This is how Real Fashion People talk about Fashion

So I’m struggling with something. As you know, I am currently in Paris for Fashion Week, and I am surrounded all day by Fashion people and Fashion things. Two weeks ago we did that in New York and during London and Milan we were behind our laptops for every livestream. It’s high fashion and low fashion and I love it. But, dear people, I have a hard time with what to do with all those impressions. Especially don’t think that you can just find something “beautiful” or “ugly.” Those are not fashion words, That’s Not How You Talk. No, talking and writing about fashion has a strict pattern of especially not saying what you really think and using a lot of fluffy, convoluted words to beat around the bush.

There was the Gucci show, the first designed by the new designer Alessandro Michele after the departure of Frida Giannini. The Gucci woman under Frida was all about femininity with lots of sex and breasts and butt, Alessandro sees it very differently and transforms that sultry woman into a dusty nerd girl with glasses and bows in her collar. Look, tastes differ, but we didn’t find the collection particularly, uh, beautiful. But that, you can’t say. “Ugly is not a fashion word. We call that challenging,” texted a fashion friend who was live at the Gucci show. And then it rained politically correct expressions like: “Today’s woman is in touch with her sensuality while being vulnerable and fragile. She dresses like one of the boys and does not conform to gender rules or boundaries.” Or what do you think of this: “It’s a reflection on what is contemporary.”

“Today’s woman is in touch with her sensuality while being vulnerable and fragile. She dresses like one of the boys and does not conform to gender rules or boundaries.”

Fashion is more than taste, fashion is art and so you can say smart things about it without being guided by your own preferences. Just like art historians don’t say that they would find this or that Rembrandt ugly. But really, it’s often so hilarious to hear fashion people who take themselves seriously twist and turn about an ugly collection. You then get things like: “This is a commercial challenge” (meaning: this is unsellable). Or: “It was in any case incredibly innovative” (meaning: we had never seen this before and we would have liked to keep it that way).

Master and lord in this game is Style.com, the site of Vogue. The fashion critics there, led by Tim Blanks, are the undisputed stars in especially not saying what is thought. For collections of new designers for existing houses, it is often written about “Well, this isn’t such a bad start at all.”

“Well, this isn’t such a bad start at all.”

Not entirely without reason, by the way. A fashion critic who does say what’s what can easily be denied access to the shows. It happened to Suzy Menkes in 2001, when she used the following headline in a review of Dior: “Dior’s Aggression Misses the New Romantic Beat.” That didn’t sit well with Bernard Arnault, the top boss at LVMH. And so he decided that she was no longer welcome at all shows under LVMH, including those of Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Givenchy.

So anyone who wants to make an impression delves into synonyms and complicated sentence structures and especially in the way to say a lot without saying anything. I have four days left to practice and in September I’m going to steal the show. C’est incroyable.