Walter Van Beirendonck said this week in an op-ed piece in the Business
of Fashion that fashion students should not receive more business training.
“We must do everything we can to prioritise creativity in fashion
education,” he explained, “it is the thing that keeps the industry
going.”
That I can’t make this statement without reservation is something that
saddens me. The reality that encroaches on this vision of an artistic
utopia is right outside my midtown Manhattan classroom window. Although
fashion as an industry is often referred to as global, the fast fashion
phenomenon has created a cultural divide between Europe and the US that is
wider than ever. Historically, the American fashion industry paid homage to
the Parisian houses by bringing new couture styles home to be manufactured
for the US market. The Wall Street Crash of 1929, wartime unrest, combined
with other contributing factors led to strides being made during the
inter-war years that improved production and created a domestic
ready-to-wear industry that financially exceeded the European one. There
was no turning back. As the city’s skyline touched the clouds, the seeds
were sewn for the apparel industry that we know today to spring up and
usurp the spot reserved for a fashion industry.
Creativity is not the thing that keeps the US fashion industry running,
capitalism is
Educated in London and having spent a large portion of my career
designing in Europe, before working and then becoming an educator in the
U.S., I experienced the baptism of fire that my students face upon
graduation much later. Creativity is not the thing that keeps the U.S.
fashion industry running, capitalism is. Money is the root of all
endeavour. And capitalism corrupts creativity.
If we support the idea that fashion is an art form, even an applied art
form (and I certainly do) then a decent number of students––the most
creative exciting ones–-are underserved not by the education system here
but by the avaricious US fashion industry which primarily exists to churn
out glossily merchandised, irresponsibly and sloppily designed generic
product. Landfills’ worth of the stuff. It’s essentially money for old
rope, as we say in the UK.
Yet as educators we applaud our most uniquely gifted students, the ones
that could hold their own among Europe’s finest graduates, offering them
prime position in end-of-year fashion shows, awarding them titles and
accolades. Their garments are featured on websites and WWD might even give
them a write-up.
Then what? Where do they go when we release them with a congratulatory
clap on the back into the wilds of the industry stateside? Are we guilty of
encouraging the equivalent of champagne tastes on a beer budget? John
Galliano dreams in a Macy’s reality?
Van Beirendonck who is head of fashion at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts
in Antwerp also had this to say, “That’s where most of our students end up
— at the house of Balenciaga, the house of Dior. But they get there mainly
because of their creativity; not for their business acumen.”
That’s nice. The majority of fashion students in the top American
schools will not end up in these houses, but not for lack of creativity.
There are practical roadblocks to this gilded highway, tolls to pay. Most
European fashion houses do not welcome the extra hassle of sponsoring a
work visa for someone fresh out of a U.S. programme when they can tap the
schools closer to home. There are industry collaborations in both the
Parsons and FIT programmes, and in many other schools across the country,
which result in awards and sponsorships for the winning students but only
rarely do they lead to longterm employment. Upon graduation, my students
can’t do like I did, and take off on a dirt cheap one-way Ryanair flight to
Paris or Milan to test the waters with their portfolio. Most of them are
stuck with what’s available here.
But what about homegrown talent? In business terms, they get what I
can only call a raw deal
Yet from my experience as a working designer in the U.S., I’m aware of
the high leverage candidates with “European design experience” possess in
this job market, indeed have benefitted from it myself. These
well-travelled portfolios seem to exude a frisson of luxury and exoticism
that makes HR managers in their skyscraper cubicles salivate and fumble for
the phone: I have someone in front of me I really think you should
see…
But what about homegrown talent? In business terms, they get what I can
only call a raw deal.
Clothing design is predominantly straightforward in the US. Is it a
dress or a pant? Is it contemporary or bridge? Ceci n’est pas une pipe is
not a concept that goes over well here. Ambiguity does not breed mystery,
just misunderstanding. Branding and merchandising is subdivided into such
labyrinthine categories that students have no option but to understand this
language early because to fall between the cracks of the categories means
to have no place.
Parsons’ 2012 decision to revolutionise its curriculum to reflect a more
experimental concept-based approach to design caused uproar with many
detractors lamenting that it was mimicking the UK schools, favouring
unwearable eccentric fashion over technically sound offerings readily
suited to the marketplace. Some of my fellow educators might react to
images of the St Martin’s graduate show with horror (British fashion
schools occupy two of the top three spots in the recently published BoF
list of global rankings in both the undergraduate and Masters programmes;
Van Beirendonck’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts takes third spot on the
Masters list), but I can understand where they’re coming from. The
exuberance of idea over product is simply overwhelming, assaultive and,
well, bad for business. In other words, it’s an insult to their culture.
While I might personally disagree with this response, I feel a huge
responsibility to my students to deliver an education aimed not at the
industry as I want it to be, not how it is across the pond, nor even how it
was in my day, but how it is now. It’s the least my students deserve. It is
literally the very least.
So bring on the business education. Lather on the merchandising and
marketing and ramp up the branding. I’ll grieve personally on behalf of
these talented, poetic, artistic individuals for what is lost to them, but
I’d rather see them gain employment. After all, what is the alternative?
By contributing guest editor Jackie Mallon, who is on the teaching
faculty of several NYC fashion programmes and is the author of Silk for the
Feed Dogs, a novel set in the international fashion industry.