Fashion & lifestyle

Fashion Is Culture

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Exploring the intersection of style, identity, and society


Fashion is culture. With the word fashion, we mean the appearance and behaviour of a social community according to a particular taste of the moment. It refers to all the style and life elements that identify a society during a specific era.

Fashion is just another way to scan our society and culture. Another lens through which we can investigate human behaviour.

We can use clothes to hide aspects of our personality or, instead, to show and express our identity. As an overall concept, we can use clothes to analyze different cultures.

How culture and fashion have evolved


Fashion is the result of a creative process that talks about our culture. The reason it became mistreated and demeaned as a vain or silly field, lies in the system itself and some external factors. Since finance took over the industry, during the 80s and 90s, the creative process has been forcibly accelerated, pushed to an extremely fast-paced model. Very little space was left for creativity.

Later on, when the internet and social media entered the scene, the creative side of fashion became completely distorted.
Fashion has undergone such strong pressure that valuable designers, like Martin Margiela, one of the greatest innovators and game-changers, decided to leave. Too much pressure, a continuous request for something new, too many products to put out in a short time. And then also, an obsessive hunger for information, in the form of silly poses and clownesque outfits.

Rather than a place for creativity, fashion became all about budgets, money and clowns. Pure business without a soul. Tangible examples are the rise of fast fashion and fashion bloggers.

But all that fast-paced overproduction, overconsumption, massive show-off was just a bubble, a system that couldn’t sustain itself in the long run. In fact, during the pandemic, it exploded.

Now that the world is re-awakening, we need to bring a new level of consciousness that puts creativity and ethical work at the heart. Slow fashion and smaller-scale production are the basis on which we can build truly sustainable models.

Fashion is culture–reflecting the values and spirit of our times.

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Researching The New

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Fashion research for a niche audience


Researching the new, exploring alternative concepts in fashion design has always been our passion, a kind of innate attitude or a real fixation.

Fashion design: niche vs mass market


In terms of fashion design, what is considered new by a niche audience is not what is new for the masses. New means something original, singular. Something unusual. Probably or at least possibly, never seen before.

For a niche audience, new refers to what designers, or at least the really creative ones, pioneered first, expressing their vision and sense of style in a way no one has done before.
For the masses, new means what brands have taken from the few creatives, repurposing it under their name.
We can’t count the times some agents proposed to us collections we already had the season before in our boutique, just with a different label. It you are part of the niche, that reheated soup is not for you. You respect the original ideas, you need creativity because you understand its value.
Unless some brands are filtering existing concepts in a new, creative way – but that doesn’t happen frequently. Copy & paste is the easy way out.

Researching the new in fashion


The concept of new in the fashion industry doesn’t exist anymore. It was pretty clear before the pandemic, it’s both frustrating and discouraging now that we are in the middle of it.

Some brands that were modern 30 years ago are still the ones we would wear now. Perhaps they already did anything and everything. So many others seem just part of an old era, outdated, they lost meaning.

While we see collections without identity, lacking idiosyncrasy, still copying & pasting from others. Grasping the occasion to reset and restart with new ideas would be a smart move.

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Women & Society’s Standards

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Navigating expectations and empowerment in today’s world


A point on women & society’s standards is always necessary considering the current discussions and comments we hear. Indeed, we find it difficult to identify with women presented in the media. But also, with women presented by women themselves. As if feminism had never existed.

“I make clothes for a woman who is not swayed by what her husband thinks”

Rei Kawakubo

This powerful Rei Kawakubo quote, a thought we completely embrace and promote, opens up a window on society’s standards, personal growth, self-awareness, and perhaps new feminism.

Women, fashion and expectations


The clothes we wear are the expression of our personality, this is undeniable. If we analyse the type of clothes that easily reach a large audience, we could portray a clear image of a woman stuck in the Fifties. A woman who must have a hold on men, and most of all, who must make it crystal clear, totally visible. So, this statement translates into second-skin dresses, wide necklines, and super short hemlines.

In fact, this is what society has long expected from women, what women are educated to, and what centuries of patriarchal brainwashing have instilled in them. And, eventually, it seems this is what women want, too, well adapted to a man-shaped society. Just replace grace with rudeness, and we jump into our modern times, finding ourselves in today’s world.

There’s always the same submissiveness, asking for permission to buy something or buying an item only upon the husband’s approval.

Centuries of evolution from Virginia Woolf, passing through feminism and all a woman can aspire is being an accessory of a man.

On the contrary, we embrace a new sensibility away from the dominant models. Femininity free from conventions and stereotypes. Assertive, not aggressive. Self-aware, or at least opening the eyes, and beginning the process of personal growth.

Her style would be different.
We are different.
Ready to express a new vision of who we are.

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Redefining The Lexicon

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Shaping fashion’s future through new language and innovation


Redefining the lexicon in fashion means embracing a new vocabulary that challenges outdated norms. In fact, redefining the lexicon is essential–how can fashion evolve if the language is always the same?

Pre-collections. Still? For real? Selling campaigns, seasons, gender categories, budgets, and, above all, discounts and sales. Real or fake, who cares. The only intention is to push people to buy whatever product, keeping the business exactly as it was before the pandemic.

Can’t you see how all that is disconnected from the new reality?
All those words lost their meaning because we are in a different place now, an unknown territory, where those concepts do not apply anymore.

We expected something more. We envisioned brave designers or brands coming up with new ideas, guiding us to innovate an outdated system. But other than a lot of greenwashing, nothing has happened. Or worse, everyone’s hoping to go back to normal. Completely forgetting that normal was the problem.

So we take an active stance. We make choices about what is good and what is not for us and our audience. We don’t believe in a supermarket model. By preserving the value of creativity, we want to decide the quantities and quality we need to buy, based on the real needs of our community, not only to grow large companies’ pockets.
We must understand that good design and quality do not have an expiry date. We do not believe anymore in discounts as a drive to boost sales. Sales are just another element of the status quo, a short term illusion of joy.

We believe in conscious buying, so we are educating ourselves and our community to buy less but better.

The language we use plays a crucial role in shaping the fashion’s future. Language is not just a tool for communication but a reflection of values, creativity, and innovation.

By stopping the use of mainstream fashion language, we take a bold step toward change. To redefine the lexicon is the first and most powerful expression of transformation within the fashion system.

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Sustainability Or Greenwashing?

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Unpacking the bubble of eco-friendly marketing


Sustainability as we know it today, is a bubble, an old-school marketing operation better defined by the name greenwashing.
The same marketers made us believe in the existence of 100% organic food products. The world is an open-air landfill, but we believe it is unspoiled. Or at least we can isolate lands, preventing any contamination. Trust in it!

If sustainability is about reducing waste, why do brands keep overproducing? If it’s about ethical labor, why do supply chains remain opaque? And if it’s about real change, why does the industry still run on overconsumption?

It’s as though we suddenly all woke up in a sustainable world, with green labels flourishing everywhere. But some questions are jumping into our heads.
Is the use of a few eco-friendly materials enough to define a brand sustainable?
Can fast-fashion brands call themselves sustainable?
And all the luxury brands that continue to produce enormous quantities of products?
Can they be sustainable? Really?

Sustainability isn’t a sticker or a marketing tagline—it’s a fundamental shift in mindset. Yet, the more brands claim to be sustainable, the more the industry stays the same.

And so, sustainability or greenwashing? Contradictions are strong.

We need a radical change, not fake messages.

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