OBSESSED
Surrendering to fashion our ability to think straight.
Have I ever told you about how much I love fashion? I do, if I had to choose an art, a medium to create emotion or a tool for self-expression, I would downright choose fashion, no second guessing, no guilt or self-awareness. But man, I do hate how we allow fashion to fiddle with our minds. Fashion it’s like money, is not a good or bad thing per se, but it is tricky to navigate because as empowering as it can be, it can also be very disempowering. In fact, we all know what I am talking about.
Today I want to use the excuse of Phoebe Philo’s return to talk about some of what’s terribly wrong with fashion, and I’ll ask to be excused, because although on the one hand, I find the whole conversation about her much-awaited return utterly tiresome by now (I don’t pretend to offer anything new, but I’ve got a rant in me), on the other, I totally get the hype; the stuff is beautiful, well shot and gorgeously on brand with her aesthetic and values, plus some timely updates.
The motto for this space goes like this: “A newsletter about a stylist perspective from behind the scenes, plus the highs, the lows and the freedom of not having to be obsessed” I have often wondered if the last bit about not having to be obsessed makes any sense to anyone except me. I’ll explain, I started my professional career in the UK and at this point, I really scanned the magazines and took it all in. The glossies would then (and still do now) tell their readership which fashion items they should go crazy about, and the wording of the headlines usually went like this “The shoes/coats/etc. we’ve been obsessing/going crazy/drooling about this season” I wondered if to truly belong in the fashion industry I should at some point start practicing all this obsessing. I was in fashion for the creativity and self-expression of it, so I’ve often been an awkward fit when it came to trends, I use them as a tool for work, not as the holy grail of what to wear. It is also true that I have been very “fortunate” in that I knew what to wear, it was first an instinct and later a career, and although this is not the case for many people, the patronising fashion talk still gets on my nerves.
And how does this fit with Phoebe Philo’s return? Because the worst of this obsession is at the centre of the conversation about her return to fashion. A note for the uninitiated, Phoebe Philo is a cult designer who has been so influential in fashion that today’s aesthetic is inextricably linked with her original ideas, most of today’s highly coveted brands are in some way indebted to her either because their designers were her protegès at some point (Rokh, Daniel Lee or Peter Do) or because they took her aesthetic and developed their own take on it (Khaite, A.W.A.K.E., The Row). She was so prominent that like a pop star, she even had a fan base named after her: The Philophiles who when Philo resigned from Celine to pursue her own interests 6 years ago, mourned the loss as if their grandma had died. The prices for old Celine pieces designed by Philo are quite high and continue on the rise. Last Monday, nearly a year after she announced her return, her eponymous brand finally launched backed by LVMH. The 104 pieces were available exclusively online and despite the eye-watering prices, sold out within the same day.
Phoebe Philo developed her cult status as an icon and pygmalion for career women who dressed for themselves, who valued feeling beautiful or sexy under their own standards and away from the male gaze, so often the norm in a fashion system dominated by male designers who claim to love women but have little personal experience of how a woman sees the world and herself. The whole issue of the male gaze and fashion is pretty complex and I might talk about it some other time… Women can certainly be understood by men and vice versa but the way men design for women is very different to the way women design for women, take Donna Karan, Miuccia Prada or Rei Kawakubo for example, Donatella Versace goes in a different category, so we let her be.
Did these Philophiles utterly lose it when the woman in question came back into the fashion arena? Because all everybody was talking about was how obsessed everyone was with this collection, even before the launch, and I feel sad. Not at the clothes, but at the phenomena itself and the way it has been handled by the company and the media. It was either my bad, for considering the buyers as people who actually had lives, who couldn’t or wouldn't wait for a collection to drop while staring at their computers and refreshing the website over and over to buy the stuff when it went online as if they were a bunch of teenagers queuing for the latest drop at a Supreme Shop in 2017, or the hip just got to that point where resellers are very aware of where the money is.
According to Google, the word obsess comes from the Latin obsidere which means the opposite of sitting (this is quite funny), and in late and middle English stands for being haunted or possessed by something. Therefore, our fashion obsessions have to do with having our minds and will be taken over by an item or trend, the people behind their creation, more likely. Maybe what really haunts and possesses us is the idea that we are never good enough as we are. And they make money by the hour while we’re in that mind space.
Here are a few things I’ve come across this week that I’d like to contest:
According to Understitch, Philo is designing for the “Intellectual Feminist”.
I just can’t believe that any intellectual feminist after their thirties (the women Philo supposedly designs for) would go to those lengths to purchase a piece of clothing. And when we do, I wonder what got onto us. Is it the quality of the clothes themselves that are worth a big chunk of a decent yearly salary? Is it the status that owning one of these highly expensive and covetable pieces will give us? Is it an investment for old age? Or is it that we refuse to allow our rational mind into the business of buying what everybody else simply can’t afford?
According to Vogue the collection is “A new formula: rounded shoulders, tailored trousers and striking high heels”, “An anti-trend”, and “A nod to sustainability”.
Is this really a new formula? Only if you are from Mars and landed on Earth last Sunday. As I was saying before, many cult brands of today already offer this silhouette, which indeed was her original idea, but we have been swimming in a sea of rounded shoulders, tailored trousers and squared-toe high heels for a few years already, so even though this was indeed a new formula when she took the helm at Celine it can hardly be considered that today.
As for the Anti-trend, it definitely was then but regarding fashion today all I could say, I have already.
This last nod-to-sustainability idea gets on my nerves, it also says so on the brand's own website, which explains that they have made reduced productions to avoid overstocking, but if we take into account the speed at which things sold out they have probably made a fairly small production with the intention of creating demand and therefore boosting value through a wall of exclusivity. Maybe they were being cautious and didn't want to risk ending up with lots of unsold product, but I doubt it. Calling it sustainable is greenwashing in its full glory.
Our world is very diverse and conflicted, of course, many people couldn’t care less about the new collection of a cult designer, which makes all sense. But when it comes to the people who do myself included, we need to keep it real. Leaving aside those buying with the intention of reselling for profit, what does this craze say about the women who bought Phoebe Philo’s clothes this week, in particular informed women, the ones that value quality over hype, the ones that make up their own minds, the so-called Philophiles? Are they Philo’s original clients anymore or has the hype engulfed the whole thing and we are buying because of the cult status, because as the magazines say, this is the moment to be obsessed, we can’t sit down until we own one of these pieces of clothing and money or philosophical questions couldn’t be less of a concern? Do we think we’ll be taller, prettier, smarter or just a better version of ourselves if our bums show through the open zips?
My dears, what do you think? Am I wrong or preaching to the choir? I read your thoughts in the comments. As usual, love and appreciation are some of the best things we can give, so please keep them coming.
Happy weekend!