Reading this felt like an essential act of calibration, not nostalgic but exacting. You articulate what few are willing to confront: the recursive aesthetics mistaken for innovation, the exhaustion of reference recirculated under the guise of freshness. This is not critique for its own sake, it is cultural hygiene at a time of conceptual stagnation.
The illusion of originality via styling, the industrialisation of image-making, the acceleration of production beyond the capacities of emotional or intellectual assimilation, these forces have rendered fashion perilously hollow. Trends no longer fade, they auto-extinguish. As you note, the solution is not increased volume but increased resistance. Less proliferation, more refusal. More consequence, less consent.
Still, fissures are emerging. Designers such as Karoline Vitto, Ludovic de Saint Sernin, Duran Lantink, and Jordan Gogos are not proposing new silhouettes alone, they are engineering new systems. Temporal shifts. Epistemologies of form. Their work resists being reduced to visual currency; it is not decorative response, but ontological provocation.
For this to hold, however, we need the kind of cultural authorship you demonstrate here, the ability to interrogate repetition, interrupt automation, and reassert discernment as a structural necessity.
Thanks for the write up! As Warren Buffett said: “Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome”. In a booming market, brands got complacent and stopped innovating. But nothing sparks change like a crisis! We’re now seeing a luxury reckoning where consumers, even HNWIs, are more discerning and expect real value. Brands will have to innovate or die..
Wow.
Ouch.
True.
True true true.
So well said, Cristopher. Fashion today is flat, except for a few exceptions, designed for screen viewing and distracted buyers.
Exactly!
This is brilliant! And it’s given me a lot to think about.
See where it goes next.
Fascinating! I’m Harrison, an ex fine dining line cook. My stack "The Secret Ingredient" adapts hit restaurant recipes for easy home cooking.
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THANK YOU. Thank you thank you thank you. Modern fashion desperately needs definition, and you’ve put it into words
Phew.
Reading this felt like an essential act of calibration, not nostalgic but exacting. You articulate what few are willing to confront: the recursive aesthetics mistaken for innovation, the exhaustion of reference recirculated under the guise of freshness. This is not critique for its own sake, it is cultural hygiene at a time of conceptual stagnation.
The illusion of originality via styling, the industrialisation of image-making, the acceleration of production beyond the capacities of emotional or intellectual assimilation, these forces have rendered fashion perilously hollow. Trends no longer fade, they auto-extinguish. As you note, the solution is not increased volume but increased resistance. Less proliferation, more refusal. More consequence, less consent.
Still, fissures are emerging. Designers such as Karoline Vitto, Ludovic de Saint Sernin, Duran Lantink, and Jordan Gogos are not proposing new silhouettes alone, they are engineering new systems. Temporal shifts. Epistemologies of form. Their work resists being reduced to visual currency; it is not decorative response, but ontological provocation.
For this to hold, however, we need the kind of cultural authorship you demonstrate here, the ability to interrogate repetition, interrupt automation, and reassert discernment as a structural necessity.
Thank you Ole!
Thanks for the write up! As Warren Buffett said: “Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome”. In a booming market, brands got complacent and stopped innovating. But nothing sparks change like a crisis! We’re now seeing a luxury reckoning where consumers, even HNWIs, are more discerning and expect real value. Brands will have to innovate or die..
A take!
Wonderfully put, glad the algorithm pushed this one on me!