The 11 Biggest Fashion Stories of 2022
A guide to some of Back Row's best stories of the year.
Dear Back Row Subscribers,
This is the last you’ll hear from me until the first week of January. I wish you all the very safest and happiest of holidays! I also want to say thank you for supporting Back Row by being here, and thank you especially to paid subscribers who make this newsletter possible. If you need a last-minute gift, a subscription makes a great one — it requires no shipping and is great for the person who doesn’t like accumulating more stuff. Or maybe you’d like to treat yourself to Back Row for $5 a month (half the price of a single green juice in many places) or $50 annually.
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See you all in the new year!
xo
Amy
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When I was thinking about starting this publication, a friend told me they didn’t want to read about fashion. I believed this person was wrong — but I was also afraid that they were right. This year was Back Row’s first full year publishing, and I’ve been amazed to see this community grow, which suggests that there are a lot of you out there who — just like me — want to read about this industry as a social and cultural force and feel exhausted by puff pieces and clickbait.
A lot of publications post “our most read stories” lists at the end of the year. That doesn’t exactly work here since this community has grown so much that there is a huge disparity in audience figures between, say, February and December. So using the Back Row archive, audience response, and my gut as a guide, I compiled a list of the biggest fashion stories from 2022. Some of this list will overlap with other year-end lists, but some of it won’t because it’s the kind of story that you can’t run in a publication dependent on marketing dollars from brands, meaning you might have only read about it in Back Row. For those of you who are newer to this community, I hope this list serves as a useful guide to the archive and you find some pieces to enjoy reading over the holidays.
1. Clothing companies issuing statements of support for women following the overturn of Roe were revealed to be indirectly funding anti-choice politicians.
In some cases, brands like Nike have PACs that give money to senators and representatives who are staunchly anti-choice. There are also companies like Victoria’s Secret that give money to lobbying organizations like the National Retail Federation that in turn give money to anti-choice politicians. Victoria’s Secret even says on its website, “Although Victoria’s Secret & Co. participates in these organizations, we do not exercise control over them and may not agree with all the positions of each organization.” Then it seems completely fair to ask: why are they giving them their money?
Read more in Back Row: How Nike, Gap, and Victoria’s Secret Profits Indirectly Support Anti-Abortion Politicians
2. André Leon Talley died.
In 2009, Talley was asked what he wanted his legacy to be. He said, “I’d like to be remembered as someone who made a difference in the lives of young people — that I nurtured someone and taught them to pursue their dreams and their careers, to leave a legacy. You cannot live your life in the elitist world of fashion and not step out or you’re disconnected. You have to realize that fashion is not the endgame.”
I am personally grateful to the help Talley gave me over the course of my career, particularly with the biography about Anna Wintour I published this year. His fraught relationship with her and Vogue magazine received renewed attention around the time of his death. But even if she and the magazine ultimately didn’t make him feel seen, so many people in and outside the industry did see him. I was reminded of this when I attended the street renaming ceremony near his house in White Plains, New York earlier this year. Tributes to Talley poured forth from Diane Von Furstenberg, members of his church, and friends from the community. A press release issued by town officials had said Anna was expected to attend, but by that time she was already in Milan, going to fashion week events with Donatella Versace.
Read more in Back Row: Part I: André Leon Talley's 'Anna' Interviews
Part II: André Leon Talley’s ‘Anna’ Interviews
3. The Miu Miu skirt set was everywhere.
The look first appeared in a Miu Miu show in late 2021, but this was its year. It’s one of few outfits that could plausibly be accused of going to the opening of an envelope. It appeared on Nicole Kidman on the cover of Vanity Fair, a pregnant Shay Mitchell, and so many more, much of it documented in the @miumiuset Instagram feed. The set was loaned to no fewer than 10 influencers who attended the brand’s fashion week show in March.
However, the look’s ubiquity — including its Walmart knockoff — hardly represented the democratizing of runway fashion. It also appeared on Paloma Elsesser on the cover of i-D, only — we later learned in a Business of Fashion story — after it had been cut and enlarged with a panel of fabric to make it fit. “They chose not to make that skirt big enough. There's no reason a fat person can't wear a miniskirt,” said Virginia Sole-Smith, author of the Substack Burnt Toast in a Back Row interview about anti-fat bias in fashion. "We need fashion designers to say, ‘It is also interesting to me to dress curves. It is interesting to me to dress a round stomach.’”
Read more in Back Row: Fashion's Anti-Fat Bias Is Prevalent as Ever, Says Virginia Sole-Smith
The Case for Nicole Kidman's 'Vanity Fair' Cover
4. Luxury fashion brands brazenly raised prices.
If anything reinforced the velvet rope between the über-wealth and everyone else in the pandemic’s twilight, it may have been 2022’s truly eye-watering luxury price tags. That sumptuous fringed leather statement skirt by Bottega Veneta that snaked its way onto Moda Operandi with a $29,000 price tag this year was merely the natural offspring of a period of extreme price hikes that seem to affect the wealthy as much as the difference between a 72-degree and 73-degree day. By early 2022, Chanel’s small flap bag that once cost $5,300 had gone up to $8,200. Louis Vuitton’s bag prices went up on average from 6 to 7 percent, but by as much as 25 percent in some markets. And in October, Hermès — whose Birkin and Kelly bags are the gold standard for car-priced individual items of fashion — announced price increases of 5 to 10 percent for 2023. The brand had already hiked prices by 4 percent in 2022. While brands say the price increases are due to things like increasing cost of goods and currency fluctuations, former Chanel boutique workers told Back Row they viewed those as merely excuses and — like abolishing a commission-based pay structure for retail sales people — really a way to juice corporate profits.
Read more in Back Row: Look! A $29,000 Skirt.
Retail Confessions: Chanel, Part I
Retail Confessions: Chanel: Part II
Beyoncé hyped attainably-priced Telfar and called her Birkins “shits in storage.”
This famous song lyric was one of many signs that 2022 was a year when many people railed against the kind of conspicuous consumption seen in Kylie Jenner’s infamous “you wanna take mine or yours?” Instagram. Beyoncé’s first Rennaissance single “Break My Soul” became a summer anthem because it cast aspiration as simply getting out from under a shitty 9-to-5. Perhaps this explains the appeal of the understated luxury of Matthieu Blazy’s debut at Bottega Veneta in 2022, which is expensive as hell, but featured jeans and plaid shirts that were actually made of leather, only you wouldn’t know that unless you knew that. I could see luxury shaping up this decade to be defined by buying according to insider knowledge and understated tastefulness instead of seeking out the most obvious signifiers of wealth.
Read more in Back Row: Beyoncé, Birkins, and a Note to Readers
Alessandro Michele departed Gucci, leaving behind a fur-free vision for luxury fashion.
The coverage about Michele leaving Gucci focused on the profits his vision earned for parent company Kering (“tens of billions of dollars,” according to the New York Times). Plus the fading appeal of his Harry Styles collabs and genderless, maximalist idea of glamour.
But I was surprised not to see more mention of Gucci’s fur ban, announced in late 2017, in the flurry of press on his departure. But maybe that’s another sign that the industry now takes for granted Gucci CEO and president Marco Bizzarri’s statement to Business of Fashion that fur is no longer modern. The decision was made with Michele, Bizzarri said at the time, and was hugely significant for the anti-fur movement given the buzz surrounding the label. A cascade of luxury fashion fur bans followed, at houses including Bottega Veneta, Prada, Chanel, and Balenciaga, to name just a few. The Humane Society’s PJ Smith, who has been lobbying the fashion industry to stop using fur since 2009, told Back Row, “I think maybe in the next 10 to 15 years we will see the end of fur as we know it.”
Read more in Back Row: A Symbol of Elitism, Fur Is Going Extinct
Balenciaga’s recent pulled ad campaigns led to one of the worst spates of public backlash against a fashion brand in the last two decades.
So few fashion stories escape the industry itself and capture mass attention, and unfortunately for Balenciaga, this was one of them. Absorbing much of the backlash was Gabriele Galimberti, the photographer of the holiday campaign — not to be confused with the separate campaign that included a printout of Supreme Court documents from a child pornography case. This kind of public scandal has a great chance of ruining the career of an independent artist like Galimberti who wasn’t that widely known prior to this story.
The same is not true of former Balenciaga face Kim Kardashian, who bowed to public pressure to make a statement about the ads. She seemingly managed to use the attention to promote herself in other ways.
Read more in Back Row: Balenciaga Tried to Blame Contractors. It Failed.
Why the Vibe Shift Might Finally Leave the Kardashians Behind
The industry reckoned with the TikTok influencer class.
Leading up to fashion month in September, a rift began bubbling up on social media between TikTok’s new fashion influencers and old guard Instagram influencers and veteran fashion critics. The old guard argued that the TikTokers didn’t know anything; the TikTokers lamented that more established people in the industry didn’t want to help them. The divide spilled into the open during New York Fashion Week, after TikTokers posted videos drawing attention to publicly available lists of PR people who ticket shows, saying all you have to do to go to fashion week is email them! The PR people were inundated with messages and at least one complained of “feel[ing] doxxed.”
The exploding interest in fashion, specifically the shows themselves, on TikTok says something good, overall, to me about the future of fashion, fashion week particularly, which is that the younger generation really cares about these shows! That seems like something for fashion week organizers to capitalize on instead of fear.
Read more in Back Row: Who Gets to Be a Fashion Authority in 2022?
Dangerous high heels clomped back onto the runway.
Blame it on sneaker fatigue, the Y2K revival, the popularity of And Just Like That or a potpourri of it all. The spring 2023 runway shows included a rush of dramatic footwear not seen in such a swell since around the time of Alexander McQueen’s famous Plato’s Atlantis show that featured 10-inch “Armadillo” heels. At the Valentino show, high-heeled shoes caused teary-eyed young models to take painful falls on the runway. This was a rare misstep for creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli and likely an avoidable one since heels in extreme heights didn’t have the same effect at most other shows.
Read more in Back Row: The Return of Dangerous Shoes
The Met Gala became a froth of Kardashian-induced controversy.
Probably as a testament to its enduring power, the Met Gala opening the second part of an exhibition on American fashion remained the biggest internationally recognized red-carpet fashion event of 2022 — despite some not-great optics. Among them was Kim Kardashian wearing the same dress Marilyn Monroe did to sing “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy in 1962, and talking openly about how she lost 16 pounds in three weeks to fit into it. Professional fashion conservators said Kardashian never should have been allowed to wear the dress, a point that seemed proved by photos that emerged on social media showing alleged damage after the Gala. I’m curious to see if major celebrities like Beyoncé and Rihanna will return next year or if Kardashian will be left to dominate again.
Read more in Back Row: Like It or Not, Kim Kardashian’s Marilyn Monroe Met Gala Stunt Sets a Precedent
Kanye West lost partnerships with brands like Balenciaga and Nike, plus his place in Anna Wintour’s inner circle.
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about this downfall was not how steep or public it was, but that it hadn’t happened sooner. By the time he graced Balenciaga’s mud runway and staged the Paris Fashion Week show that sparked all of this, West had a long history of making offensive statements. None of it ever stopped fashion brands from giving him business deals that would make him a billionaire. After he lost all those deals, his net worth still stood at around $400 million, according to Forbes.
Read more in Back Row: Fashion Won’t Cancel Kanye West
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Back Row is exactly the fashion journalism I’ve always wanted! I couldn’t click “paid subscription” fast enough when I found it! 😅 I look forward to each issue and they’re always a delight. Thank you for this & ANNA!❤️
Wow... just watched a video of the Valentino show. Truly horrific...those models should’ve been paid double for that bs. Shocked no one broke an ankle, tbh. How did this happen?!