Couture week has been and gone and I haven't written nothing. I've been very busy reading though. I swear to god that one of the worst effects of this recession has been the way in which it has corrupted the reviews of even the more refined of the worlds fashion press. Fashion journalists couldn't help but write about couture without the arbitrary discussion of how it was 'coping' with the recession.
Its as if the world's fashion journalists suddenly become hardened marxists, adopting an uncharacteristically cold attitude to the 'necessity of couture'. Since when has anything in fashion been 'necessary'? To take the couture out of fashion would be to deflate everything about it that is beautiful.
With a tiny minority of people able to place orders at the end of the week (mostly fat old russian ladies from what I gather), I guess it is not the element of fashion that keeps the industry directly afloat. But couture is the ultimate escapist fashion fantasy. I am well aware that it is the fantasy drawn in the image of capitalism, but it is also the point at which fashion and art, high culture and drama start to chime together in a moment of pure perfection. To sit in the front row of this exhibition must be pure bliss. To then follow this with a boring review based on something as unsavoury as the financial crisis is a waste of everyones time.
Lacroix has a saviour, thank god. One of the few to exist purely in the world of couture, he is a curious example of a designer whose collections have never been able to be dissolved or diluted into ready-to-wear. To work for a project in which perfection is the aim is an admirable existence. As Nietzsche, I'm sure, would have said, its all 'magical fluff'.
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