Fashion is highly valued, which is why a lot of people spend a lot on it. But although it is supposed to all be about new trends, a closer analysis shows that these trends often just recycle what has come before. For an explanation of this phenomenon I interviewed Melanie, a young fashion designer who has worked for lots of vintage shops in Brick Lane, Schoreditch and Camden over the last five years.
According to Melanie, one explanation is that once people see old clothes in old documentaries and movies, they become curious about what it would be like to wear those clothes themselves. The fashion industry then tracks their behaviour, and so if the industry realises that consumers have developed a taste for 1980s fashion, then it will generate designs that revisit the 80s.
But she also added that “… most contemporary fashion designers do not have ideas,” and want to get rich quick. “This has killed the high level of creativity among fashion designers. Since they want to come up with new products faster, they are unable to take the time to design unique fashion styles rather than copying styles that were used by other people in the past.”
Melanie worried that this was not good for sustainability. Fashion was founded on creativity, she said, and so it would need to stay creative to prosper. With deteriorating levels of creativity, she argued, the industry was likely to crumble. Her advice to designers was they should draw a clear line between duplicating the past and creating something new.