For fashion to connect with the very population it continuously wishes to seduce, it must continuously speak to the public, reflecting its sentiments while subtly leading the way through the dichotomy of conformity and competition for reigning inspiration through individuality.
Fashion doesn’t just want to be relevant; it needs to be.
For fashion to do this, it must associate with what we consider new, and it is in the direction of youth that always wins. Youth is everything new. It is fresh, energetic, and wide-eyed. It sees the world from new eyes and isn’t afraid to ask why things are the way they are or why they must be. It is the optimism of exploration, the naivety that opens doors to new approaches. How can one think out of the box when it has never been put in one? Youth knows. It hasn’t learned all the rules, and thus can break them.
But the design world is not coming from a youthful place. These creatives have experience and accumulated knowledge that come from being on the planet longer. That doesn’t mean they are out of touch. They pay attention as all artists do, and they have the technology to pay attention to the younger demographic.
The current focus is on embracing youth to be relevant, particularly when our world is changing. The economic picture is transforming as manufacturing gives way to the potential disruption offered by technological advancements that threaten everything we have grown accustomed to. Erosion of middle class has pushed us to embrace technological knowledge relevancy such as our ability to learn the new basics such as coding and program adaption that are attributed as innate to younger generations such as the Millennials.
Compounding these concerns is our embrace of social media has a necessary component of relevancy. This has made appearance even more important, something not lost in the beauty industry but not limited to it either. As our older generations are living longer, they are maintaining youth longer as well. We all have heard the ”forty is the new thirty” mantra. Many who aim to maintain relevance dress younger to preserve the association. Fashion knows this; it’s part of the mechanism that maintains the cache of youth in our culture as valuable. And for a growing portion of unemployed and those looking over their backs aware of their age as an unfair judgment factor, the competition to remain relevant has spurred articles instructing job-seekers on ways to look and appear young, even though our appearance has little to do with technical knowledge or relevancy. We wouldn’t have this concern if value on youth wasn’t emphasized to the degree it is today but our associations of youth and technological adaption along with age stereotyping have shaped this perception. Thus, to cultivate a new client base and continue the attraction with its existing clientele means reaching out to youth because we associate relevance with such alignment.
Our strongest reference of youth are the decades where youth ruled. For the 20th century, this would be the 20s, the 60s through the 90s. These were energetic and sexy periods. These were also dominated by the power of youth culture. In particular, the 20s, 60s and 80s had high hemlines and drop waists. The sexual ambiguity of a dropped waist and the youthful permission to hike the hems high were embraced as part of the larger affinity with our value of youth culture. And there is no shortage of these in the collections coming out this month.
There are simply too many names that would fill the article to refer to. Nearly every collection has both elements in their collections. For those with great legs and a tight waistline, fashion is smiling on them with these elements being offered. And for those who are young or maintain the appearance of being so, these items are for them. The aspects of youthfulness is a new (yet not) currency of exclusivity that fashion offers, and some lines have a higher percentage of these elements as if to declare the status of their clientele. Fortunately, the collections have more going on. It is, above all, a business.
It’s fascinating to see what we value and what components of society are contributing to the values we maintain. For those who are more educated one realizes that not all Millennials are as tech savvy as media has portrayed, and energy and innovation is not the domain of youth. A culture raised on conformity has nothing on a seasoned creative who has learned with less barriers and constrictions and the rise of obesity that includes all generations doesn’t speak much about energy. And, in the coming decades, the more physical aspirations we place value on won’t be restricted to an age range either. The amazing discoveries in science and its exponential growth we see now are already looking to extending and reversing the very process of aging.
As this happens you can be sure that we will find, explore and exploit whatever qualities we deem valuable in its place. And as designers are businesspeople, they will recognize that a good collection is not solely based on these aspects…although they will be sure to take those values into consideration in their collections; the compulsion of exploitation which acts as drivers of human nature is unlikely to change. We’ll just have to hope for enlightenment to come into fashion. Perhaps we can plant the seeds now to get there.