Why Fashion Matters

Frances Corner

• Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9780500772089
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

Fashion matters to the economy, to society and to each of us personally. What we wear tells the story of who we are or who we want to be more quickly than anything else. Yet even as fashion touches the lives of each and every one of us, it can seem mysterious. Accessible, instructive and hugely enjoyable, this book will be essential reading for anyone involved in fashion, business, education and beyond. Frances Corner is Head of London College of Fashion and a leading expert on this rapidly expanding, increasingly global, always exciting industry so is ideally placed to guide readers into this dizzying world. In 101 provocative entries she teases out the intricacies and contradictions of an industry that simultaneously values technology and craft, timeless style and fast fashion, the bespoke and the mass-market, consumption and sustainability, cold-hard numbers and creative expression. From 'Karl Lagerfeld and High-Tech Fur' to 'The White Shirt' to 'The One Trillion Dollar Business', each of the 101 provocative entries offers a unique avenue into fashion and its impact, both positive and negative, around the globe.

THE COUTURE LABORATORY

1	I attended my first haute couture show soon after starting as Head of London College of Fashion. I was determined to gain an understanding of these special collections and the incomparable skills of the ateliers that craft them entirely by hand. I was not disappointed; they are extraordinary.

Haute couture was developed in France to protect Paris’s status as the world’s fashion capital. Even today, what does and does not qualify as couture is strictly governed by the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, a trade organization with roots in the nineteenth century. Many people confuse haute couture with the ready-to-wear collections covered extensively in the media but couture is quite distinct. For a fashion house to qualify as a maker of couture it must follow strict rules: it must design made-to-order garments for private clients, with one or more fittings necessary, maintain a workshop in Paris that employs at least fifteen people full-time, and show two collections each year in Paris in January and July, with each one comprised of at least thirty-five outfits for both day- and eveningwear.

To some, couture is an anachronism, elitist and irrelevant. But I admire it as a system that has preserved and protected a vast range of skills and crafts, such as fine embroidery, beadwork and the decorative use of feathers or precious stones. Many of these skills are no longer practised anywhere else in the world, making Paris the global centre for the creation of these exquisite, handmade, one-off fashions.

In the 1990s, it seemed as if couture might be dying because not enough clients were regularly buying sufficient quantities to keep the ateliers alive. Now, with the growth of wealth in Russia, Asia and the Middle East, couture is once again flourishing, so much so that Giorgio Armani and Dolce & Gabbana have added it to their repertoire in recent years. The Chambre Syndicale has also embraced new foreign-born couturiers, including Livia Stoianova and Yassen Samoilov of On Aura Tout Vu, Rad Hourani, Laurence Xu and Didit Hediprasetyo, all of whom have brought new vitality to this traditional French industry.

In the end, couture is all about the beauty of the clothes. As my colleague Tony Glenville, who introduced me to all things couture, has said: ‘In spite of rumours of the demise of couture, the snide comments from people who say it is PR only to sell fragrance and those who see no modern validity in it, it survives. It is where art and fashion meet if only briefly. . . . It is still a laboratory for design and things are possible in couture which are impossible anywhere else.’

CLOSING THE (PLASTIC BOTTLE) LOOP

2

The idea that plastic bottles can be recycled into other objects, saving them from the landfill, has captured the imaginations of many. Making new clothes from old bottles is thought to consume less energy than standard polyester production and a number of major retailers are turning to recycled textiles to ‘green’ their supply chain. As with all environmental issues, the reality is more complicated. Manufacturing polyester from recycled bottles may consume less energy than manufacturing new polyester from fossil fuels but it consumes more energy than is necessary to produce organic natural fibres. Melting and re-extruding the plastic to make new yarns also degrades it so that eventually it can no longer be recycled. As the base colours of the recycled plastic vary in consistency, more chemical dye is necessary to achieve a uniform colour. Fabrics made from synthetic and organic blends cannot be recycled at all.

Achieving a closed loop of production in which yarns can be recycled indefinitely seems a long way off but there has been progress. Some companies are designing products that do not feature backings or use textile blends. Textile manufacturers are beginning to create more fabrics without the carcinogenic chemical antimony, which can be released into the environment through wastewater. Significant research is going into the fabrication of bio-based polymers that will be recyclable, biodegradable and made from sustainable sources. Such fabrics would have the positive properties of any conventional synthetic material, including its low cost of manufacture, but none of the negative side effects.

THE ‘CLOTHES THAT WEAR US’

3

One of my favourite fashion books is Colin McDowell’s Literary Companion to Fashion. Covering over four hundred years of literature from Britain, Ireland, Europe and America, it explores the rituals and meanings of dress, as well as the intrinsic role that clothes play in the creation of character and the telling of a story that is both believable and meaningful.

Whenever I revisit this book, I find myself reflecting on stories, novels and plays that I have personally read or seen performed. From fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, The Emperor’s New Clothes and The Elves and the Shoemaker to the novels of Marcel Proust, Doris Lessing and Jean Rhys, the importance placed upon clothes and accessories in these texts is remarkable and moving.

For me, it is a passage from Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando, in which the central protagonist shifts gender halfway through, that most brilliantly articulates the significance of clothes in both our lives and those of characters:

‘THERE IS MUCH TO SUPPORT THE VIEW THAT IT IS CLOTHES THAT WEAR US, AND NOT WE, THEM; WE MAY MAKE THEM TAKE THE MOULD OF ARM OR BREAST, BUT THEY MOULD OUR HEARTS, OUR BRAINS, OUR TONGUES TO THEIR LIKING.’

PRADA, ZARA AND THE GREAT MARK-UP MYSTERY

4

Did you know that of any industry fashion has the greatest range of stages involved in the making of its products? Its supply chain is long and convoluted, often involving travel between factories and countries, contractors and subcontractors. Partly because of this complexity, fashion has a greater range of mark-ups than any other industry.

Now that we’re all happy to mix our Prada with our Zara, we tend to have little to no understanding of the true value of each garment or accessory in our wardrobes. Designer labels and high-street retailers often use the same factories and labourers, yet they attach wildly different price tags to their goods. Counterfeiting and cheap copies take shoppers further and further away from the reality of production costs. You would hope that a higher price tag guaranteed that the garment worker who made it received a living wage, but too often it doesn’t. How can value and price begin to reflect one another once again?

THE AFRICAN LUXURY MARKET

5	Africa is being touted as the next Asia with regards to retail and a growing consumer appetite for luxury goods. The International Herald Tribune’s 2012 Luxury Conference was dedicated to discussing the potential for Africa to be both a ‘producer and ultimately consumer of luxury goods’.

Seven of the world’s ten fastest growing economies are in Africa and seventy per cent of the continent’s population live in countries that have enjoyed annual economic growth of over four per cent in the past decade. Approximately 310 million Africans are now middle-class and eager to buy local fashions that epitomize excellence. While for the majority of the continent’s people, poverty remains a cruel reality, according to a report from The Economist’s Intelligence Unit, Africa’s eighteen leading national economies will have a combined spending power of $1.3 trillion by 2030.

Across Africa there is a real hunger for and interest in fashion and the creative industries. With the numbers of fifteen to twenty-five year olds increasing significantly, the desire for Western fashion is growing at an exponential rate and brand awareness is becoming very sophisticated. Zara, Nike, Levi’s and Gap have all recently opened stores in either South Africa, Kenya, Ghana or Nigeria. Luxury brand Ermenegildo Zegna has pioneered the opening of a number of high-end stores across the continent.

Fashion weeks in Lagos, Nigeria, and Accra, Ghana, are working to raise the profile of African fashion across the continent, while designers are pioneering their own contributions to the burgeoning fashion industry, often absorbing Western cultural references before twisting and changing them to suit local styles. Traditional artisanal skills and craftsmanship are often key to the production of these new designs, resulting in garments that are highly desirable to African consumers as well as a global audience looking for something fresh and authentic. How African fashion and traditional dress may fuse and intertwine over the coming years seems likely to lead to all sorts of creative possibilities and tensions. Watch this space.

EDUCATION, EXPERIMENTATION AND ATTITUDE

6	Since 2005 I have enjoyed the privilege of being Head of the London College of Fashion, one of the world’s leading fashion education institutions since its founding in 1906. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the importance and value of education is something to which I have devoted quite a lot of thought.

Education should give students the opportunity to test, experiment, investigate and undergo a series of experiences that ultimately transform their thinking, like some form of alchemy, about the world around them. Education should equip them with the confidence and abilities to shape their own lives, to plan and to respond to challenges in ways that were previously inconceivable to them.

Hope combined with the belief that there is a way through every problem is at the heart of the creative process. Over the years, I have tried to build this attitude and approach into the courses of every educational institution at which I have worked. At the heart of this philosophy is the journey, both physical and intellectual. This journey cannot be precisely planned because, while you might know your destination, both anticipated and unanticipated obstacles are bound to arise.

There are countless ways to achieve your goal, whatever that may be. A flexibility in thought will give you the courage to seize whatever opportunities come your way without losing sight of your true aim. This flexibility should extend to what the end result may be, not as an excuse for under achievement but in recognition that as we grow and change, so too will what we want out of life.

Openness, flexibility, curiosity and the conviction that for every decision made an equally interesting, difficult or adventurous option could have been taken, these are the qualities that should motivate ev...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 101 Thoughts on Why Fashion Matters
• Acknowledgments
• Further Reading and Selected Sources
• Relevant Websites
• Other titles of interest
• About the author
• Copyright