London - People often ask me if I think catwalk shows have a point, a future, or even a chance in the digital landscape of today.
When you have things like Loewe’s clever presentations, geared up to advertising shots that were plastering Paris with the label’s forthcoming wares, days before the label’s menswear shows there last week, you wonder why people bother with the live event for an audience of just a few hundred.
Especially when anything can go wrong at a live event. I remember Gareth Pugh commenting that presenting his collections by film allowed him to avoid the pitfalls of, say, a model mis-stepping and taking a tumble, or a piece of fabric getting caught and tugging a pair of trews at the wrong angle.
Other stuff can go awry, too. As it did at Rick Owens’s show in Paris last week, when a model saw fit to brandish a banner in the middle of the show which, the house was quick to state, was in no way connected to the clothes on show. “Please Kill Angela Merkel Not” was the odd, vague and vaguely politicised message.
I would argue that this is the reason why we need fashion shows: the unexpected live event and the use of that live event to express something. It isn’t done enough these days, when clothes with a message are often subjugated to commercial needs.
This is great if you’re showing in the way that JW Anderson’s Loewe is, a format the designer chooses, he says, because he loves the idea of the press seeing his wares as cold, hard product.
Contrast that with someone like Dame Vivienne Westwood, who uses her catwalks to opposes things as varied as American cultural imperialism, the death of culture and climate change. I interviewed Westwood recently, expecting her to tub-thump those causes above her clothes, but she was in reflective mood. Thinking of fashion, she said the industry gives her a platform to promote those ideas, and the catwalk is the perfect stage.
I’d like more designers to think of their shows that way: as a means of expressing ideas in a public forum and on a human body, as opposed to empty display of product. I can’t help, in my nostalgia, thinking of the spectacles of Lee Alexander McQueen and John Galliano of 10 (or even 20) years ago.No one questioned their validity.
If more creatives thought about the catwalk creatively, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
The Independent