As we enter another season of Berlin Fashion Week, I find myself in a cloud of nostalgia, tracing how things have changed since I first became interested in fashion. I still have my collection of magazines from the 90’s stored in my bedroom in my parent’s house – when I come home to visit, sometimes I slip through the most iconic issues, like the 1992 September cover of Harper’s Bazaar with its close-up of Nadja Auermann’s dramatically made-up face. Although the image’s impact is timeless, the content of the magazine is, in parts, obviously out of date. Fashion has moved on.
Deconstructionism’s ascent is old news by now and Rei Kawakubo has brought it to the masses with her collection for H&M. The era of the supermodel has come to a close, replaced by celebrities, although these days even their famous faces aren’t enough to prop up the failing magazine industry. The obsession with luxury has been tempered by an appreciation of the high-low mix, best embodied by fast fashion. In today’s style landscape plus-size models are more visible, the issue of racism in the modeling industry is more widely discussed (if not actually addressed), attempts are made by magazines to take more responsibility for promoting unhealthy body images. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that fashion has discarded elitism and discovered its conscience.
But, of course, it hasn’t, at least not in the way most of us would define a conscience, as something immutable and essential. In fashion, conscience, like everything else, is a matter of trend, and convenience. That’s why newsstands are filled with issues dedicated to body shape, eco-consciousness, black and plus-size models, and a stance against photoshopping – these are the issues at the forefront of readers minds. And if – or rather, when – we move on, fashion will happily skip ahead of us, embracing a new cause célèbre or manifestation of a ‘progressive attitude.’ Whatever it takes to keep us consuming.
If we want to implement longer-lasting shifts in our cultural expectations and representations then it’s incumbent on us, as consumers, to demand a continual engagement with the issues that we deem of importance. Because if we leave it to fashion, well, plus-size and black models and ‘responsible’ photoshopping and green consciousness, all of it, will be judged ‘so last season’ and discarded without a second thought.
It’s worth keeping in mind as we follow the collections unveiled over the next several days, and their emergence in editorial stories in the coming months, that despite its best attempts to maintain a hierarchy, fashion is more democratic than ever before, and we, as consumers, have almost all the power. Fashion allows us to participate in ways that would have been unthinkable in 1992 – primarily via the internet, but also through our purchasing decisions – and it would be a shame if we didn’t take advantage of these opportunities to shape our sartorial future. Who knows, maybe 20 years from now, when a new generation flips through back issues of Vogue from 2010, they’ll see the seeds of change that have become, for them, second nature – a great element of realism when it comes to body image, more diverse representation amongst models, and an awareness that, while great beauty can be transcendent and material objects can be enriching, there are other, equally important issues that deserve our attention.
