Who dictates fashion?|Xenia Joost|TEDxLasnamäe

How are changes in social and political life reflected in fashion? Who is behind our decisions about what we wear, and how does it happen? By observing changes in fashion, it becomes apparent that there is a connection to fundamental changes in the system of power. What does modern fashion tell us, and who really dictates it.

Xenia is a fashion designer. She worked in the team of the Estonian designer Ivo Niccolo and had professional training with Vivien Westwood. She designed clothes for the First Lady of Estonia.

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.

Look around.

Who is sitting next to you?

In your row of seats? Behind you?

How many people have you
talked to during the lunch break?

Did you exchange any words,
express your opinion?

With how many people
have you had visual contact?

Fashion is a visual language.

And, it can expose you,
even when you are fully dressed.

Who chose your image for today? You?

Me, perhaps?

Somebody in far off Paris?

Let's talk today about
who was behind your decision,

why you dress like you do,

what you can tell about a person
by how they dress,

what we can tell about a society
if we analyse its fashion.

I would like to tell you a few stories,

stories to give you a vivid picture

of how society changes looking at it
through the fashion industry.

Let's go back to the time of the monarchy.

At this time, all power
was in the hands of one person:

essentially, fashion
depended on their wishes.

It was a narrow circle of elite,
the nobility, of inherited entitlement,

their revenues guaranteed
by their estates.

The life of ordinary people
was completely different.

For these people, their clothes played
another role ... a practical one,

or one according to their profession,
craft or employment.

So, it was the case that you could tell
from the clothes they wore

what they did,

or what their societal status was.

All information was passed by hand
from person to person,

there was no press, no mass media,
that is, no promotion of information,

so how fast you got
information from the monarch,

from the centre of power,

depended on how close to him,
how close to the centre of power you were.

That's how the expression
"provincial fashion" came about.

By the time you received any information,
it would have become out of date,

whether it was about fashion
or anything else.

In other words,
looking at somebody's outfit,

we get to know how close that person was
from a centre of power, from the monarchy.

The world of fashion
underwent a transformation

with the coming
of the Industrial Revolution.

The nobility started to get poorer,
a title no longer guaranteed your income,

and estates could be bought and sold.

A new elite came to power,

the capitalist elite, the capitalists.

They came from
a very low stratum of society.

Look at this picture,
how easy this family looks.

Maybe you know who it is in this photo?

This family is a manufacturer
of sports footwear.

There are two brothers there:

one of them is Adi Dassler,

and his brother was nicknamed Puma.

The laws of the previous elite
were not written for them.

They simply don't know them.

And since they don't know them,
they don't use them.

An opportunity presents itself,

and with it the desire to show off
your new status in society.

The easiest way to do that
is through clothes, through fashion.

Individuality comes to fashion.

The Industrial Revolution makes possible
the production of cheaper clothes.

The quality of goods is becoming
much more consistent.

And the situation is becoming one

where there's more on the market

than people really need.

For the capitalists
to maintain their power,

you need constant consumption
requiring constant production.

How do you do that
if people don't need things?

They have to be taught to buy.

And that's where designers came in,

creating, not just practical clothes,

but a look,

an individual look for everyone.

By the way, the first designers
as we know them today,

as we know the fashion industry,

come to us from the 19th century.

The first designer to sew his label
on the clothes he made

was Charles Frederick Worth.

And then this image
created by this designer,

which isn't really practical anymore,

but an emotional image,

starts to sell.

Seasonality is coming, new trends,

but the capitalists needed to sustain
growth in consumption.

How was that to be done?

The printing press arrives,

and by using the printing press,
they achieve their goal.

Advertising.

New advertising agencies are opening up

that build purely emotional sales,

while the product itself is already
becoming of secondary concern.

It's the consumption
of emotion that matters.

For the capitalists of the time,

this proved to be
very supportive of their power

and the growth of that power,

but they didn't realize

that they themselves had started

the beginning of the end of their century.

The press.

Fashion magazines
are gaining a lot o power,

and so into their hands
falls the future of designers,

the future of trademarks,
the future of brands.

And you won't believe how big a role
they play in a situation like this.

It is Paris, a young designer
shows his new collection.

Christian Dior.

The American press,
including "Harper's Bazaar".

Its editor-in-chief, Carmel Snow,
exclaimed after the show:

"Dior! It's a new look!" -

"It's a new approach,
a new look at fashion!"

She goes back to America
and writes about it.

Photographs.

Dior becomes very popular
in America and in Europe,

The style icon of the decade was to be
the "New Look" by Christian Dior.

His name is very easy to pronounce,

and it's even easier to write in English.

At this time in Europe,
in France, in Paris,

there are, in fact, a lot more designers

who also show similar fashions.

But their names
are much harder to pronounce,

while Dior's name is much easier to say.

The names of the other designers
are slowly fading into history:

including a great designer,
Elsa Schiaparelli, for example.

Christian Dior is the "New Look".

Capitalists have discovered

the way of a new age,

the age of information,
a world of information

where power passes
from the hands of capitalists

into the hands of those
who manipulate, who use,

exploit information.

A new elite emerges,
the information elite.

The entire structure
of society is changing,

as is the way fashion is created,

and what is behind
the impulse to create fashion.

The most important thing
for a designer right now,

for the fashion industry, to survive

is collaboration with social media,

with Instagram and applications like it.

For a designer to have a
success with his collection,

the designer has
to come up with images, clothes,

that fit the most popular
Instagram hashtags.

They're already talking openly about
whether we need traditional fashion weeks,

whether we need seasonality.

Because Instagram
doesn't have seasonality.

And, on what the critics
write about a fashion week,

practically nothing depends.

Everything depends on your ability

to collaborate with bloggers,
with Instagram.

And even the entire
business model is changing.

If the traditional model
involved a markup,

where you added an amount
to the cost of the goods to make a profit,

now, the most important thing
is a constant turnover.

Now such online stores as Amazon
are becoming the sales leaders,

and it's because they can sell at a loss.

The most important thing for them is
is the turnover of information.

And the traditional shops,
the leaders of the 20th century,

are forced to close their doors

because they cannot stand the competition

for the purchasing power
of a new generation.

In the information world,

the most important thing
is the constant movement of information,

but not the quality of that information.

The faster the information circulates,
the greater it becomes.

This is just what we see
in fashion trends,

where quality is becoming marginalized.

And we cannot even say
that quality corresponds to price.

In fact, the development and design
of new looks is already not so important.

You can imagine that just yesterday,

this would have been
the greatest of horrors

for a professional designer?

Flip-flops with socks and shorts.

I just laughed at it.

I took this photo today

from one of today's
most famous brands: "Vetements".

And this is what
they're actually presenting,

I mean, that's the outfit

of the most fashionable
men and women of fashion in the world.

Does it get any better than this ...

(Applause)

Hoodies.

(Laughter)

We see three almost identical hoodies,

their colour and design are the same.

"Off-White", "Supreme", I don't know -
You know them? Ever heard of them?

Very prominent contemporary brands.

Basically, the difference in them

is only in the brand logo
and the added pictures and patterns.

And the last hoodie in the picture -

I checked this morning
before coming here -

you can't buy it in a conventional shop,

it's only for collectors.

You can buy it for yourself on eBay

for up to $25,000.

Basically, with these three
very fashionable hoodies,

we just see the information
about their brand, and nothing else.

So, brands are acquiring
a new informational status,

where the product itself
is no longer important.

What is important is the information
and product promotion on social media.

"Supreme" can be stuck

onto practically anything.

If before, when before,
when fashion houses were being created,

brands were being created,

there was a client in mind, one client,
at which the brand was aimed,

defined by the price tag.

That is, a product line
offered by one brand

would all have about the same price.

In the case of Supreme,

the price can start
in the luxury segment -

a Ferrari with a Supreme sticker -

while at the same time,
we can see in the slide,

they sell shovels with the same logo.

It can be glued onto any product,
and the price raised.

The second very interesting change

is that the development
of the design of this product

is nor provided by the Supreme team.

It is being done by factories

who actually make the product,

and Supreme is just gluing its logos on.

Similarly, the hoodie by Louis Vuitton
which we've just seen

was designed by Louis Vuitton,

and Supreme has just glued on its logo.

And this is exactly how

firms that started their businesses
in the 20th century

are surviving today:

by collaborating

with such information brands as Supreme.

Today, I've told you

how we can see, through fashion,

how our society is changing,

and how the centre of power is changing.

We started from the monarchy,

where all power was
in the hands of one person,

and then we moved on to capitalists,
who brought us individuality to fashion.

Then, via print media,
we've arrived at the world of information.

I wouldn't like to tell you

that Steve Jobs was a great fashion icon.

I don't honestly think
he was very preoccupied with fashion;

he just wore his jeans and sneakers

and went about minding his own business.

Even less that he thought about
how we all should dress.

That's not the issue at all;
it's that the vector of power has shifted.

And that's already reflected
in the way we dress.

Look around you.

Has anything changed?

No, I don't mean in how we're dressed,

we're dressed just as we were
18 minutes ago.

But, maybe, something's changed about you,

in how you see fashion?

Thank you.

(Applause)