Franca On Emerging Designers
To tell you the truth the real question was: “Should emerging designers get inspired by big names in fashion history, or should they try to come up with a new style? In an already peculiar world, is it okay to dare?”
Young designers should do what they feel like. Being creative is an artistic expression, their inner world, their dreams, their thoughts. Looking at the past is not interesting if you can't add something new to it. The past is just for background, it helps to understand what happened in the past, the history of mores, but it shouldn't influence a new style.
I am going to answer now because there are the shows in Rome, as well as presentations, and in ten days it's the fashion shows in New York. What do we expert? That young people would be more daring, that they surprise us with something extraordinary, unexpected. We put all of our hopes in youth, although not too many journalists attend to their shows. We ask of them but at times we don't even consider them. It's not easy.
If a show is too creative, in the sense that it's too daring and not easy to wear, it doesn't get good review, if it's too normal, it's considered ordinary. A young person should in any case try to create his own style, his way of perceiving fashion and showing it. It's a dare for the future.
Watching many of the young shows, and let me be general like I did with bloggers, we often get the feeling that they are more worried about pleasing the press and the buyers rather than themselves. They don't have a push, and mostly follow what the market already offers or proposes. It's true that if they don't sell, they can't keep on producing and showing, but it's not the correct way to go.
The collection for sale, the one in the showroom for buyers, is easier to wear and to sell, but when you step on the catwalk, you need strength, determination, the will to take risks.
In choosing young designers like we did for Who is On Next or for Vogue Talents or for The Vogue Talents Corner – an event we will hold in February during Milan Fashion Week, open to the public, presenting ten young designers that have been selected from around the world, and you can shop online at thecorner.com – we tried to promote creativity and the concept of the collection.
A collection, even the smallest one, should express an idea. Transmit a concept, a vision. If it's just a rack of clothes, even if they are nice, it doesn't leave much sense, it becomes just a style exercize. And then? How do you keep going?
If each year we find a young promise, if these designers then become well-known internationally, it means that if you dare, keep trying, you stay. Looking only at the past is a waste of time, and hoping that everyone likes you can only lead to deception.
A concept. Few pieces but to the point. It's ok to dare.
Young designers should do what they feel like. Being creative is an artistic expression, their inner world, their dreams, their thoughts. Looking at the past is not interesting if you can't add something new to it. The past is just for background, it helps to understand what happened in the past, the history of mores, but it shouldn't influence a new style.
I am going to answer now because there are the shows in Rome, as well as presentations, and in ten days it's the fashion shows in New York. What do we expert? That young people would be more daring, that they surprise us with something extraordinary, unexpected. We put all of our hopes in youth, although not too many journalists attend to their shows. We ask of them but at times we don't even consider them. It's not easy.
If a show is too creative, in the sense that it's too daring and not easy to wear, it doesn't get good review, if it's too normal, it's considered ordinary. A young person should in any case try to create his own style, his way of perceiving fashion and showing it. It's a dare for the future.
Watching many of the young shows, and let me be general like I did with bloggers, we often get the feeling that they are more worried about pleasing the press and the buyers rather than themselves. They don't have a push, and mostly follow what the market already offers or proposes. It's true that if they don't sell, they can't keep on producing and showing, but it's not the correct way to go.
The collection for sale, the one in the showroom for buyers, is easier to wear and to sell, but when you step on the catwalk, you need strength, determination, the will to take risks.
In choosing young designers like we did for Who is On Next or for Vogue Talents or for The Vogue Talents Corner – an event we will hold in February during Milan Fashion Week, open to the public, presenting ten young designers that have been selected from around the world, and you can shop online at thecorner.com – we tried to promote creativity and the concept of the collection.
A collection, even the smallest one, should express an idea. Transmit a concept, a vision. If it's just a rack of clothes, even if they are nice, it doesn't leave much sense, it becomes just a style exercize. And then? How do you keep going?
If each year we find a young promise, if these designers then become well-known internationally, it means that if you dare, keep trying, you stay. Looking only at the past is a waste of time, and hoping that everyone likes you can only lead to deception.
A concept. Few pieces but to the point. It's ok to dare.
Franca On BLOGGERS:
There are many questions about the invasion of fashion bloggers. Why are they so credited? Why do they sit in front row? Why does the Chamber of Italian Fashion thinks so highly of them, so much as to provide them with a driver during the shows as it's happened during menswear?
Are they important for Vogue? Do we need all these bloggers? They don't offer an opinion but only talk about themselves, take their own pictures wearing absurd outfits. What's the point? I don't even know who they are except a few names because they are so many and all the same, they are so worried about what to wear to get noticed that my eyes only see a crowd in the end.
They want to be recognized during the shows. I see many of them because they tell me their names, or I ask, because they are sitting front row, but I forget quickly. They are the bloggers, like the veline, no one has a real name. It's a category. Anonymous, but real.
They don't do much damage because they are like moths. They live only one night. If they last longer, it's not because they are better bloggers or their blog is more interesting. It's a trend and like it happens with all trends in fashion, it gets blown up out of proportion and creates many followers.
Still, it's an interesting phenomenon because it changes the approach to fashion. These aren't people who have been working in fashion too long to end up criticizing everything, the shows, and they don't have a background in fashion so they are not conditioned by their knowledge or interests. There comments are naif and enthusiastic. They don't hold a real importance in the business. Of course not.
Personally I would like to know their opinion to understand a new point of view and not just rely on journalists "who have been doing this for thirty years!" Not being biased at times helps to see what people who work in this industry miss.
Non reliable opinions? It doesn't matter because what matters is having different opinions from all kinds of people with different backgrounds. Journalists can be harsh in their comments. These are partly personal opinions too. At the end if we are being honest, who comments and who buys? Who should we listen to; the buyer or the journalist? Why not a blogger?
There some bloggers that are outstanding. Girls and boys who dictated their own style, at times circus like, but personal. They are original, they have invented a new way of communication.
Not all trends are nice and not all bloggers are good, but so it's for designers and journalists. Time is needed to emerge, and when you make it, to resist. Time decides what's successful or not. What makes history. The blogger phenomenon is too young, too new.
Lets wait a minute before acclaiming it or hating it. There are still a lot of people who don't know what blogger means, and none of us knows how it will evolve. It's still under observation. The only thing I can say with certitude it's that if it were a disease, we would call it a viral cold. An epidemic!