Opinion: Perhaps it’s a reaction to the growing social and environmental pressure against its very existence but fashion is making its diktats ever more strident.
Pants – as in knickers, briefs, grundies – are now considered an outer-wear outfit. Admittedly, hopping on the bus in just one’s kecks and a T-shirt has yet to go mainstream, but celebrities now increasingly step out in their smalls. Actress Emma Corrin recently fused the internet appearing in a knitted pair with matching cardie.
It’s no longer considered outlandish, if you speak Vogue, to spend NZ$1200 on a single pair of Miu Miu underdungers and wear them, with or without tights, with a pair of clunky brogues and an air of insouciance.
Let’s hastily clarify: people bold enough to rock this look wear their actual underwear underneath. They’re not barbarians.
The commercial point – beyond the obvious “look at me!” – is to alienate and to reinforce a sense of exclusivity. A tiny proportion of the population would profess to “get” this look, let alone have the daring to wear it. Fashion thrives on this perversity.
The more disgusted the general population, the more kudos is held to accrue. Micro minis, flares, piercings, hot pants, mohawks, see-through – the styles that outrage people usually have a short life. The early adopters are mostly celebs who quickly move on, making mere mortals in the style look tryhard, whence it lapses into historical quaintness. But the essence of the shock look’s commercial power is to sew that tiny seed of discomfort and self-questioning in enough of the prospective consumer base to sustain an actual trend.
The pants fashion is massively ambitious, given the prevailing “togs, togs, undies” orthodoxy. If nothing else, the endless repetition of “You forgot your skirt/trousers, luv!” would quickly become tiresome, specially if you’d parted with $1200.
But the figures don’t lie. Miu Miu is minting it, the wee grundies flying off the shelves. This sort of – to most people – insulting nonsense can be intensely lucrative.
Logic dictates that luxury fashion should be collapsing in the post-pandemic pestilence of high interest rates and recession, and New Zealand is definitely down to its smalls with Kate Sylvester the highest-profile label to go and Fashion Week 2024 cancelled. Global purveyors, including Kering, which owns Gucci and YSL, are also doing it tough, but a select category of “it” handbags has become a more reliable form of investment than many traditional commodities, with projected capital gains in multiples of 10. Credit Suisse says the 2021 return on a Hermès Birkin bag was 38%.
Again, it’s objectively absurd. Birkin and Kelly bags – the holy grails of leatherwear – probably remind most people of their great-grandmother’s sensible, sturdy, boring old receptacle, within which nothing sexier than a wallet, clean hanky and occasionally used lipstick would reside.
Apparently, it’s this prosaic utilitarian-ness that appeals – though the bags do come in nicer colours than Nana’s tan or brown. A vintage Birkin has sold for $630,000. It’s so difficult to buy a new one – at $18,000-$30,000 – that an anti-trust lawsuit has been brought against Hermès in California by customers refused bags.
The waiting list can be years, and the buyer is typically interviewed and assessed by a shop assistant who may or may not eventually let them purchase one, though frequently not the one they actually wanted.
Again, such ingenious perversity. The wealthy have allowed companies like Hermès to build their own ritual humiliation and grovelling into their business model, to relieve them of an ever-spiralling margin – for a product few people would even notice, let alone appreciate.
The day of reckoning never seems to come for fashion’s rapacious deities. But maybe they will finally hit the wall when Sotheby’s – surely? – draws the line at auctioning used knickers.
