Despite the moderator's attempt to steer the discussion towards a mundane dissection of undergraduate level humanities theory, New York Times writer, Cathy Horyn, managed to land a few gems on the topic of critical thinking and fashion during yesterdays installment of Stanford Humanities Department Arts Critics in Residence Series.

Horyn, breaking from dated women's wear reporting of fashion, ascribes her critical style to the demands of the designers themselves. In the 90's, supplanting the relatively easier to understand world of Vogue reportage that included heritage designers such as Yves Saint Laurent and Calvin Klein with his wildly accessible marketing campaign, was an era of "difficult" clothes, conceptual garments that virtually that insisted upon intellectually driven discussions post runway.

Some examples: Rei Kawakubo's "lumps and bumps" grotesquery, the Japanese designer envisioning the 21st century silhouette that referred to our mobility, phones and backpacks included; the Belgian avante garde; Chalayan's deconstruction of the body as habitat; the work of stylists delving into street and grunge, or the unique eye of Helmut Lang that diverged from New Look and classic Haute aesthetic manner of seeing. Such defiance of fashion mandate in favor of individuality, encouraged avant garde designers to explore self-conscious expression and process technical inquiries in public view as finished product.

"I want to be the real 21st century designer." --Alexander McQueen as related by Cathy Horyn.

Witness the late Alexander McQueen, who combined technology and modernity with the personal that resulted in an artist's rendering of madness and death. He applied these themes not only to the way garments were worn, but how they were constructed. Each collection begged dissection in terms of cultural meaning, not simply, "What is beautiful now?" but also "What is femininity?" And fruitful discussion required the same language used to understand iconic art pieces.

Elaborating on the way technology has transformed fashion writing, Horyn describes the liberation of a journalist from deadlines and page limits through the advent of blogs. The freedom of occupying a new conversational space with the reader - one in which the instantaneous nature of blogging performs a "stream of conscious[ness]" relationship between the meta muse of theory, current events, tv, and celebrity - offers up a kind of mirror for the ephemeral nature of fashion itself while engendering a similar brevity in content. Although people tell Horyn that they are hungry for depth and detail, publishers and marketers continue to argue that consumers want pictures and loath language. Such emphasis on speed and soundbytes, a new kind of working mode that hearkens back to the pre-institution of big media itself, has replaced classic narrative reportage and effectively diminished the kind of critiques that elevated the work of fashion in previous decades. Pressure to compose concise quips drives a quantitative over qualitative approach to talking about fashion.

On the implications of Twittering...

"Twitter is a haiku... I dont want to get too involved with Twitter. It kills your mind." --Cathy Horyn

To sum, Horyn stresses that the audience has grown wider, more diverse, and as such, the modes of writing must succumb to the variety of information consumption available. In this case, how does, I have often wondered, a professional reporter compete with the likes of Tavi and her bevy of bedroom commentators? Horyn stresses the primacy of basic journalism; gaining access to demonstrations of construction technique, gathering insight into ongoing and changing modes of production, picking out the best pattern makers behind the scenes, and reflecting on the relationship with potential constomers watching the show. An examination of Alaia's introspective obsession with ruching and how the master fits his clients, can shed light on the process of iterative design, application at a manufacturing level, and eventually modes of consumption.

But if information has become shallower, so too fashion as it becomes broader. Horyn points out that globalization tends to cater to globalization rather than regionalism and that despite the number and scope of proliferating runway shows in every country, western aesthetics continues to dominate. To aggravate the trend, designers have opened their runway shows as direct buy web shops, designing easy-to-fit, wearable clothes with wide reaching appeal. The paradigm of the couturier, the designer as artist, lapses into oblivion as a confluence of economic factors limits truly innovative creativity in the face of financial risk.

Over time, Horyn has come to define herself as anti-commerce, because the runway has become, or perhaps returned to being, a promotional tool rather than a forum for challenging ideas. But if fashion critique has declined, it's because fashion itself has become less challenging. The contemporary industry, she intimates, is consolidating and reductive, show over substance, veering away from the notion that clothes matter over presentation. We are full circle from what's new, to what's IN. Horyn admits that a good show still has relevance, the  ability to cultivate an aura of milieu as Galliano did with his "Twins" motif. She states that designers have a keen eye for when a difficult concept can be presented. But these are not those moments, and the days of McQueen "having something to say" with and about the staging a live stream show are perhaps over, or at the very least, out of fashion.

Horyn reminds us that for all its transient nature, the real impact of a fashion moment is something gradual and almost primeval, an evolutionary process of ideas that proliferate over time. For instance, how Raf Simmons redefined a generation of menswear, or how Margiela's minimalism has permeated our approach to modern dressing. Those insights are a blip glossed over by the propulsive forward thrust of technology. The reporter's task according to Horyn, is to take a mundane observation, and then scribe a cogent, contextualized response that helps us understand who and where we are.



On a personal level, I came to fashion awareness during the apparently halcyon days of high concept. Perhaps I didn't fully understand Rei Kawakubo's bumps, nor all of Chalayan's references at the time, but the aesthetic of the Japanese Avant garde, Ackerman's subdued constructivism, Australian-Japanese Akira Isogawa's beautiful cross cultural textiles, and McQueen's tortured elegance were instilled early on. Their sensibilities mirrored my awe and aversion to the Town and Country elitism of the old Haute, scrambled the body centric ideals to which my awkward teenage form could never compare, transcribed all the nascent rebellion and geeky glasses modern artsy-ness that I couldn't express. After more recent seasons of boredom -costume lady edwardian dressing, Project Runway, retro pastiche, return of the pretty, preppy, and wandering through the shops not falling in love with anything - Horyn made me realize my longing as a case of "It's not me, it's them". If not for my slim wallet and my no place to go, I would have slung a piece of avant art on my body long ago. As things lie, suitably professional or California beach bum defines what some would call a "wardrobe". Not a lot of designers sell avant on the rack. But behind all the t-shirts and jeans, a coveted bottle of Alexander McQueen fragrance is hidden in my closet. If his creations aren't actually advertised by my actual corpus, I ought to display that cracked heart in the open as a reminder to stick by my instincts and be brave otherwheres.

On losing weight, deconstructing and reconstructing perspective on fashion, inhabiting the body and ostensibly, participating in the decisions that are your life...

"John [Abroon M.D.], I got myself into the bakery section, I think I can find my way out." --Cathy Horyn in Fashion, the Mirror and Me

Random Notes:


2000 - McQueen in tandem with Chalayan. Apocalypse.
loss of individuality
constructed identity
buyer performs the clothes
death of the author