Op-Ed | Instagram & Late Capitalism
Hey everyone, I haven't seen a thread about Faust's last collaboration with highsnobiety.
https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/bad-t...te-capitalism/
Plenty of things to discuss !!!!
As soon as I have some time I'll post my thoughts.
PS: sorry if there's already a thread about this, I quickly searched but didn't find any.
I look forward to your comments.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde
StyleZeitgeist Magazine
Yeah, good article. Couldnt agree more. We see this everywhere. Not only in fashion.
Great read. Something mentioned in the article that had never really crossed my mind before was awful taste and disregard for context. I remember seeing and hearing about the noose hoodie and Columbine sweater when they were introduced and noting that they were awful pieces of clothing. Now that I think about it again, it never really hit me how appalling and worrisome it is that no-one down the line at Burberry/ERD thought twice about these items. This genre of clothing is beyond kitsch, if such a term exists, because I don't think edgy cuts it either.
What is, then, the solution? If anything, I have seen StyleZeitgeist's Instagram following increase from around 20k in December to 31.6k today (Faust can correct me on this one). I think it's a good sign, and that although mainstream fashion is huge, the avant-garde/underground crowd is not shrinking by any means.
great article, A LOT to touch on, gathering my thoughts to come back later......
“You know,” he says, with a resilient smile, “it is a hard world for poets.”
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Faust, great writing as always!
I completely agree, I think that there are a couple of additional factors in play that create this absurd reality. First, is the fact that today everything has to be immediate. People come in with the wrong intentions, they are not here to design, they are here to be successful and they want immediately, for that reason they just chose to do whatever will bring them success (popularity) quickly. They don't want to develop their skills and craftsmanship they just want to be popular.
Second, is the push for equality of outcome. In recent years there was a major push for equality of opportunity, which is a wonderful concept yet it changed to equality of outcome which is a terrible concept. No matter what is being produced it is being praised as long as you 'play the game'. Critiques barley write negative reviews, and if they do they write it about someone who is 'safe' to criticise. This is happening not only in fashion but in many other industries and aspects of life. People are praised simply because you don't want the backlash for saying the truth.
Third, is the fact that the entire marketing model has changed, what matters now is how something looks digitally and who is associated with it. Of course in the past people would notice what celebrities are wearing, but today it's on a whole different level. People are chosen as 'brand ambassadors' solely on their ability to generate profit and/or interest, meaning they are chosen simply based on the size of their social following.
I'm not sure whether it will change as it seems that the digital world is becoming more and more prominant in our life, with that being said you can see a certain push back as people start to realise that this is not a reasonable road to continue on.
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/\ All good points. That's why I laugh when people keep saying that today's consumer is not susceptible to marketing. You've got to be joking when you say this. Maybe they are less susceptible to traditional advertising (a 30 sec spot on TV), but the average consumer is as much of a sheep as ever.
Lack of criticism is truly dispiriting. Today I received the New York Times magazine with the list of what they think are 25 relevant songs for today. Want to kill myself.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde
StyleZeitgeist Magazine
I agree that these new breed of "designers" are so very hurt to their core by any type of critique of their work, like they can just say, "I have 200k likes on the instagram post of this dope hoody so that critic must be wrong because that's only one idiot's opinion". But if 1% of the people that like that instagram post buy something from that brand, then that will amount to huge sales, so I guess they win in the end.
What about fashion darlings/critics diet_prada? I personally do not like what they do at all. Calling out D&G and other racists or assholes is great, and it's great that they have such a big audience that they can make some type of difference, however, their overbearing negativity and snark is not helping anyone. They are not doing any actual critique, hell, their bio is "people knocking each other off lol". That "lol" sums up to me their whole contribution to fashion critique. They're not real critics at all but people want to know what they think, and they take it seriously. It's scary. And they're clearly being paid by several brands to write good reviews. They liked the Tommy Hilfiger show?!? Really?!? That guy is a known racist and that show was god awful. And finally, the guy that is half of diet_prada released one of the worst mens collections I've ever seen in my life and he's supposed to be a taste-maker now? NO THANK YOU.
I would love to see this article expanded in the future, it's important now to have this discussion, and I think with proper historical references (for example the quotes from Jean Baudrillard really brought the article to another level) you could help guide a certain intelligent and curious group of consumers into the light.
Last edited by applecrisp; 03-15-2019 at 03:33 AM.
Yes I loved the Baudrillard as well! More fitting by the day unfortunately
I also find that Diet Prada is so ideologically driven that PC sentiment rules over the quality of work in their reviews. They applauded all the clothing in Valentino Haute Couture on the basis of having the majority of models be POC... Non Challenging, self confirming etc...
But i love it, that Diet Prada is calling out the copy cats.
Couldn't agree more about Diet Prada.Originally Posted by applecrisp
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde
StyleZeitgeist Magazine
Exactly. Another article addressing this coming your way.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde
StyleZeitgeist Magazine
If the claim of racism stems from the remarks he supposedly made on Oprah’s show: this rumor has been proven false.
Awful collections? This has been proven right, haha. His taste in interior design is also questionable …
"The only rule is don't be boring and dress cute wherever you go. Life is too short to blend in."
-Paris Hilton
Awesome-- The worst part about this to me, is that this is seen as progressive.
That being said, it just goes to show the genius of Mr. Small for being the only one in the game addressing this to any extent.
Last edited by supercilious; 03-15-2019 at 07:57 PM.
Great article, Faust.
everybody just follows the (like/follower) numbers and accepts this aesthetic, instead of developing their own taste dig deeper. Which is contradictory as a lot of those people claim at the same time to be individual.
Look at the Berghain line on a Sunday in summer. Everybody of those standing in line would claim to hair their individual taste yet 90% percent wear their black adidas short and t-shirt to fit (and hope to get) in.
It's not just garments, it's about following cool & popular opinions formed by influencers or things like diet_prada too.
Thanks for bringing it up. The article consists of many relevant points especially the susceptibility of the millennial customer to advertisements and their affinity to stand out of the masses while not risking their belonging to the society.
About Tommy Hilfiger, he himself couldn't did what he did if he appear as a designer current days he just give his deep thanks to the 90s which brought him to fashion surface not for his design concepts but for empty area in fashion needs filling
The same methods brought many as$#@ls from 90s to represent the legacy of fashion industry today
What make me bleeding is what i read about Tommy Hilfiger and your words absolutely true while KVA had to went out of business by his own brand
That simply what we all suffering this days
And to be fair it's not only the KVA case we had there is several designers went out of business for the same reasons
No wonder why a piece of garbage like Tommy Hilfiger is in the show while stupid (ultra stupid) consumer still purchase a stupid graphic tee of a girl wearing bikini as print with stupid cut, very bad material and ugly stitching just because it holding high end brand name
When Deepti come with the EVA glass suit i thought this women will make new era of design /material collaboration but few years later it's 99% near to even went out of business, why? Shut the hell up. How you couldn't realize her fault of trying bring some thing new, second to none and high quality techniques, she had to did what the legend Tommy Hilfiger did
She had to add and fill more garbage to fashion area to succeed
Really this stupid sphere which we live on deserve guys like Tommy Hilfiger as a punishment for their sick following of trends and fashion media like goats
They don't deserve the craftsmanship of KVA in contemporary or Deepti in dark fashion any more
That's the ugly true
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