Foreground: Balenciaga, Kim Kardashian, Lil Miquela, Gigi Hadid, John Galliano. Background: Virgil Abloh for Louis Vuitton.
Nostalgic ‘00s fashion trends may focus on fluorescent animal prints, lace-up trousers and logo-mania, but as we pull our monogrammed shoulder bags out of storage it’s hard not to notice all the things that will never see the light of day again. For instance, take American Apparel—which went bankrupt in 2015. While see-through spandex basics may have taken us from indie-rock concerts to frozen yogurt shops circa 2008, we suddenly aren’t so keen to support Dov Charney’s empire, built on ad campaigns where he undressed and allegedly sexually assaulted sales associates, whom he affectionately referred to as “sluts”. There have been some changes.
The decade kicked off with the invention of a seemingly innocuous app: Instagram. We may have spent the previous decade following blogs and over-sharing our every thought on Facebook, but the emergence of the photo-based platform in 2010 turned us all into curators as aspirational content became the goal and the era of the influencer was born. A decade later, it might be fashionable to say you are “over” the platform, but without a doubt— for better or for worse—it has redefined how ad campaigns and fashion shows are cast, producing top models such as Bella and Gigi Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski and Hailey Baldwin—not to mention those that only exist on the platform, like Lil Miquela, for example. Instagram has also given rise to fashion watchdogs, such as @dietprada who with more than a million and a half followers can expose photographers, brands and photographers, with real industry consequences.
After Instagram and the draining rise of social media, came the boom of ‘cancel culture’—the public boycott of well-known figures on account of morally reprehensible behaviour, or what the society en masse defines as such. One of the decade’s first public cancellations was of fashion’s enfant terrible John Galliano, responsible for the opulent Dior runways from 1996 until his firing in 2011—he was caught on a cell phone camera proclaiming “I love Hitler” to women at a Parisian café and how people like them would have been gassed during the Holocaust. While objectively awful, comments like these would have been dismissed as throwaway drunken banter in the past. The Galliano scandal made it clear to the fashion industry—and to the world—that we are living in a new era where everyone has a recording device in their pockets and talent no longer excuses bad behaviour. Although Parisian heritage house Maison Martin Margiela hired the designer to head up the label in 2014, the once brazen fashion giant has been notably contrite and humble since the incident.
As the decade progressed, many of the larger-than-life institutions that ran the fashion industry were no longer in a position to dictate what was en mode, but had to listen to the voices of social media or face extinction. While Anna Wintour famously replaced models with celebrities on the cover of Vogue, the fashion world was shocked, when in 2014, the editrix put a reality star on the front of the high-brow fashion bible. Kim Kardashian has since carved out her place in the fashion world, but at the time she was still synonymous with a sex tape, mall rat style and a reality TV show that had everyone talking with a vocal fry. Still, her name was on everyone’s lips and that started to carry more currency than good taste.
Two thousand and fourteen also marked the first Vetements’ runway. While Demna Gvasalia’s label, which specialised in luxury subversions of commercial imagery may not have outlived the decade (he left the brand this summer), the ironic brand was a was a big part of the movement that made streetwear mainstream, earning Gvasalia a place at the helm of Balenciaga—which under the Georgian designer’s reign became a leader in the luxury sneaker trend, eclipsing perfume as a new entry point for customers into luxury retail. As hoodies and t-shirts became big business for century-old fashion houses, the industry was forced to redefine what luxury was. While it is easy to justify a couture gown in this category, casual attire is a harder sell; still, Virgil Abloh’s ascent to the helm of Louis Vuitton’s menswear collections in 2018 solidified streetwear’s place in high fashion.
As social media amplified the voice and efforts of activists in the middle of the decade, fashion was forced to get woke, quickly. Starting in 2016 with Hugo Boss, Armani, Gucci, Michael Kors, Versace, Burberry and Prada all heeded calls from Peta to stop working with fur. Influencers who continue to wear pelts receive an onslaught of negative comments, pushing the real thing further out of fashion. But with technological advancements, allowing for convincing imitations, the aesthetic remains very much in style. Problem solved? Not exactly, plastic faux fur triggered another debate: sustainability.
Left: Courtesy of @louisvuitton. Right: Courtesy of @balenciaga.
Online shopping and the proliferation of fast fashion brands over the decade made for an impressive amount of waste, to the yearly tune of 92 million tonnes in landfills and over a million tonnes of CO2. To add classism to pollution, it was revealed that Burberry burned $40 million worth of stock in 2017 because they didn’t want to cheapen the brand by reducing prices. It’s no wonder that when climate activism reached a fever pitch in 2018, the fashion industry was the main target. The London chapter of Extinction Rebellion staged a funeral at the city’s fashion week just this year. ‘Sustainability’ has become a buzzword in fashion with practices such as carbon offsetting and up-cycling aiming to reduce companies’ environmental impacts, but there is still the worry of whether it will be enough as the planet heads towards disastrous levels of global warming.
On a more positive note, as we move into the new decade, the fashion industry is finally starting to be held accountable for representation—fewer predators, more diversity. When the #MeToo movement hit Hollywood in late 2017, the fashion industry was not far behind. While it started with the long-overdue banning of Terry Richardson—who had countless allegations of sexual harassment against him, including getting naked on shoots and touching models without consent, from Condé Nast—Bruce Webber and Mario Testino‚ both personal friends of Wintour—were also barred from working with the publications the following year, after accusations of sexually coercive behaviour on set.
In 2019, the cancellation of the Victoria’s Secret fashion show signified another turning point. The writing was on the wall after the 2018 show, when a company executive said that plus-size and transgender models did not fit the brand’s “fantasy”. The industry may not be a perfect cross section of society, but being open about excluding certain groups is something that just doesn’t fly anymore. A final nail in the coffin came in the form of Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty runway, which championed body diversity, as well as pregnant models to roaring applause, proving itself to be everything that VS wasn’t.
Over the past ten years, we’ve established a new world order in fashion. As social media and the information overload of the internet have killed off the publications and people that once served as the industry’s authorities, a new way of doing things has emerged. More than ever, the public, which can go after a brand image while only lifting a thumb, is holding institutions responsible. There is no “fashion world”, but only a real world, where social issues intersect with the practices of luxury houses, as well as high street shops. And while we may look back fondly on the trends of the decades before us, it’s because things are changing at a rapid pace and now there’s no going back.