Do we need high fashion?

Wee need clothes to cover our body and face the weather but do we need clothes that have a price tag of hundreds or thousands of dollars? Maybe we don´t, but for some people like myself, High Fashion is a way of living a dream by being part of the universe that our favorite labels embody: the people, places, events and fantasy tales related to them; reading about them, looking at their ad campaigns, visiting their corners or flagship stores and, with the act of buying, we become a part of the tangible expression of ideals we identify with, an identity we want to relate to.

We are part of a lifestyle we live, feel, or want.

So, maybe we don´t need High Fashion, but many of us need to dream, and High Fashion is a way of living some of our dreams.

Li Xiaofeng

This amazing Chinese artist makes some of the greatest looking clothes out of ceramics, they look just incredible, and, he recently collaborated with Lacoste on the creation of some polo shirts, really worth looking for them.

Retrosuperfuture

This is just one of the coolest eyewear line I´ve seen in a long time, check it out at their site.

Tradition

The word can take us to places like family dinners, parades or comic book conventions, but for luxury brands like Hermès or Louis Vuitton, it´s the place they were born in, the materials and techniques they use; values, a way of life, their identity.

They are part of historic moments, places and people. They are not only brands but also legends and fairy tales that translate into highly desirable products.

But it is important to note the fact that these fashion houses understand that tradition also means reinventing the legend, keeping the quality of the materials and the techniques, but also being open to reinterpret their aesthetic symbols, as well as creating some new ones along the way.

Supra Footwear

Awesome stuff, I just found out about this brand and have to say I´m now a fan, plus they have a great website, online shop and blog, be sure to check them out. I just got the Gunny Black Tuf High Top Model and can´t wait to rock them out.

Swear

Swear is a footwear brand created in London by entrepeneur Jose Neves. In 2000 Jose and brand manager Jorge Sampaio wanted to create a crossover shoe for a crossover generation. Tired of going to gigs and seeing cool young people wearing a mix of converse and vintage boots with their skinny jeans, they set out to design a sneaker-classic shoe hybrid that would look cool with tight jeans and t-shirt, a bold and minimal look of the early 00's, taken to the streets by garage rock revival bands such as The Strokes, White Stripes or The Hives. 

So, be sure to check their stuff at Swear

Quality and Timelessness

These are the new values that occupy the mind of consumers.

A sentiment triggered by the current economic downturn and manifested in different ways. Consumers now look for clothes and accessories that are capable of transcending the logic of disposability that come with the change of seasons in fashion. Or, like in the case of emergent economies like China, where their up and coming upper middle class is looking for articles from the likes of Gucci and Hermès as a way of letting everyone know they like the best and have the money to pay for it.

Whatever the reason, there´s always someone willing to support the industry, even in this hard and uncertain weather.

Peonía

Mexican Fashion at its best. This concept store with a namesake brand offers a wonderful aesthetic that has little to do with folklore and everything with style. Sophisticated design and construction by designer Carlos Ortega, Peonía is sure worth to check.

Elvine

Elvine is a Swedish clothing brand inspired by Gothenburg’s unrefined subcultures and the legacy of traditional craftmanship.

Fantastic clothing all around, altough my favorite items are jackets, still, visit Elvine and check it all out.

Knowledge Value

Concepts vary depending on the context, and because this is a space about fashion theory, or at least what I consider this to be, I´m going to adapt each concept to the theme, trying not to leave out of the equation the many ramifications that cut across the theme.

So for starters, I´m going to try and define what I consider a very important characteristic of the fashion industry and it´s products: Knowledge Value.

So, from some personal observations and the help of Taichi Sakaiya here it goes:

As the term indicates, Knowledge Value is the amount of knowledge involved in the creation of a product, beginning with the design and aesthetic, passing on to the selection of materials and the manufacturing techniques used to give it life.

Knowledge Value can be tangible or not, it can be measured or not, it can come from the tradition of a particular know how or from innovation, it can be the combination of these and many other factors.

Ultimately it is a testimony that each product presented to us, be it a shirt, a bag or a pair of shoes, are not only mere objects but the result of thought and passion being put to practice.

Crisis on Multiple Seasons

There´s resort, cruise, spring - summer, pre - fall, fall - winter and an awful lot more seasons in between nowadays that one just can´t keep up with the mood of fashion, no that it has much left since the increasing number of collections expected from designers today is just killing their creativity and hability to come up with those incredible backgrounds that made fashion fun, interesting to follow, and a reason to spend good money.

Sure we have Karl Lagerfeld and Miuccia Prada to create something that turns heads but still; every day I read more articles about how fashion is at a creative crisis, that much of the shows are flat and the collections unflavoured, that there´s no discourse in the fashion world today, no meaning whatsoever.

I agree, there is no meaning, and there cannot be any until the product becomes scarce and the mind behind has the time to prepare a line with a life, an origin and a story, present and future; not just loads of shirts and jackets tweaked enough to fill shelves and look remotely novel every month.

Everything we hold dear has a meaning, be this a place or the clothes we put on, and they mean to us because we think them rare, they make us feel unique, they help us get by.

High Fashion used to do that: two collections a year, limited pieces in a collection, limited production and limited spaces to buy this miraculously looking, marvelously made, and un realistically presented products.

But the times change; now there are millions of people with a lot of cash and no sensibility for all the work behind a fashion collection, and they want new things to buy every month so they don´t get bored.

Fashion, like anything else is a businness, no argument there, and today it has to come up with more products to sell at a faster pace; so be it, one has to adapt to survive.

But we can´t expect the marvels fashion can deliver, not without its most fantastic and now forgotten characteristics: freedom and time, to live, dream and mature into the things we don´t know we can´t live without until the change of seasons (two seasons that is).