Fashion Will Not Disappear. It Will Transform.
This has been, economically, the worst year in the industry’s history. And yet fashion is more relevant than ever.
Credit.Martin Nicolausson
By Rhonda Garelick
Dr. Garelick is the dean of the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons/The New School and the author of “Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History.”
Dec. 22, 2020 on what life will look like in 2021.
In an April interview about the pandemic, the philosopher Slavoj Zizek said we should “forget about the economy we have now” and “treat simply as irrelevant things like the fashion industry.” He was voicing a prejudice usually unspoken: a contemptuous disregard for fashion. For him, the industry is merely about conspicuous consumption and self-indulgence and should simply be allowed to die.