I have seemed to lost the thrills and excitement right when fashion week reaches its height.
Beautiful girl, bored expression always sells
To keep this really straightforward, here are some reasons why I find fashion less interesting these days:
1. The repetitive looks highly inspired by Balenciaga during Ghesquière period and Céline during Philo period for the upcoming fall/winter. There are too many of them--in all New York, London, Milan and Paris it seems that distinguished aesthetics are now gone and replaced by the needs to sell clothes. Or is it because the designers are basically exposed to similar things thanks to popular websites and social media channels?
*inserting the correct French name takes some effort, you know.
2. The stagnancy of fashion blogs. When those popular girls (and boys) depart from their chic environment to the "high fashion" territory, they somehow start to produce similar content in their blogs. Not to mention their similar styles and similar activities during fashion week. Plus the inability of the bloggers to produce high quality review, the whole blogging content is really inundated with various phrases that all mean the same: We love it because we are invited.
*There are still few distinctive bloggers who stand out with their wit and smart take on the collection, but the rest of the pack is really frustrating.
3. Monotonous captures of the "street style personalities" in the so-called leading street style websites. Other than the polished looks on the runway crafted by expert stylists, I pretty much would love to see the pieces on real person. This where the street style photographers are supposed to feed their readers with. But instead of photographing great style regardless of how famous the person is, they consistently take photos of renowned fashion industry insiders. Thus the website appears no different than those of celebrity websites.
*Again, there are several exclusions to this, but I really cannot help but including this disappointing tendency of the street style trend here.
4. Local designers putting unbelievably high price tag on their clothes. Personally, I would love to buy local designers' clothes because that way, I feel like I have partaken in supporting the local talents. But once they start going gaga on pricing, that would be hard for a lot of people to access their clothes. I am not saying that it should be cheap, but there are times when I find crappy cutting, messy lining or mediocre fabric being priced unfairly high. The local brands serving middle class, in particular, are now labelling themselves as "exclusive" thus creating gap for the people to access them. Regular bazaars bringing a number of local brands together are becoming hit and miss, somehow classifying themselves in the category of "cool" and the rests are simply "not cool."
5. Snob fashion insiders. This is a long overdue issue, but the stamp given on the people working in the fashion industry is: They are mean. A more important thing to consider is actually: Is it because of the movie "Devil Wears Prada" or because the fashion workers regard brands and positions more than they regard style and aesthetic?
*Exclusion, exclusion, exclusion to several warmhearted fashion people out there.
I haven't rested my case. But this should be enough for now. I am still waiting for Ghesquière upcoming Louis Vuitton collection, which is supposed to be fantastic. The beautiful photo is from here, used for illustrative purpose only.
