fashioncritique

The luxury inconsistency

/ Leave a Comment

How the fashion system devalues itself

Straight to the point of the luxury inconsistency: top brands stopped representing luxury. When they started the overproduction pattern, triggering the constant need for discounts, they moved in a different direction. And since the diffusion of affordable luxury, a meaningless oxymoron, the fashion industry is doing its best to devalue what little remains of luxury.

Luxury: from exclusivity to mass products

Overproduction and luxury have nothing in common. But the fashion industry promoted this pattern to make more money – in the name of growth and greed.
Some top brands represented the last stronghold of an industry which was transmuting into financial conglomerates. In this new context, fashion went from exclusivity to the masses.

In order to appeal to a wider audience, communication had to develop a different narrative. And it revolves around three points:
1- extremized concepts, just to give something to talk about
2- socialite or fashion bloggers to promote the products
3- frequent markdowns

And so, the industry has lowered standards focusing on branding rather than providing creativity and excellent quality. The byproduct was a crass logo dependency. But, associating a logo with specific lifestyle imagery is different from well-made products. Most importantly, exclusivity and discounts contradict each other!

The luxury short-circuit

Sometimes luxury brands, how they still want to call themselves, release the wrong communication, as in the case of Balenciaga. Consequently, fashion bloggers sell their products for cheap. Can you imagine who paid the full price for those items? They must be happy to see them undersold!

Rising prices: the latest strategy for luxury

Now brands increase prices due to pandemic-related issues and inflation, but that does not mean better quality. They cover their costs. If people accept to pay more, they get mass products in return, not exclusivity.

What masses believe is luxury, it is not. It’s the product of an industry that lost consistency. Without serious critique and questioning, it reveals its short-circuit and inability to change.

Indeed, communication missteps show the luxury inconsistency to everyone. And you don’t even need to be a fashion insider to understand it!

The luxury inconsistency Read More »

Smells like marketing

Fashion smells like marketing. Not creativity. Marketing.
It’s embedded into the product, making everything look the same. Brands united by a flat cloying language.

It would be interesting to understand why designers do everything except what they are supposed to do: create beautiful clothes. There must be a reason for it.

After the fashion weeks, the Gucci Love Parade in Hollywood was yet another weird event, representing the many futile proclamations navigating the sea of marketing.

Some designers want to ban leather; if not that they’ve always used synthetic materials to make their accessories (which is worse). Some others became a B-Corp but lost the beauty of their collections. Others tell us to buy vintage instead of new clothes. Maybe those proposals have to do with a sustainable lifestyle, blindly giving the benefit of the doubt. But, leave good design aside.

Designers forget the purpose of their role.
Instead of doing their job – making beautiful clothes – they suggest alternative lifestyle strategies.

Marketing and the purpose of a fashion brand

If you are a designer, you should have a vision and express it through your creativity. That is an opportunity to trace new pathways, inspiring others. But the issue is that clothes have no point anymore.
The design is not the focus of a collection, the chit-chat that surrounds them is.

Well, designers, the viable idea is to make much smaller collections. Reduce – a lot – the number of pieces and create a timeless aesthetic.

But please, put your creativity to work and make curated creations that reflect your visions.
We appreciate your lifestyle suggestions, but creativity is what we expect from you. All the other proposals have to come along with it. Otherwise, it seems like you have no ideas except marketing claims.

Wittgenstein said that “ethics and aesthetics are one.”

In the latest fashion proposals, apart from the questionable aesthetics, the supposed ethics smell like marketing. Just empty claims!

You can hire marketing gurus. But new ideas and creative designs are hard to find!

Smells like marketing Read More »