Contemporary issue Fashion

Our conclusion will be supporting the idea that the fashion system ISN'T crashing, it's just under a very fast mutation, but it's fashion's very essence: it fades, it is ephemeral. Anti-fashion turns into fashion all the time and that's how the fashion system reinvents itself, even if Suzy Menkes says it's crashing or Li Edelkoort says it's dead. The Mutation of the Fashion System: From Lipovetsky to Kawamura to Fashion being the agent of balance between the contradictory powers of Individualism and Collectiveness in Contemporary Times Problematizing the “French Fashion System” in Contemporary Times: is the French Fashion “System” still relevant nowadays? Does it still really exist? Is there really a Fashion System or there isn’t anymore? The argument is that it has probably changed its way of functioning, gone through a deep process of mutation, but not completely disappeared or lost its importance. There are some elements that, in one side, reinforce its power, and others that show its weaknesses. The acceptance and legitimacy of Japanese designers in the French Fashion System makes it clear that for a creator to be internationally known they have to be present in the Parisian Fashion Market. However, on the other side, the Speed of Fashion has accelerated so much over the past few years, specially due to Social Media, that we can’t talk about an institutionalized organization of the “ephemeral”, or about predicting trends, or maybe even about a system itself. What has then changed from Lipovetsky’s Analysis (Century of Fashion) to Kawamura Analysis of the Fashion System in terms of Legitimacy and Power within the appropriation of Japanese designers by French Haute-Couture? Has the power of the System just increased over the years or is it a crashing nowadays? Perhaps, the fashion system isn’t crashing, it’s just on an ongoing process of mutation, because we can see in Fred Davis piece (Anti-Fashion) the arguments that anti-fashion ends up mixing with fashion and reinventing itself all the time. Maybe the speed has accelerated, but the fashion system hasn’t lost its importance in terms of power and structure. Simmel, in his “Fashion” piece, also mentions fashion as an important agent to balance the contradictory powers of contemporary times of democratization: fashion had always been perceived as a tool to express individualism, to express our own identities, but now the feeling of belonging to a specific group, a sense of collectiveness. We want to be unique but at the same time we want to feel we belong somewhere, so we remain all the same, we dress all the same, it has become flat. This would be directly related to the process of Democratization of Fashion, which also concern the progressive blurring lines between High Culture and Mass Culture and the questioning of the supremacy of Haute-Couture as the unrivaled laboratory of novelties that Lipovetsky describes in his analysis. other readings would be : -lipovetsky (century of fashion)/ kawamura (japanese designers)/suzy menkes(fashion is crashing)/ Li Edelkoort (antifashion manifesto)/ fred davis (antifashion)/ the power of fashion ( the compelling nature of fashion, of change)