Writers Club: The Future of Fashion Presentation
Photography by Audrey Roh
Below, the winning responses to our latest Writers Club prompt: Fashion week felt more whimsical and accessible than ever before, but the question on everyone’s mind is where will it go from here? Will fashion presentations continue to evolve or will we revert to the exclusive and elusive invite-only runway shows of previous seasons? Do people want it to change? So that’s the question we are posing to you this month: where do you see the future of fashion presentation… or better yet, where do you want fashion presentation to go?
McQueen. The 2018 documentary film about Alexander McQueen was the first thing that ever made me think about fashion presentation.
McQueen was a showman as much as he was a designer. His fashion shows were nothing short of iconic; the combination of theatrical plot and fantastical settings allowed for a fully immersive fashion experience. Since his passing in 2010, runways and fashion presentations haven’t been quite the same… until this year.
The innovative and completely new feeling McQueen-era fashion shows gave us has returned, but in an almost inverse way. McQueen’s shows were fully immersive in a world completely constructed by him and for his work in a very physical sense. The digital fashion shows and presentations of this year were done to allow the viewer immersion into their own lives. For the first time, fashion influencers and “regular” people alike were able to watch the shows together and experience the same revelations ( good or bad) new collections bring. This year the presentations seemed fully accessible, while still maintaining the excitement and promise of newness and change. Even after Gucci’s Epilogue movie came out, they proceeded to host Gucci-Fest: a short-film series on their website and Youtube that was a collaboration between Head Designer Alessandro Michele, filmmaker Gus Van Sant, celebrities like Billie Eilish and Harry Styles, and smaller up-and-coming designers like Collina Strada. And I liked it.
I hope, moving forward, the fashion industry, designers and consumers alike, continue this. I want fashion to continue to become more accessible and I want to return to a place of storytelling and theatrics. Seeing gaunt models stomping down the runway will always be an option of presentation, but I want more than that. I want fashion to be the intersection between all different types of art and artists. I want to feel included and otherworldly. I just want it to keep progressing. Change is interesting and, as it seems from this past year, inevitable.
By Anonymous