Hot Takes #14: Fashion Is A Pay To Play Game
The deeper your pockets, the more you stand a chance playing the fashion game
As Dirty Cash once rapped: "Money talks, mmm, mmm, money talks". He was onto something. And in fashion, if you've got a few figures sitting in your bank account, you can pay to play the fashion game.
Hot Takes is my bullet point thoughts on fashion's hottest issues. These posts get to the heart of why people are talking about what they’re talking about, what this means and where this could go next.
Think: what direction is fashion heading in? What’s new, innovative and exciting? What's going on in fashion that's really pissing people off?
Hot Takes ties fashion topics to a wider cultural and social context, and digs into why these topics are important and the often more significant meanings behind them.
So sit back, relax and let's get into it. Here’s Hot Takes #14.
Let’s set the scene.
Hats off to Kylie Jenner, who was crowned the Brand Innovator of the Year at the 2023 WSJ. Magazine Innovator Awards, the same day her inaugural fashion label, Khy, dropped its debut 12-piece collection. Now, let's not kid ourselves — Ms. Jenner might have the title, but calling her a brand innovator is like calling a microwave a culinary genius. She's less an innovator and more a perpetual walking endorsement, a human billboard powered by Emma and Jens Grede — the duo behind celebrity brands such as Skims, Good American and Brady. This is not innovation; it's a profitable partnership with Kylie as the centrepiece.
After years of championing the need for fresh voices and breaking free from the shackles of fashion hegemony, mainstream fashion, where the door to influence swings open with a well-padded wallet, is reverting to its old ways. In the face of a cost of living crisis, geopolitical drama and retailers adopting a more cautious approach to pre-ordering, independent designers find themselves not just struggling to make ends meet but desperately treading water to stay afloat. It's an industry where money has the loudest voice, and creativity is under threat unless you’re the youngest self-made billionaire ever à la Ms. Jenner.
Money talks, money talks
In fashion, the deeper your pockets, the more likely your brand is to be successful. And that sucks. Unfortunately, as money tightens and sponsorships for emerging brands become as rare as a sample size at a buffet, the game is getting trickier. Vogue Business estimated that a fashion show could cost anywhere from £10,000 to £50,000, leaving emerging designers contemplating more budget-friendly ways to flaunt their creativity. When your roots aren't intertwined with dollar bills, the game of fashion is more likely to resemble financial fiction than runway reality.
Mass brand clout vs niche, independent labels
Let's decode some runway rhetoric real quick: celebrity brands are for the masses while smaller, independent labels do their thing for a niche audience. LFW SS23 was an example of this — not for the brands that were on show, but for the ones that weren’t. SS Daley, Robyn Lynch and Dilara Findikoğlu missed the schedule, even though Findikoğlu has dressed the likes of Cardi B and Margot Robbie. The designer revealed to The New York Times that she cancelled because “we simply don’t have the finances for a runway show right now”. For smaller labels with limited resources, the uphill climb can feel like a high-fashion obstacle course with no end in sight.
My two cents.
Should we rain on Ms. Jenner's parade for using her colossal following and healthy bank account to make her fashion brand debut? Wouldn't we do the same if we were in her shoes? Who knows. But if one thing is for sure, it’s that different markets coexist beneath the vast fashion umbrella and Khy isn't a brand that's going to be for everyone the same way that Mowalola is known for rifling a few feathers. Autonomous creatives and public figures operate in separate galaxies; so there's no point in attempting a side-by-side analysis.
But the fashion industry is in dire need of a makeover. What it values and rewards needs to be given more thought, rather than concentrating on who can make the most money. We've had our fair share of working-class independent fashion visionaries — think Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen and Christopher Kane — but in today's financial mosh pit, none of them would have survived their starting days. It's time to break from the tyranny of dollar signs and move into a fashion era where creativity, innovation and daring to do something a little different make fashion more than just a pay-to-play game.
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