How Wearable Should Clothes in a Fashion Show Be?

So much of what we see on the runways won't ever get produced. But isn't the last thing consumers need more stuff?

In today’s issue:

• Giorgio Armani recently said that in fashion, “anything today is accepted as long as it’s in the name of extravagance and forced.”

• Do fashion shows as theater make sense anymore? An analysis.

• Loose Threads from Paris Fashion Week and beyond, including Balmain, Victoria Beckham on her first private plane ride with David, Beyoncé’s new cover, and more.

For the fall 2024 season, the award for most insane viral stunt (so far) goes to the label Avavav, which showed at Milan Fashion Week. Audience members were encouraged to throw trash at the models, including food wrappers, banana peels, and liquid waste. This was meant to be a commentary on internet trolls, the trash symbolizing the trolls, and the models symbolizing “self-respect, keeping a straight face while being trashed,” Avavav explained on Instagram. Whatever the justification, it was still a show where the models — who often walk in exchange for clothes instead of money, though I don’t know the exact arrangement here — had to have trash thrown at them. I have a hard time finding redeeming qualities in this approach, particularly when after watching the show, I can barely recall the actual clothing.

This “craziness at all costs” seemed to be precisely what Giorgio Armani was referencing when he spoke to Women’s Wear Daily on Sunday following his show in Milan. He lamented that the media fixate on clothes that have “no reflection in real life.” The story continues:

“I detest the world that is laid out this way,” Armani said. Turning to the press seated in front of him, he said he wished the media “would clarify and underscore how difficult it is to put together a collection, while anything today is accepted as long as it’s in the name of extravagance and forced.”

Now, Armani is known to be the kind of designer who has strong opinions and throws his weight around. As I discuss in ANNA: The Biography, he withheld advertising from Vogue when Anna Wintour failed to feature enough of his clothing, which turned into a tabloid story about a feud between them. His credits in the magazine were light because his women’s wear was not popular among fashion editors. His couture Privé dresses have made for some some nice red carpet moments. But if you look at his ready-to-wear, you can see why it might not be the first pick for a fashion editor striving to create fantasy, sex appeal, and otherworldly gorgeousness in a photo editorial.

That said, you can see a real woman on his runway. She’s an older customer, but someone who exists. Yet, what about so many of these other shows that present clothes that, for the most part, won’t get ever get produced and sold? If we don’t live in a part of the world that is being literally buried by clothing waste, many of us probably feel like we’re drowning in our own belongings. Maybe you have a closet full of clothes and feel like you have nothing to wear. Maybe you feel like if you aren’t constantly vigilant about the items that get to live in your home, you’ll exist in a forever state of clutter. Is a fashion show that presents just stuff in its purest essence — not particularly special, not particularly useful — what consumers really want?

Since Instagram and TikTok became the primary medium for consuming fashion content, brands seem caught between two extremes: do something ridiculous with the clothes (or simply around them) that is designed to go viral, or do something so wearable as to risk boring the in-person audience and online followers. Designers who go highly commercial and safe risk disappointing critics and the online peanut gallery. Or, they can go in the opposite direction and try to please the media, who have seen it all. They can also try to give the influencers replacing the media something to talk about, but many aren’t experts and mistake maximalism for good design.

I feel for a brand like Avavav. Standing out in the attention economy is hard. Just look at Jennifer Lopez. She’s one of the most recognizable celebrities in the world who was able to self-finance a $20 million movie as part of her album launch, yet This Is Me …Now debuted at number 38 on the Billboard chart and is being called a flop.

The fashion world has plenty of examples of media darlings who flame out, including Zac Posen, Sies Marjan, and Thakoon, to name just a few. One can only imagine how hard it must feel to get seen in 2024 as a label that isn’t a titan like Dior or Armani. I can understand the thinking behind stunts like the trash or spraying a nearly nude Bella Hadid with liquid fabric, as Coperni did for spring 2023.

Some brands that don’t employ such theatrics draw attention instead with a preponderance of clothes that are not wearable or sellable. I put Marni in this bucket. It’s fun to look at, maybe we’ve not seen some of this stuff before — but why are we looking at it? Who is this Marni shopper? How much of this will go into production — maybe 10 percent? As one designer with decades of experience at major brands told me, that felt like “an experimental exercise that ended with a show.” Is that what a fashion show should be?

From left: Diesel, Jil Sander, and Marni.

I’d argue that, in most cases, it shouldn’t. Yet these kinds of shows abound in women’s wear. I can’t pretend to understand much of what came down the Diesel runway or the Jil Sander runway or many others. On the other end of the spectrum are brands like Gucci, Ferragamo, and Fendi. These runway shows are theater to promote handbag businesses, and while these brands present more wearable ideas than many, they struggle to distinguish themselves through design. Saint Laurent is also a handbag business, and while the collection appears less frivolous than many others, the latest show — almost entirely tight and sheer — was so unforgiving as to be seemingly solely designed for, well, runway models. That is not an actual customer base. That is a closet full of clothes with nothing to wear.

A CEO might tell a designer, the clothes don’t matter, do whatever you want, our bags are going to sell anyway. For instance, Louis Vuitton trunks and Neverfulls will sell no matter what Creative Director Nicolas Ghesquière sends down the runway.

Conversely, we have Maria Grazia Chiuri at Christian Dior, showing clothes that are wearable to the point of being negatively labeled “commercial” each season by fashion followers, but also lacking a point of view that makes them distinctly Dior. I have often appreciated what she’s trying to do because she showcases artisans, her customer exists, and these clothes can go on a rack and sell to actual human beings. But slapping MISS DIOR on a few looks wasn’t interesting design. The strongest pieces in her recent show were the sparkly maxi dresses at the end, but one stylist pointed out to me that those could have appeared on the Elie Tahari runway. You could argue that Dior — a brand with rich history and broad name recognition — would be stronger with more overt artistry, particularly in the couture line, which allows for just that. But Dior choses not to push it.

Then we have critical darling Bottega Veneta. A lot of this collection probably won’t go into production. While it seems more wearable than, say, Marni, is it, really? How many women are wearing double layered leather shirts? Or a fully pleated skirt and top? A sweater maxi skirt? A huge structured coat with all-over leather fringe? The clothing was well-made and nice to look at, but also quite heavy and frequently experimental. I have a hard time imagining so much of it in the real world.

From left: Bottega Veneta, Saint Laurent, and Dior.

Some brands now offer explicit antidotes to Instagram clothing. The Row garnered headlines for not allowing social media at its show in Paris Wednesday. Attendees were offered a pad and pencil to take notes instead. To be fair, The Row is so successful by this point that it doesn’t need any extra online exposure. One show that didn’t ban phones yet managed to focus on the clothes instead of online noise was Undercover. Designer Jun Takahashi asked German director Wim Wenders to write and read a poem as the soundtrack to the show. Wenders described the daily routine of a 40-year-old woman who works in law and has an 8-year-old son. “Would others see a difference from last week, last month, last year? She never does. To herself she's always the same — sometimes more tired, that's all,” said Wenders, as models walked the runway carrying groceries and yoga mats along with their handbags, not as a gimmick, but to convey real life. The opening look was a tank top and jeans. While I wish Takahashi had cast fortysomethings to model the clothes, you saw a real person here instead of viral tricks. In this vein was Dries Van Noten, who titled his show The Woman Who Dares to Cut Her Own Fringe. He told Vogue, “It’s about style and not so much about fashion.”

From left: Undercover, Dries Van Noten, and Rick Owens.

In a landscape where, as Cathy Horyn wrote in The Cut, innovative design is in short supply, one can understand the enthusiasm for John Galliano’s recent couture show for Maison Margiela. Couture allows for experimentation, and Galliano took advantage, showcasing a fantasy of Paris’s underbelly in the 1920s and 30s. Yet many of the dresses, if styled differently, could at least make their way to a red carpet, as we saw with Anya Taylor-Joy at a recent Dune: Part Two premiere. Rick Owens is one of the few designers with commercial and industry appeal, someone who both presents new ideas and manages to sell them. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that both he and Galliano are in their sixties.

The runway shows feel like they’re at an inflection point. This means it’s the perfect time for a new model to emerge for the future. But young designers have few examples of innovative clothes for real people. And they may feel so dependent on the attention economy to succeed that they may not have incentive to create for anything else. Which will just leave us drowning in more and more stuff.

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Loose Threads from Paris Fashion Week and Beyond

• #GIRLBOSS author Sophia Amoruso is profiled in Elle. She joked about writing a follow-up book called Girl Loss, and told journalist Jessica Bennett, “A man’s successes and failures aren’t attributed to his gender. So why should ours be? Why can’t I just good old-fashioned blow it and move on?”

• Chemena Kamali showed her first collection for Chloé in Paris, bringing the brand back to its boho roots with Sienna Miller in the front row. The industry seems happy with her debut. Chloé needed that jolt of fun.

• Victoria Beckham did Into the Gloss’s “Top Shelf.“ She reminisced about her first private plane ride with her husband: “I was in the Spice Girls when David and I first met. He was living in Manchester playing for Manchester United, and he would drive down to London. We literally would meet in a car park at a restaurant called City Limits. We would sit in his car and talk and really get to know each other. A friend at the time said, ‘You know, when people find out that you two are dating, everyone is going to go crazy. There’s going to be paparazzi everywhere.’ The same friend said, ‘When people know about you, take a trip. Do something special. The first trip that you should take should be to Portofino. There’s this amazing hotel called Hotel Splendido.’ That was the first time that we ever went away together, the first time that we were on a private plane together.”

• Beyoncé covers CR Fashion Book, pegged to her new hair care line Cécred, styled by Carine Roitfeld.

• Givenchy staged a show with no creative director, its first since Matthew Williamson left late last year. Maybe it would have been OK to sit one season out?

• The Courrèges show was ultra-sleek and sexual, true capital F Fashion — the James Bond of the Paris shows. The soundtrack was a woman panting.

• The Balmain show was inspired by Olivier Rousteing’s hometown of Bordeaux, explaining the grape motif. I was kind of in love with the sparkly mini-dress with the fruit on the shoulders and can only hope someone wears it to the Oscars. If not, I expect it at the Met Gala, where the dress code is “The Garden of Time.”