Making Ourselves Up: A Fashion Roundtable

Fashion is time, and to love fashion is to be in thrall to constant change—some of it for the better, some of it not. And yet, fashion and its symptoms cannot be avoided. Like eating and drinking, we must clothe ourselves each day, and like these other modes of sustaining consumption, it isn’t always good for us, nor us for it. Still, we live in fashion’s silk-lined pocket, and most of us wouldn’t have it any other way. Feeld reached out to five very different fashion fanatics—journalists, broadcasters, academics, performers, and more—to ask them what it means to love fashion expansively, ethically, and with pleasure. 

Do you love fashion? If so, imagine you’re going to couple’s counseling with…fashion. In the privacy of your therapist’s office: What would you say are the worst, most damaging things about your lover?

Of course I love fashion. And in fact, I’ll be a bad spouse and tell you I don’t think we need couple’s therapy. Maybe my partner (fashion) needs to go to therapy and work out their stuff. I can tell they’re feeling stuck, directionless, and over-indulged. But my love is true and unconditional.

 Obviously, there are so many things wrong with fashion. But I worry that too many people distill those problems into a broader condescension towards and even dismissal of pleasure and feminine interests and pursuits. I’m not saying that fashion is better in terms of environmental factors, labor, waste, or meaningless consumerism than other kinds of cultural production or mediums or industries. It’s just as bad and, in many ways, it’s worse. I just think it’s crazy to be like, “Well I love fashion BUUUUUUT.” There is a long and goofy history of people apologizing for things they like because they’re embarrassing or bad or silly or problematic that I feel is outdated.—Rachel Tashjian

Perpetuating the gender binary by dividing clothes into “men’s” and “women’s” clothes, not making clothing sizes that accurately reflect the reality of people’s bodies, exploitation of the Earth and labor, on and on…—ALOK 

I love fashion and I love clothes, and I find that they’re two distinctly different things. I would say, “Why do I never feel like I’m good enough?” Why do so many people who get into a relationship with fashion still feel that way, too? So many of us feel like we’re not pretty enough, not skinny enough, or like we don’t have enough clout. It doesn’t matter how much you love it. It doesn’t matter how much work you put into it. It doesn’t matter how much integrity you have. There’s still this bent of not feeling good enough and it’s perpetuated and reflected back all the time.—Recho Omondi

“Love” is the best word to describe my relationship to fashion. It begins with obsession; I’ll see a piece and begin to imagine the rest of my life with it. I’ll do an FBI-level investigation in an attempt to reveal all its flaws. I’ll believe momentarily that it will complete me; that I’ve finally—finally!—found what it is I’ve been looking for. And then, of course, those feelings will fade. I’ll resent the piece for not solving all my problems. I’ll start to hate it—and myself for indulging it. And then I’ll toss it aside. Only to miss it later when I’m looking for the next piece to fill the void. If we’re talking about damage, to me, personally, I would say that my wallet is really the thing being hit the hardest. I definitely spend more time and energy than I should fixating on material things. My obsession also makes me feel a little mad sometimes. But I think I have a pretty healthy relationship to fashion, for the most part. It’s ruining my life, sure, but as Nicholas Cage says in Moonstruck: “We’re here to ruin ourselves, break our hearts, and love the wrong people, and die.”—Emilia Petrarca

I love parts of fashion. The reason that I can’t say “I love fashion!” with my whole chest is because of the things we know about it that are extractive and hierarchical. It’s exploitative of the environment and the people who work in it. It’s constantly seeking to grow and accelerate and sell us things that we don’t need and then telling us that we need those things to make our lives better. But at the same time, it is also so rich in creativity and passion. The people who care about clothes really care about clothes, and they’re my people. So, yes, I have mixed feelings!—Rosie Findlay

Bad labor conditions, excessive waste of water, materials, and production of toxins—these are some of the more obvious issues within the fashion industry. What do you think of marketing and advertising? Specifically, should the need to sell fashion, and sell it continuously for the industry to be profitable, be examined?

Of course, and it’s something I’ve written about a lot. To me it’s one of the main reasons we have a diversity issue among creative directors.

One thing that we’ve lost is desire. We’ve just skipped over that whole beautiful process and experience of seeing something and imagining it and wanting it; fantasizing about it. Instead, marketing has taken over such that it’s just see it, buy it.

Desire is really one of the most gorgeous feelings in the world. So strange. You feel inadequate, that you’re missing something, and it’s also…intoxicating?! That’s what was so good about the [FW] Prada show last year, for example. It was all about that sort of seduction with a character and a look and feeling that stirs desire. It doesn’t even mean you go out and get the clothing; it’s just about that dance. Simone Rocha really gets that. I think Tyler Mitchell’s campaign for Ferragamo worked in that way.—Rachel

Many fashion brands still rely on this idea of advertising aspiration: that people are insufficient and need the clothing in order to become something (beautiful, desirable, successful, etc.). This fuels a world where people are made to feel inadequate. I prefer advertising that recognizes the power, dignity, and inherent beauty of the consumer—that the fashion is just a mode of expression for the brilliance that is already there. Yes, absolutely this should be examined. The fashion system that we have right now is in need of serious reform.—ALOK 

I’m of two minds. There have been a lot of changes for the better in marketing, like we have more talk about inclusivity. We recognize that visibility and representation are super important. These are buzzy cliché words, but it’s true because they affect your psyche. If you don’t see yourself in something, it’s hard to imagine yourself in it. It’s the same reason why people hang family photos all over their walls. It’s to show that this is your lineage, this is where you come from. You see yourself in the story. So, when people talk about representation, it’s not this woke snowflake proposition. This happened from people yelling and screaming and throwing fits. That stuff works! Shaming people, it works!—Recho 

Absolutely. Fashion is an art, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be commercialized. But I do understand that people need to make money and be paid for their hard work. I just wish there were [a] better distribution of profits; those making the most money need to be doing more to help fund less profitable, more creative enterprises. For most big brands, it’s never enough. And so we’re stuck in this cycle that’s unsustainable in every way, and it’s only getting worse. During COVID, there were conversations about this at every level, but fashion operates at such a relentless pace, nothing ever came of it. People only pay attention when they’re losing money, but the industry benefits as a whole when creative talent is fostered and supported.—Emilia 

I think it’s the constant pursuit of profit above everything else that fuels the asymmetries of the fashion industry—in media production, in garment production, in the production of raw materials. One of the critiques that Marx makes about capitalist modes of production is that the labor, emotion, and the humanity of the people who make the objects, products, and commodities gets completely abstracted by the image of the commodity. Marx argues that in capitalist society, goods are not valued for their usefulness or functionality (use-value) but their exchange value—the value they hold in money, a form of abstraction that hides the labor used to produce them (which has its own, unappreciated value). 

The thing gets fetishized, like the amazing shoes or the beautiful handbag, and the material conditions in which that thing was made aren’t apparent when we encounter that object. We can very easily not think about the suffering of the people who made the clothes that we wear—the hands that sewed the garments on our backs or the lands being poisoned by toxins to create more and more and more at a scale that is unsustainable.—Rosie 

Are there designers or brands who you think create collections or pieces that might help to reform some of the more damaging aspects of the fashion industry?

I think upcycling is so creative and totally Marxist and no one’s really gotten that in their heads yet. Marine Serre is really good at it; so is Ahluwalia. And Chopova Lowena. I am incredibly skeptical of anything that’s supposedly recycled, or “environmentally friendly,” or whatever. The smartest and best thing a designer can do is create fewer clothes that are absolutely fantastic, well-made, interesting, beautiful, thoughtful, weird, cool. I think about Collina Strada or Rosie Assoulin or Lafayette 148 or Tory Burch or Maria McManus, for example, or a Saint Laurent coat or Balenciaga’s Garde-Robe line.—Rachel 

Yes. I notice that it’s easy to default into narratives of despair. But hope and beauty are present, if we take the time to notice them. There are plenty, and many of them are based out of the United States. Some slow fashion brands in India that I really look up to center relationships with craftspeople: Jodi Life, Drawn, and Papa Don’t Preach. And I absolutely adore Infinita es Infinita in Colombia.—ALOK 

I love Nili Lotan. She just makes great clothes. Great trousers. She’s not particularly buzzy or big, but she’s been doing it for a long time. Gabriela Hearst, too. I do love the quiet luxury stuff. Can I afford all of it? (Laughs).—Recho

Definitely! There are so many, and they don’t get enough attention. Looking at my own closet, specifically: I love babaà sweaters, Naomi Nomi shirts, and Lauren Manoogian cashmere—small brands that really take craft seriously. On a bigger scale, I think what Marine Serre and Priya Ahluwalia are doing is great. Eileen Fisher, forever. These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.—Emilia 

Someone I really admire is Aja Barber—who works as a writer, stylist, and consultant, and has an online presence where she seeks to educate her community about ethical and sustainable fashion. Then there is Professor Kate Fletcher—an activist, designer, and writer. She’s written over ten books on sustainable fashion and advocates for a complete rethinking and transformation of the fashion industry. Her writing’s really beautiful. Earth Logic, which she wrote with Mathilda Tham, is actually free to download.—Rosie 

What can we learn from how these people write, educate, or design? 

The ethos I subscribe to is simple, well-made, reliable things that you can wear over and over and over. That’s the type of design I like.—Recho 

Returning to your earlier question about profitability, I always look to someone like Norma Kamali as a North Star. She’s just doing her thing, and is not interested in making a gazillion dollars, or having everyone in the entire world wear her clothes. “That $25–50 million zone was always the worst place to be in fashion, but that’s where I’ve always been,” she told me in an interview once. It’s one of my favorite quotes: “When you’re in that world, you survive, and you don’t get sucked into this noisy cycle. I don’t do fashion shows. I’ve never paid people to wear my clothes. I stopped selling to department stores fifteen years ago. I was happy being quieter, not so famous, not so rich, doing what I love to do, paying my rent. I’m happy here.” Chef’s kiss.—Emilia 

Contrary to the sentiment that we love fashion in spite of its problems: What do you value most about fashion (clothing, design) and the fashion industry?

Beauty, pleasure, the egos.—Rachel

Fashion is a potent form of storytelling. It was the first language I had to express myself before I had the words to do it. It’s creative expression, every day, mobile artistry. It’s a spiritual practice: one that for millennia has been linked to ritual. It’s a form of armor, a way of cultivating beauty in a world that so often is resistant to it.—ALOK

I love the signaling of fashion. Fashion reveals a lot about who a person is, whether they know that or not. So, I think it’s a really great communication tool. It’s an opportunity to speak without being spoken to. Everything about style and fashion signals where you’re from, how you might think. We can always be wrong, but that’s how prejudice works. I don’t care who you are, everyone is pre-judging something before they engage. Fashion is a way of altering or curtailing that pre-judgment in whatever way you see fit.—Recho 

It allows me to reinvent who I am every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. I also appreciate fashion simply as a good conversation starter, or a way to get to know someone. “I love your shoes, where did you get them?” can really take you a long way, if you mean it! In terms of the industry, I feel so lucky to have been able to travel to so many different places and met so many intelligent, funny, eccentric people who are interested in the same fucked up thing as me.—Emilia 

I love what clothes do to and for us. I love the ways that they expand and extend the body itself. They tie us to other people and they individuate us. They’re deeply intimate and deeply social at the same time. There aren’t many aesthetic forms that you can participate in, in such a material way, and there is something intriguing and intimate about how people make themselves up.—Rosie 

The fashion critic responds to constant newness, based around seasons and cycles and trends. How do you think we, the non-experts, can engage in a fashion-loving lifestyle without contributing to the more toxic side of things?

Improve your eye. Demand beauty. Make your standards high and don’t buy anything that doesn’t meet them. Learn to hunt for vintage (doesn’t have to be designer…in fact non-designer vintage is usually just as good!).—Rachel

Fashion has always been an integral part of my art practice. One of my favorite parts about touring is trying to collaborate with local (usually queer) designers in every city I’m performing in and highlight their work. It’s important to me to use my stage to platform and celebrate small and emerging designers, especially people who are reimagining what the fashion industry is and could be.—ALOK

I found a lot of validation and self-expression through clothing, but I don’t feel the need to consume at the rate that I did. I think as you get older, you develop a better sense of who you are, which can mean you develop a uniform in some way. That’s what I’ve found.—Recho 

It may seem simple, but I really try to stay in touch with my closet. I mean that literally. Every couple of months, I take everything out, try stuff on, and take stock of what I have. I just think it’s important to remind yourself how much you already own—my shopping amnesia is bad—and also have a sense of the sheer amount of physical space your stuff takes up. When you take it all out from under the bed, or wherever you’ve stuffed it, it can be pretty horrifying.—Emilia 

I’m a big advocate for making the change that you can with what’s available to you. Buy the best quality things that you can have, that you can afford. Buy locally where you can; buy ethically where you can. I find for me, what this looks like is I tend to mostly buy second-hand clothes—on second-hand clothing apps, charity shops, or go to flea markets and things like that, which I really enjoy. But someone else might not. So I think, “what could making more sustainable choices look like for someone else?” All of us have the power to make small changes, and those aren’t to be underestimated.—Rosie 

Contributors:

ALOK (they/them) is an internationally acclaimed poet, comedian, public speaker, and actor. ALOK’s literary works Beyond the Gender Binary, Femme in Public, and Your Wound / My Garden have garnered global recognition.

Emilia Petrarca is a freelance fashion and culture writer based in Brooklyn. She has a weekly newsletter called Shop Rat that focuses on getting offline, going outside, and engaging with style in real life.

Rachel Tashjian is a fashion writer for The Washington Post’s Style section and the creator of Opulent Tips, an “invitation-only” newsletter with a cult following providing shopping and personal style advice.

Recho Omondi is the founder and host of The Cutting Room Floor, a podcast examining the business, philosophies, and culture of fashion. 

Rosie Findlay is a writer and academic who researches contemporary fashion media and communication and the weave between dress, self, memory, and imagination.