Fashion: From Radical To Mainstream

Once at the forefront of design and creativity, radical fashion has left the building and may even be presumed dead. Clothes that once pushed boundaries, call it radical fashion or conceptual, has in this industry of all-powerful big groups, simply gone out of fashion. Avant-garde designers and conceptualists seem to be ever-absent from the catwalk shows around the world. In New York, Imitation of Christ and Miguel Adrovar are mere memories. In Paris, Jurgi Persoons and Angelo Figus have gone out of business. And in London, a city with a high need to represent newness and desire to discover the next new thing, has barely any names left to seduce the international crowd. Is it money that has killed the avant-garde? The big groups have so much power that no one designer, no matter how talented, can go on their own anymore. The large design houses have consolidated and exploited their power over the glossy magazines to create a kind of quid pro quo situation in which advertising money 0- the lifeblood of a fashion monthly - are traded for editorial coverage. New designers, risky ones, may get a tiny picture and a few words in the news sections, the big full-colour pictures are reserved to the paying customers. How can you fight Gucci and Prada, quips one designer. With Gaultier designing Hermes, Helmut Lang owned by the Prada Group, Martin Margiela launching a classic luxury line, and Yohji Yamamoto focusing on his lower-priced accessible line Ys, there isn't much left to seduce as being avant-garde. No more McQueen shows in carparks, no more cerebral, emotional work and no more risks. Fashion is a business of confidence, and when people are not feeling confident in their financial state, it suffers. If you are an avant-garde designer no store will take a big risk on you, because people aren't buying. Therefore you end up with smaller volumes, so the manufacturers don't produce you, as you don't make enough. Then you have difficulty with your deliveries and the retailers don't want to take the risk and it all starts again. There is a consensus, however, that the fashion world is in a state of flux and we are at a crossroads of some sort. The world as we know it is being reformed in a way that goes deeper than the trendiest of being avant-garde or establishment. Gucci can't be any Guccier, and gold can't be any gilder. Consumers already have everything they need. In addition, shoppers are smarter and know more. Maybe the avant-garde isn't gone, but is instead being reborn. Hopefully in a renewed emphasis on individual talent.