Fashion month ended last week, and like many who follow this world, we’re still processing what we saw. But we wanted to take a moment to talk about a conversation bubbling up around the coverage of fashion this season. Started on Instagram by Edward Buchanan, it questioned who has the authority to comment and criticize fashion shows and designers. Mr. Buchanan, a designer and fashion director in Milan, condemned “bedside critiques” of fashion shows and noted that seeing a show online was no substitute for watching the show in person. He also pushed against “hurtful language” against the designers, saying we should give them “time and respect to work.”
The post was, Mr. Buchanan said over the phone from Milan, inspired by online commentary he had seen over the course of the fashion season lashing out at designers making their debuts at big brands and attacking them personally, as well as the quality of their work, before “they have even had a chance to develop.”
“It’s fine to express an opinion,” he said, but he felt the anger he saw online was counterproductive. From there, his post traveled further afield, with other fashion world insiders, editors and critics expressing similar sentiments. Below, members of the Styles desk took up the debate.
Jacob Gallagher I disagree with the idea that you have to be in the room and that you have to talk to designers to analyze or weigh in on a fashion show.
Vanessa Friedman I saw Ed’s comment as directed at the offhand, often snarky reactions from people seeing photos from fashion shows on social media and essentially “performing” for their followers.
Yola Mzizi This conversation is one that the fashion media has been wrestling with since at least the 2000s, with the rise of bloggers who did not climb up the ranks of legacy media. Today the debate has shifted to content creators on TikTok.
Vanessa Friedman Designers and brands count on an expanded audience for their shows by streaming them for the world. They get the eyeballs, but if some of the eyeballs choose to react negatively, that’s the deal. Most people encountering fashion do so without the mediation of a show. They just react to clothes as they see them, so for a designer, understanding how their work might be perceived, absent all the signposting involved in a show, is actually a useful data point.
Yola Mzizi Why do snarky videos gain more traction? The simple answer is that bad news travels faster, but I also think it may feel refreshing for an audience to encounter a review that wasn’t gushing.
Vanessa Friedman Well, bad reviews are almost always more fun to read than good ones. But criticism, if delivered fairly, should be welcomed by brands and designers, which are often structured in such a way that no one ever says to a creative director, “Hang on, maybe that diaper is not such a good idea.”
Jacob Gallagher Yes. We’re nearing comical, Cannes-like levels with some of these standing ovations after the shows.
Vanessa Friedman The audience is mostly friends of the house, buyers, magazine editors, who see their jobs as being cheerleaders, and influencers who may be paid by the brand (or might like to be). One of the issues here is the ever-shrinking number of true critics in the room.
Jacob Gallagher Don’t you think that those rapturous reactions in the room are actually making people on the outside react more negatively?
Yola Mzizi Most people may not be buying Dior, but they do wear clothes and can discern when something is or isn’t working.
Vanessa Friedman I do appreciate how much of themselves designers put into their collections, and how scary it is to show it to the world on a schedule. Jonathan Anderson at Dior and Lazaro Hernandez at Loewe had tears in their eyes after their shows. While that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t criticize them, it does mean we should recognize they are also human.
Jacob Gallagher I’m all for remembering the humanity of the designers, but you don’t need to use kid gloves. These companies are global corporations with highly compensated creative directors. These collections are so unattainable for most people that following along online becomes like watching sports. People watching know the players and the coaches and the team records and all that, but they’re not playing football themselves.
Yola Mzizi We can all agree about online critiques being useful, but there is a need to differentiate a critique from an opinion.
Vanessa Friedman Everyone can have an opinion, but that’s different than being a critic. Valid but different. For example, I like to put a designer’s work in context — the context of the moment, the brand’s history, the designer’s own history — and then assess it on those terms.
This discussion is also why I find the whole idea of “banning” critics from a show ridiculous. Everyone can see a show, and everyone can offer an opinion. Is it different if you are not in the room? Sure. But that doesn’t make it illegitimate.
Jacob Gallagher Sometimes I do read something online about a show and it makes me rethink what I just saw. That’s where the internet has value: It allows people not in the room, not credentialed as we are, to have their say. Those missives certainly have more value than yet another superlative Instagram post from in the room.
Vanessa, as you alluded, during these fashion weeks, we are some of the very few people left doing traditional criticism. So have you had any deep thoughts about that “last of a dying breed” status?
Vanessa Friedman I don’t buy the argument that classic criticism is dead. In fact, this whole discussion suggests the opposite. The fun of it is the variety of voices, and the variety of platforms that can now be used.
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