027 - The future of fashion
Adapt or die
It’s a fact we all know but just can’t quite face up to: fashion is f*cked. The clothing industry is the third most polluting in the world, behind only farming and fossil fuels. It pumps out millions of garments every day, costing workers their welfare, the planet its resources, but consumers only pennies. Meanwhile social media has sent the nostalgia loop spinning out of control, with the trend cycle collapsing under the pressure to keep up. Retailers are being forced to peddle fast fashion, or die. Consumers are paralysed by choice, their conscience, or their wallet.
Luckily for us, that’s not the only way. With every death comes a rebirth. For every Shein copycat design is a secondhand steal. For every faddy TikTok trend is a timeless bit of personal style. For every old school brand is a pioneering designer trying to make change.
Today, we have the visionary Cameron Morse, creative director, musician, and founder of Montreal’s Mending Nights. Below he shares a vision for the future of fashion that we could all get on board with.
imagine: the sky is an orange haze, the air tastes like soot. corporate profits have never been higher. you see a billboard glowing in the dark. "CURATE THE LANDFILL". explicitly: help decide what we fill the dumps with more of. only you can make the sky a little darker, the ground a little more toxic.
fashion is constrained and corrupted by the demands of consumerism. this process hollows out fashion culture and limits its ability to communicate richly.
but because fashion is something we all take part in, we are free to develop a culture that benefits us and challenges the culture of consumption (championed by businesses responsible for around 10% of yearly global co2 emissions).
as it stands, there are two main modes in which to engage fashion culture.
maybe you shop for the "Good Clothes" (what your boss won’t fire you for wearing, what your friends deem acceptable due to trends - maybe that’s Balenciaga or Bode or Shein). in this mode you might go to impersonal fashion shows, you may frequent empty boutiques, or scroll endless reams of online shops.
alternatively you might reject fashion to communicate that "you aren't like all Those People'' (minion tee core, normcore, 70s throwback, "not trying"). you avoid "fashion" events at all costs or only do so with ironic detachment.
this reduction of the art-form and culture of fashion to only two ideas is a direct result of the consumerist culture of fashion. you either buy in, or you’re out.
understandably, this restricted conversation alienates the majority from fashion and its social potential. but art is capable of encoding and communicating nearly infinite information, our clothes should be able to communicate far beyond our ability to be ”good” or “bad” consumers.
our fashion should communicate our care for the earth, our care for life and our care for each other. it should tell stories and create meaning. and it should be more beautiful and progressive than the contemporary Fashion Industry's efforts, explicitly because we can remove it from its confinement to communicating consumerism.
it is through the breakthroughs of Martin Margiela, who recontextualized already existing textile and objects into fashion, that the industry was able to create truly new, truly communicative and beautiful works of art. take for example the Margiela sock sweater for which the house provided step by step instructions to be made at home. (Demna referenced this recently with a Balenciaga invite composed of a suit jacket pattern). it’s true creativity combined with true care.
unfortunately, the fashion industry rejects this approach because it would make it harder to exploit workers and the natural world to create reliable, excessive capital. which as it stands grants the upper crust of the industry glamourous alienated lives (reflected in their fashion).
where the current landscape supports only a few massive players, the future will allow millions of designers worldwide, on every street to creatively remix existing textile into New Fashion while being supported by their local communities.
i propose we can transform fashion culture into something fun, fulfilling and genuinely sustainable.
we can create community by sharing skills and time in an effort to teach each other to maintain our things and how to dress. all while strengthening social bonds. because everyone deserves to enjoy fashion if they want to.
in Montreal we offer free mending services via the local upcycle fashion community (composed of independent designers and professors from the local fashion schools). once a month anyone can bring garments that need mending or learn how to mend at the table with us. a local venue (Systeme) provides the location and gifts the mending team free food and drink for their time. here new people meet at each event, learning skills and developing their relationships. the approach is undeniably chic, and a direct response to the typical "twee" mending event which appeals only to a small few.
in the future there will be a different event for every crowd. within these new scenes we will redefine fashion and we will celebrate visible mends and aged clothes. this process will help normalize even those that are not actively recontextualizing their outfits. this will spur public support for more mending nights and solidify the concept into the mainstream.
the facade of "green" and "sustainable" new textile fashion will slowly deteriorate as we create an engaging local fashion culture. the immediacy of local designers and tailors that you engage with ritually will become the experience of fashion. ordering online will seem impersonal and irrational. celebrities will explicitly wear archive fashion to avoid seeming unchic (something we’re already seeing this with celebs’ embrace of popular Depop accounts).
eventually a brand new garment will be embarrassing to wear. in turn, this process will create new market opportunities. new production clothing will continue to exist because it must, but not in ways we’ve seen before. Arcteryx and Vollebak may hint into these directions but only scratch the surface. the future of textile production should solve problems that vintage textile cannot.
in this future, the space occupied by traditional brands will be dominated by a new generation who can develop truly revolutionary textile and manufacturing techniques, to create garments that are not only durable but created with mending and maintenance in mind.
the last shoe brand will develop shoes that can be worn every day for a hundred years. the last sock manufacturer will make socks that survive generations. established brands must ask themselves what they can offer that vintage and upcycle fashion can not. and in the process genuine creativity will be unlocked again.
it will be an excruciating transition if not impossible for most as they cannot operate without projections of infinite growth for the board. smaller companies who intend to stay small have the upper hand here. in the meantime, it will pay to create new clothing that appears vintage and to publically champion clothing mending in boutique.
together we make fashion culture. the establishment is trapped by their relationship to capital and its certain death march. so it's up to us to come together to improve not only fashion but our culture and our planet. if we do not, we allow market logic to "CURATE THE LANDFILL" as we are buried alive.
As for us at MØRNING, we’re steadying ourselves for a true fashion revolution, ushered in by a new wave of designers and brands that are just starting to emerge and aren’t afraid to do things differently (see Telfar’s revolutionary pricing model and the slew of pioneering DTC brands).
As for the rest of us? We better get started.
ADVICE FOR CONSUMERS:
Buy garments that are made to last - and you will save time, promise. It’s a lie that fast-fashion saves time hard-working consumers. We all know how much admin it takes to scrounge online shops > order things that inevitably aren’t right > organise returns > then clothes break after first wear and on and on we go... Buy clothes that ‘spark joy’ (sorry), not make you feel guilty and resentful.
Embrace personal style. Fashion is how we express ourselves, so have fun doing it, and have comfort knowing that you’ll always look better in something true to you than a trend. Fashions fade, but style is eternal, a wise YSL once said.
Fix your clothes!!! We’re not expecting you to know how to sew. Support your local dry cleaners instead: loads of them offer tailoring services really affordably. If not, try an app like Sojo.
ADVICE FOR BRANDS:
To respond is to be relevant. The ways in which brands that respond to the fashion crisis will prompt larger societal interest. There's an opportunity here for you to carve out an ownable space that empower your team and earn real consumer trust.
Upcycle to get ahead. Upcycle fashion will slowly become the mainstream via brands that integrate it first into their business (many vintage shops already offer upcycled and new textile garments).
Localise. Fashion culture will start revolving around the places people come together to upkeep their garments. Make a head start by thinking locally: how can you facilitate upkeep of your apparel, and spawn community buzz in the process?
That’s all for this week! We’d love to hear your thoughts and predictions on the future of fashion, so please drop us a comment below or on IG <3
Til next time!
Words: Cameron Morse
Editor: Letty Cole
Thank you for the wonderful insight. So much to reflect on as a young fashion designer looking to create and uphold change in the industry.
loved this, so insightful. hope that mending nights like this come to London soon 🫶