During the last month, the hubbub that has occurred at the entrance to the parades attended by K-pop stars has only had one rival: the shouting that some presentations have caused on X (formerly Twitter). People have been very angry at X. They have not liked Sabato de Sarno's second collection for Gucci, nor Peter Hawkins's for Tom Ford. They didn't like Maria Grazia Chiuri's for Dior, nor Anthony Vaccarello's for Saint Laurent. Neither does Demna's for Balenciaga, nor Virginie Viard's for Chanel.
The least liked of all is Seàn McGirr's for McQueen. In parentheses: the name of the firm, as has happened with other houses lately, seems to have lost the Alexander. The debut of the Irish designer has caused disappointment, anger, indignation, rage. They have asked for his dismissal, his head. After much observation and some tweets (are they still called tweets?) that make your hair stand on end, the conclusion is that those who constantly post about clothes and internet critics (who are usually not the same ones who buy) hate what commercial. Commercial is nothing other than that designed to sell, but commercial is to fashion what intensity is to love: some dream of it, others cannot flee fast enough when they experience it.
When it was announced that Seàn McGirr, who had previously been Jonathan Anderson's right-hand man at Loewe and JW Anderson, would be Sarah Burton's successor at the helm of the brand, McQueen CEO Gialfilippo Testa said: “For me, it should be have a youthful energy. I think it should be about London, about this mix of youth culture that I see all the time here. I want that to be represented... It must provoke a reaction; that is the DNA of the brand. McQueen is also about aggression, but playful aggression.” Be that as it may (and although McQueen has never had a playful side), it can be considered that the designer managed to check each of these objectives.
In the relationship of the online audience with McQueen there is an important factor to take into account: it is a personal brand with which some of his followers have developed a kind of parasocial relationship. They feel emotionally connected to his creator, who before ending his life in 2010 changed the history of fashion. Those people wanted magic, they wanted theater. There wasn't.
Expectations are bad in all aspects of life, but they are worse when you expect others to carry your burden. More important: Fall/Winter 2024 was only a first collection. The world doesn't end no matter how bad a first collection is and this one, although it has difficult to understand outputs and the models seem uncomfortable wearing some clothes, it hasn't even been that bad.
Since Instagram and TikTok became the main means of consuming fashion, the audience has multiplied. There are the internet critics that we have talked about, the specialized press, the influencers (if the brands invite them to their shows it is because they need them to talk about them), the professional buyers and, of course, the clients. It is impossible to satisfy them all with the same parade.
Designers (and their brands) are faced with the dilemma of presenting something easy to wear that causes boredom or something so viral that it ignites the conversation on the internet for ten minutes. Because that's another matter: when it's for the better, as has happened with Coperni's silica airgel bag, the conversation is shorter than when it's for the worse. Searching for virality, however, does not mean finding it.
If you haven't heard of AVAVAV these days, it's because on this occasion what did earn it its minute of fame in previous seasons hasn't worked. The Swedish brand created by Beate Karlsson became famous for two viral shows: one in which the models fell dramatically and another in which the clothes were torn to shreds. This time, attendees found in their seats an invitation to throw trash at the models, thus participating in a performance that recovered a common practice in medieval times and that the brand has compared to current dynamics on social networks: trolls, hatred, anger. Maybe it didn't work because of the algorithm. Or perhaps someone on the internet has taken notice.
P.S. If after getting this far the reader is still convinced that they want to pursue their dream of becoming a designer and creating their own fashion company, the Paul Smith Foundation has a mentoring program and residencies at Studio Smithfield (London). They accept applications until April 14.
