The Fashion is dead. Long live the Fashion!

Death and Resurrection of the Fashion Industry

Li Edelkoort, one of the world’s most respected trend forecasters, gave a provocative talk on stage at VOICES, Here, she shares her thoughts on why the fashion system is broken, and how the industry can catch up with today’s reality and regain its cultural value as a change agent that pushes society forward. VOICES is BoF's new annual gathering for big thinkers in partnership with QIC Global Real Estate.

Lidewij Edelkoort is one of the world’s most famous trend forecasters. As an intuitive thinker who travels the world studying the evolution of socio-cultural trends before sharing this information with her clients in industries as diverse as fashion, textiles, interiors, cars, cosmetics, retail and food. Under her Paris-based company Trend Union, Edelkoort creates trend books two or more years ahead that are tools used by strategists, designers and marketeers at international brands.

In 2014 she wrote the Anti-Fashion Manifesto: this much-talked-about and thought-provoking manifesto covers the 10 main issues that indicate the fashion industry has reached breaking point. Edelkoort courageously confronts marketing and advertising, as well as challenging education, materials, manufacturing, retailing, designers, fashion shows, the press and consumers alike. This means that the economy of clothes will take over from the turnover of fashion. Therefore trend forecasting has changed as well, taking its leads from social change and finding creative ideas within lifestyle trends and consumer behavior. A break-through philosophy focusing on textiles, garment-making and the imminent revival of couture.

Following this funeral of fashion celebration, I would like to introduce a book (Luxury Hackers, by Danilo Venturi, Lindau 2011) that I found very interesting to aim to the resurrection of "our lady fashion".

Luxury and fashion are experiencing a period of crisis of value that is at the origin of the economic one. It is therefore necessary to rethink these two areas beyond a logical stance that the tradition of a brand is refreshed with small seasonal changes dictated by short-term trends. It is necessary to reconstruct the fractures between management and design, between luxury and mass products, between heritage and innovation. For this reason, the method used in this volume is détournement: the fundamental values of the two sectors have been identified, then reprocessed by comparing with values, phenomena, patterns and examples from the most disparate industries, finally recomposed in an updated form. Five events of contemporary history (globalization, fall of ideologies, "no logo" culture, web 2.0 and financial crisis) produce a widespread feeling of chaos. And, despite the fear and consequent instinct to turn back, chaos is sustainable and sometimes even necessary to create new forms of life. Halfway through a critical essay of general interest and a text for job-seekers, this book is intended to give the brand new luxury and fashion brands, Luxury Hackers, a softwear and a hardwear to present themselves as current interpreters of a world that has passed shortly from fordism to tomfordism and which today also passed the latter.

Is this an ordinary problem nowadays? Sure, but, as someone said in the lucky Nineties, "ordinary's just not good enough today".