Fashion has given up on being ‘woke.’ And that’s OK

AMY ODELL

Fashion Weeks in New York, Milan and Paris have been unapologetically decadent this year. Beige is out, red is in. Real fur is back. Eighties maximalism is elbowing aside ’90s minimalism. Sean Monahan, a trend forecaster, calls it the “boom boom” aesthetic.

Admittedly, opulence is kind of the point when you are creating and selling beautiful, expensive things. But for the past decade, fashion was trying to be socially and environmentally conscious as well. However sincere the motivation — many people, especially on the creative side of fashion, share progressive values — making the world a more diverse, equitable, inclusive and sustainable place didn’t always sit well with luxury, either practically or aesthetically.

Now all that seems to be over, and maybe that’s OK.

Activism and fashion have always been an uneasy mix. Back in 2014, the designer Karl Lagerfeld staged a Chanel ready-to-wear show in Paris where models cosplayed a protest, holding signs that read, “Women’s rights are more than all right,” “History is her story” and “Make fashion not war.” If it felt anodyne and frivolous, Lagerfeld told the website Fashionista at the time that this was exactly the point: “I like the idea of feminism being something lighthearted, not a truck driver for the feminist movement.”

The next year, the New York show for Kerby Jean-Raymond’s label Pyer Moss took on a far more serious tone, opening with a 12-minute film about police brutality against Black men. Family members of victims sat in front, pushing the important fashion people that those seats are typically reserved for to the second or third row. They watched models walk the runway in white boots inscribed with Eric Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe.”

Fashion continued advancing political messages as the 2016 election approached. That September, with Hillary Clinton running for president, Maria Grazia Chiuri presented her debut collection for Christian Dior as its first female creative director. It featured T-shirts that read, “We should all be feminists” (borrowing the title of a book by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie), tucked into extravagant but by runway standards easygoing tulle skirts. You can still buy the T-shirts for $920. You can definitely still be a feminist without owning one.

Yet before the 2010s, luxury fashion seldom tried to stand for anything, politically. Vogue has endorsed only Democratic candidates since it started endorsing anybody, but has featured first ladies of both parties, beginning with Lou Henry Hoover in 1929. Nancy Reagan and Laura Bush were profiled in the magazine before Clinton became the first first lady to get a cover in 1998.

Oscar de la Renta often dressed Hilary, but he had dressed Nancy Reagan (famously in “Reagan red”) and Laura Bush before her. Adam Lippes joined the company as creative director in 1996, and told Women’s Wear Daily that that’s where he came to view dressing first ladies as a patriotic act rather than a political one.

In certain ways, with this second low-tax, oligarch-friendly Trump era (maybe even the fabled Russian shoppers will be welcomed back), happy days might be here again for fancy brands that had started to lose their footing the past few years. Perhaps no president in history has more ties to the world of luxury goods than Trump, who has been friends with the owner of the fashion conglomerate LVMH, Bernard Arnault, since the 1980s.

LVMH, the parent company of Dior and Givenchy, made two couture looks for Ivanka Trump for the inauguration. Oscar de la Renta shared photos of its looks for Ivanka and Vice President JD Vance’s wife, Usha, on social media.

Lippes had no hesitation about making Melania’s Inauguration Day coat, after her stylist, Hervé Pierre, called him with the request. “There was no greater honour than to dress a first lady,” Lippes, who now runs his own label, told Women’s Wear Daily.

It’s certainly a good business decision. Following the inauguration, a representative for Lippes’s brand told Business of Fashion that the company had just had its best sales week ever.

Amy Odell is the author of the Back Row newsletter and “Anna: The Biography.”