionable and commercially successful, and the brand’s consumers did not seem to mind that some of those sweatshirts cost not much less than a tailored Givenchy suit.
It did not take long for the rest of the fashion world to catch up to Tisci’s success. Hood by Air began putting together a New York version of what Tisci was doing in Paris and has quickly found commercial success. Then came the now ubiquitous Vetements, who began by building on the heritage of Martin Margiela, the minimalist par excellence, but quickly veered off into producing slogan-emblazoned sweatshirts.
The case of Vetements seems especially egregious in catering to the consumer who craves Instagrammable fashion. If you look at the first two Vetements collections, you will hardly find a logo or a graphic in them. Those collections mostly concentrated on deconstruction and attention to seamwork and silhouette. But after the brand’s ironic security jacket that said “Vetements” on it became its bestseller, the light bulb went on, and Vetements’s subsequent collections became heavy on graphics and slogans.
The rise of the so-called “street style” photography has also been spurred by Instagram. Why I put “street style” in quotation marks, is because it’s no longer anything of the sort. Long gone are the days when “The Sartorialist” Scott Schuman rode his bicycle around New York City, trying to spot the sartorially interesting on the street. Today, an army of photographers mobs every single fashion show or event and the attendees spend countless hours carefully preparing for their grand entrance. Advertising teams of fashion companies often influence what they wear. Spontaneity is out, status anxiety and marketing is in."
Read the entire article on SZ-MAG
"When last year the Belgian designer Raf Simons was finally officially appointed as the creative director of Calvin Klein, the American brand known for its minimalist aesthetic, the fashion world was elated, and those of us in New York doubly so. The New York fashion scene has long been starved of creative talent of Simons’s caliber. And while the departed and highly underrated Francisco Costa has quietly done a brilliant job at the helm of Calvin Klein’s womenswear, he was never given the sweeping authority to oversee the entire brand. Simons will be doing everything, including crafting Calvin Klein’s overall aesthetic direction. But whether this will be a glorious return to Klein’s own minimalism remains to be seen. The even bigger question is whether minimalism can remain viable today.
That contemporary fashion, especially that caters to the young, is now largely driven by Instagram is no longer a subject for debate. Instagram allows designers to speak directly to the audience not only through their work, but through their lifestyle. One of the first designers to recognize this was Ricardo Tisci at Givenchy. He also quickly began tailoring his faux-goth aesthetic towards being Instagram-friendly, abandoning subtle details embedded into the clothing in favor of graphic prints on t-shirts and sweatshirts. These were immediately recognizable, becoming a branding exercise that cleverly stopped short of logomania. These products became wildly fashionable and commercially successful, and the brand’s consumers did not seem to mind that some of those sweatshirts cost not much less than a tailored Givenchy suit.
It did not take long for the rest of the fashion world to catch up to Tisci’s success. Hood by Air began putting together a New York version of what Tisci was doing in Paris and has quickly found commercial success. Then came the now ubiquitous Vetements, who began by building on the heritage of Martin Margiela, the minimalist par excellence, but quickly veered off into producing slogan-emblazoned sweatshirts.
The case of Vetements seems especially egregious in catering to the consumer who craves Instagrammable fashion. If you look at the first two Vetements collections, you will hardly find a logo or a graphic in them. Those collections mostly concentrated on deconstruction and attention to seamwork and silhouette. But after the brand’s ironic security jacket that said “Vetements” on it became its bestseller, the light bulb went on, and Vetements’s subsequent collections became heavy on graphics and slogans.
The rise of the so-called “street style” photography has also been spurred by Instagram. Why I put “street style” in quotation marks, is because it’s no longer anything of the sort. Long gone are the days when “The Sartorialist” Scott Schuman rode his bicycle around New York City, trying to spot the sartorially interesting on the street. Today, an army of photographers mobs every single fashion show or event and the attendees spend countless hours carefully preparing for their grand entrance. Advertising teams of fashion companies often influence what they wear. Spontaneity is out, status anxiety and marketing is in."
Read the entire article on SZ-MAG
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