HARPER’S BAZAAR JULY 2018 49
proof of staying power, which is all-important in a i ckle landscape. History
is comforting because the past is assured.
Early last year, I met with Pierre Bergé, cofounder of the House of
Yves Saint Laurent. It was only a few months before he passed away, rightly
acclaimed as one of the architects of modern fashion: “Le Force.” When
I asked Bergé about history—this man who created so much of it—he
pursed his lips and spat out a phrase that resonated with me: “I hate the
past. I hate nostalgia.” It’s a sentiment echoed in the words of Karl Lagerfeld.
“I don’t reinterpret the past. I’m pretentious enough to say that we invent
something for today,” he told me after his fall 2017 couture show. Lagerfeld
isn’t looking back; he’s looking around, drawing the spirit of the moment
into his creations. Fashion’s great movers and shakers, its true forward-
thinkers, are embracing the new uncertainty and challenging the old
boundaries. They think with Bergé’s mind-set. It’s not a case of destroying
traditions, far from it. But it is an acknowledgment that evolution, perhaps,
isn’t enough—revolution is the only way to jolt us out of complacency.
The designer Azzedine Alaïa, for instance, was often talked about as a
“rule breaker,” but usually in a superi cial way. No one has ever been able
to comprehend why he chose not to present his collections at the same
time as everyone else, even as the show schedules become clogged with
designers who, in all honesty, neither need nor deserve to be there. Just as
Alaïa’s home was far away from the headquarters of other Paris Houses—
in the Marais, where real people actually live—he removed himself from
the fashion melee.
“I am free,” he once told me. “If I don’t feel it, I don’t do it. I always
feel free. This is my strength.” He also told me that, if he had just one new
idea a year, he would be happy. Two new ideas? “Genius!”Alaïa was illed
with ideas, but he didn’t always consider
them new. He eschewed the pursuit of
relentless novelty in favour of perfecting
his own style and aesthetic, coni dent
that others would be won over by his
vision. He was right. Alaïa is joined by
relatively few others—Rick Owens,
Alessandro Michele at Gucci, Miuccia
Prada, to name a few—whose choices
will inform the careers of generations
of designers. They refuse to obey rules
because they make their own. And, at the moment, they are ripping apart
fashion’s etiquette book and demanding serious change.
“People say that I’m a punk,” Miuccia Prada said with a laugh after
showing her spring 2018 collection of studs and torn-looking prints.
Again, superi ciality, but she meant punk in attitude, which is understandable.
Prada actively rejects not tradition but convention, trying to ind a
dif erent path.
“I like to create things that appear attractive, easy, but that afterward—
depending on the culture of the person—will make the wearer feel
something else,” she says. “The sophisticated person looks at everything.
Someone superi cial gets only the façade.”This ability to do both—to
deliver beauty, but also a deeper message for those who care to discover
it—is what unites fashion’s rule breakers.
“I read a lot about what is right, and what is wrong, as if you have to
follow some code,” Alessandro Michele tells me.“This is something that
can kill fashion and creativity.”
“I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do,” adds Rick Owens,
echoing the words of Alaïa. “It’s not like I’m obligated to make any
compromises, which is a wonderful thing. I probably sound a little gloating
when I say that—a little boastful—but it’s signii cant. I could just burn
the whole place down if I wanted to.”
So perhaps it’s freedom from traditional rules that will create the future
of fashion—a refusal to conform to the demands of the industry, however
you perceive them. In their way, all these designers are challenging convention,
and winning, creating the fresh rules that others wind up following.
When you talk to these designers—the names who are dei ning what
we wear this very minute—common themes emerge. A loathing of the
superi cial, a disdain for conformity, a prizing of independence. And as
you look at their collections, you realise that it isn’t just about the clothes;
it’s about the entire universe each of them has been able to create—about
Michele’s Gucci stores transformed into tactile playgrounds; about Alaïa’s
converted warehouse in the Marais, a Valhalla containing his work and
living spaces, a boutique, and a pair of Julian Schnabel smashed-plate
portraits. It’s about Rick Owens’ furniture, his two-ton alabaster beds, and
petrii ed-wood-and-antler chairs, and about Miuccia Prada’s Via Fogazzaro
teatro reinvented, endlessly, for each new iteration of her ideas.
Yet those worlds all lead back to the clothes. They aren’t set dressing
or a distraction; they are frames to emphasise and contextualise proscenium
arches under which fashion is acted out. The focus is on the performers—
not the models, but the garments. Designers creating worlds isn’t anything
especially new—in the 1930s, Elsa Schiaparelli had her shocking-pink
Surrealist salon on the Place Vendôme; in the ’40s, Christian Dior his
dove-gray Louis Seize revival townhouse on Avenue Montaigne. They
were, aesthetically and creatively, worlds apart. What is new are the clothes
designers are creating to populate them.The future of fashion lies there—
in the actual nuts and bolts of designing garments.There are already
tectonic movements afoot:The way a designer like Michele creates his
collections—pulling from a wide-ranging and esoteric landscape of
references—has not only been altered but also reengineered by the adventhe future of fashion rests with
designers who lead rather than follow.
In bold moves and upheavals.”
of the Internet, which allows
designers access to every image
ever produced. The next
generation of designers—those
brought up in the digital age,
with the Web as a lifelong
companion—will rel ect how
that access has reprogrammed
the human brain.
The Web scientist Michael K. Bergman has compared plugging search
terms into Google to dragging a net across the ocean. You may catch
something, but there are fathoms you can’t fathom. That’s where we are
right now with the impact of digital on design. It’s not changing the way
we look, inasmuch as it’s transforming the way we experience, the way
we think. Given all this, it’s fair to say that the way the next generation of
designers will create clothes will have little to do with how clothes are
made now. They certainly won’t think about them the same way. They
already don’t.
Which brings us back to Monsieur Bergé—to the essentiality of a
designer living in his or her time, and creating clothes that rel ect it. There
was a similarly seismic moment in the late 1960s, when youth quaked
and rebelled, and a dynamic young couturier named Yves Saint Laurent
came up with a novel idea—ready-to-wear—that democratised fashion,
broke down old class hierarchies, and made designer clothing accessible
to all. “Because he lived in our time,” Bergé explained. The future of
fashion rests with designers who lead rather than follow. In bold moves
and upheavals. In designers who are truly free. ■