Fashion Week season has arrived once again, but with more questions about its relevance than fanfare for its return.
London Fashion Week has wrapped, and Milan’s is now underway. Amid the rise of TikTok influencers, changing markets and microtrends, however, are the world’s biggest runways keeping up with the times — and keeping our attention?
Today on Commotion, fashion writers Mosha Lundström Halbert and Joan Summers talk to host Elamin Abdelmahmoud about what they’re seeing in fashion’s most exclusive rooms.
We’ve included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.
WATCH | Today’s episode on YouTube:
Elamin: Do you want to talk about comparing London Fashion Week this year to last year, or previous years? What was the energy like this year when you went?
Mosha: I’ve been going to London Fashion Week pretty consistently since … I was, like, 22 or 23, and it was the biggest deal that I got to go to London Fashion Week. What’s missing now that we used to have in the past is really just this group of emerging talent that all kind of partied together, and felt like they were all intertwined and friends, and their work kind of bounced off of each other. There was this real creative discourse, and now it feels a bit more disparate in London.
But at the same time, you can’t miss the fact that London really is the place where a lot of the most avant-garde and creative talent still is born and birthed, and works at their least commercial and most experimental. Oftentimes you just have to appreciate these fleeting moments while they last, because they get plucked by these bigger houses and then advance into these other spheres and markets. But you kind of get to be like, “I remember you when you were showing in a dingy little basement somewhere. And now look at you.”
Elamin: I’m glad that you brought up the idea of it used to be more of a conversation because Joan … you see the thing with the Duolingo bird at the Berlin Fashion Week, you see the knight in shining armor at the Burberry show, and there’s a sense that you’re not necessarily trying to have a conversation with other designers, or even what’s necessarily happening inside of fashion. You’re trying to have a conversation that is maybe outward-facing. You’re trying to create a conversation about your work and about that particular season, but it’s a little bit for the internet. So when you think about the ways that Fashion Week is now, who are they trying to speak to? Who is the audience for Fashion Week? Is it the people in the room, or is it the people maybe outside the room?
Joan: That’s a great question. I think that we are witnessing a sort of convergence of two different conversations that are happening louder and more than ever, where you have a subset of Fashion Week that is tailored specifically to be seen by people who are not at Fashion Week. That’s how it’s always operated. Even back in the days of fashion TV, that was something that you could just turn on at home and watch. And then there’s also always these conversations that are happening amongst designers that don’t get picked up on by the public because you’re not reading the show notes. You’re not interviewing them backstage. You’re maybe not reading these interviews that are going on at Fashion Week. I think it’s an interesting Fashion Week specifically because we have Doechii, for instance, in Milan, just recreated Naomi Campbell’s infamous and iconic Dsquared run, where she goes running down the runway … for their anniversary show. And of course, that is something that Dsquared is hoping is going to get picked up by the internet. Of course it has….
But then also you have these smaller New York shows that people are not going to see. You had conversations at New York happening, like the Dazed Archive, amongst creatives and designers and fashion hopefuls. Those things, I think, are still happening; they just don’t get the same attention. And so it is interesting to watch, here in the States, Fashion Week go on because for all of the viral moments, I know that there are just 50,000 runway shows that nobody’s talking about, and 50,000 conversations that the public is not watching. But the Duolingo bird, I think, is a sign of the times. We are growing, I think, a little increasingly desperate at some of the houses to get people’s eyes on these shows. And for me, I would like to turn away. I don’t want to see Duolingo at Fashion Week anymore. I think I’m done with that.
You can listen to the full discussion from today’s show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Panel produced by Nikky Manfredi.
