The Role of Fashion in Society

The Role of Fashion in Society BigThink What is fashion’s role in society and how has it changed? Harriet Mays Powell Fashion Director, New York Magazine I think fashion has reached to kind of critical mass, literally the mass. Good taste is no longer privileged like in home design you can get fantastic looking things for your home and for you to wear and you don’t have to play a premium for that so I think that, that’s great, that great design, great fashion is at all price points now so I think it’s reached all levels of society so there’s a kind of a egalitarian idea that fashion is no longer for the privileged few which resonates my democratic ear with a nice ring to it. I think that fashion is big business. Let’s not kid ourselves when you open up fashion magazines and see the amount of advertising and the amount of money that’s put in there. Women buy clothes and continue to buy clothes and men are getting very involved much more the men’s side of fashion is growing at large rate as well. The cosmetics business all of that apart of beauty which is an extension of fashion and the way and how you look and how you are, health and the way we exercise all of that has to do with our perceptions of who we are a slight cult of youthfulness and mind to stay young. I think that has made fashion become an even larger more important role because if we dress like old ladies we’re going to feel and look like old ladies. So keeping young, keeping fit, looking beautiful, looking young staying young, keeping current with what’s going on with the trends those are all part of a kind of cultural shift and change where you know 40’s the new 50’s, 50’s the new 60’s whatever everyone is living a lot longer, living a lot healthier and everyone is allowed to I think tap in to dressing in a way that they never were before and the options are huge so you don’t just have to have a Chanel suit you can do it anyway you want to so I think fashion has become fun. It has become accessible and it means that good taste everyone can have it. How do designers feel about the increasing accessibility of fashion? I think some of them are probably a little arrogant and it’s not really bad. I would love to see it on 5’11’’ skinny beautiful model but I can’t have but think of Karl Lagerfeld who is so smart and his again reinvention of what Coco Chanel did in liberating women from corsetry and giving them a lose shape jacket and sweaters and all sort of things that we take for granted now that women never wore before she came along to kind of liberate us from the corset of the 19th Century. I admire Karl Lagerfeld’s ability to continually reinvent that and I think one of his great success is that he accepts the modern if it’s going to be a Jersey girl with a really expensive hand bag fantastic. You know if it’s a Russian Oligarchs wife who’s got gazillion rubles and she can spend it on slightly gaudy taste why not. If it’s the women of Barons that can now dictate and pay for a couture— I think to say no to that is solely you can’t change the future, I think his philosophy has always been and to his great credit embrace what’s new, find out what’s interesting about it, take from that, learn from that, keep your ears open, watch what’s going on and don’t be too arrogant or complacent about it. I think designers have to keep their ear and everyone gets tired and complacent and things that what they do, they loose step with what’s going on and I think he would be someone that one could channel to really appreciate no matter who’s wearing it. Their customer their buying it you know you’re making clothes you’re not reinventing the cure for life. You’re making clothing so whoever can wear it does wear it gosh how lucky and fortunate are you that someone wants to buy what you’ve designed or made.