This article was not written by me but Andre Walker shared an amazingly beautiful perspective on the current issues in the fashion industry with writer, Katharine Zarrella; therefore, I felt compelled to share it with all of you. I have never re-blogged another writer's article on the site before, so for this to be the first time, you have to know that it's quite significant.
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Walker — a 45-year-old Brooklyn-based designer turned
self-proclaimed fashion artist, whose claims to fame include an outré clothing
line he launched in New York’s downtown clubs when he was a teenager,
consulting for the likes of Marc Jacobs and Kim Jones, and publishing a tactile
fashion and arts zine called TIWIMUTA — has a
pretty firm grasp on the definition. And he is concerned that contemporary
culture’s ‘Give me more now’ mentality, as well as its lust for synthetic
materials and overproduction, has thrust the fashion industry into an ethically
questionable downward spiral.
Walker sits down with Katharine Zarrella to voice his views on the
state of the industry and why, in spite of it all, fashion is still “gorge.”
KZ: You once said that, at age nine, reading W magazine was a magical
experience for you. Does fashion mean the same thing to you now as it did then?
AW: No, not
at all. I believe that the infrastructures of fashion have eroded over the
years, and I think the systems need to change. We need to revisit how clothing
is manufactured, how fabrics are made and what kinds of materials are used. In
my opinion, a lot of the top luxury brands are not really making luxury goods.
I can’t look at plastic shoes that cost $3,000 and call that luxury.
KZ: Is manufacturing, in your opinion, the biggest problem?
AW: No,
it’s consumption. Consumption is the new servitude. It affects every
demographic, from the rich to the poor. Everyone is forced or obliged to
purchase something. The extremely wealthy don’t have to think as much about
what they buy as the poor or the middle class, so it’s up to the extremely
wealthy to lead by example. They need to become more conservative in their
behaviour.
KZ: How so?
AW: It
would be really interesting to see how top-tier fashion companies would react
to all of their consumers wanting something biodegradable, for example. I don’t
see the future in clothes made from plastic and latex and nylon and acetate —
not with everything that we know about the world. We need to go beyond this
surface that everyone is so quick to call luxury. These fabrics are outdated.
We need to challenge what we’re actually bringing forth into the world, rather
than just paying homage to these dumb Hello Kitty dolls and having shrines of
junk that are supposedly so cool.
KZ: How did you transform from the little boy reading Wmagazine to Andre Walker,
fashion artist?
AW: I was born in London, and by the time I was four, I was
obsessing over the crazy shoes and clothes that my mom was bringing back from
her trips to Italy, where she’d dance as part of a cabaret. I was so
fascinated, and I’d draw them with crayons. When we moved back to New York in
the early Seventies, my mom got a subscription to W magazine, and that just started it off for me. The first issue we
ever got was called “Paris is a Balloon.” It had three tweed dresses from
Kenzo’s Jungle Jap on the cover — sick. By the time I was 13, I was going to 42nd Street and buying ItalianVogue, Vogue Paris, L’Officiel, all of ’em.
My mom was super chic and we used to do a whole uptown gig and go to Saks Fifth
Avenue and Henri Bendel. I was obsessed with store windows, drama, glamour, red
lipstick, white powder, all of that stuff.
KZ: Is there a place for that today?
AW: Absolutely.
Aesthetics are one of the only things left. It’s all about the visual, but that
has nothing to do with how things are made. Anyone that has the ability to keep
renewing the visual and aesthetic cycle will be a winner. Look at all the new
designers that we love: Mary Katrantzou, JW Anderson. There’s always room for
growth.
KZ: Do you feel that any luxury labels are getting it right?
AW: I don’t have many heroes at the moment. If I see some plastic
coming out from Prada, or Marc Jacobs or Lanvin, I just think, “Gosh, you guys
can do one thousand times better than this.” A lot of people have this passive
mentality when it comes to evolving ethically within fashion, or within
society, and I think a lot of corporate society just feels cooler waiting and
pulling in the coins until it’s necessary to do otherwise. You know, I thought
Suzy Menkes was gorgeous when, in her review of Raf Simons’ [S/S 2014] menswear show, she
talked about artificiality versus organic, and said that nylon is now
considered an “enemy.”
KZ: What do you feel makes a luxury brand worthwhile these days?
AW: I love
quality. Quality is so much cooler than luxury. Luxury is becoming enormously
questionable. People can’t see past what’s in front of them. They want to be
seen carrying their shopping bags and flying first class. And, you know, I love
being wealthy. I do. I can buy things for my parents, I can give to homeless
people in the street. I can take a cab. I can have a bike in Paris, London and
New York. Yet, I don’t want to start endangering the people around me because
of my lifestyle. If we have five billion self-indulgent people, we’re going
nowhere fast.
KZ: Why is there so much fashion out there today?
AW: I feel like fashion has started to mimic the finance world,
it’s starting to mimic the grandeur of that bubble. But all you have to do is
go to a department store to see there aren’t that many people buying these
clothes. If you have a bigger population, it’s understandable that you’re going
to have more designers, but the more designers there are, the less each designer has to make. If you’re [online], and windows are
coming up every five seconds, does that mean a different garment has to pop up
every five seconds to go with it? Does fashion really need to correlate with
the speed with which we access information?
KZ: I’m sensing that you’re a bit frustrated with the state of the
industry at the moment.
AW: I just
think the top 20 brands — granted these are people that I will work with and I
want to work with — really need to start shaping up. When Prada or Marc
[Jacobs] or Lanvin began to experiment with aesthetics and freedom of the body
and freedom of expression, the public ate it up. Imagine what would happen if
they started experimenting with the foundation of fashion [production]? When
people were doing handcrafted lace and beading from the 1890s into the late
1930s, it was luxury and it was extremely time-consuming, yet somewhat
sustainable. But trying to give that to every single man is not sustainable.
You’ll need to find cheaper alternatives. And if you need to find a cheaper
alternative just for an aesthetic, you have to really think about if it needs
to exist.
KZ: Are you saying that decadence — or opulence — doesn’t have a
place in fashion?
AW: It’s not
that it does not have a place in fashion — I think decadence needs to be
reviewed. Couture is like, whatever. It’s cool. It’s a nice video. But
aspiration has nothing to do with integrity. I think if self-indulgence wasn’t
so magnified internationally, we’d see people with much clearer heads. Mahatma
Gandhi said, “There is no beauty in the finest cloth if it makes hunger and
unhappiness.” I don’t believe in luxury for luxury’s sake. I think it’s a farce
and a lie and a joke and boring.
KZ: Are you still excited about fashion?
AW: Oh my god, I love it, because I love aesthetics. It’s not that
I’m against fashion. I think fashion is against itself. The industrial
revolution just didn’t realise that it wasn’t sustainable. We all need clothes.
That’s the beautiful thing about fashion — it’s an absolute utility. And there
are so many good designers out there: Alber Elbaz, Ryan Lo, Mary Katrantzou,
Tomas Maier at Bottega Veneta, Hermès, Haider [Ackermann], Kim Jones, Marc… I
think fashion is gorge.
Source: Business of Fashion