Brightest Young Things

You may have noticed (or maybe you didn't, I don't know your LIFE) that I was atypically SILENT after NY Fashion Week; now that the last of the Fashion Weeks is finally wrapping (in Paris, after stop-throughs in London and Milan) I still find myself without a lot to say. It's not that I'm bored, exactly - it's just that all the trends I noted (leather [a la Rick Owens], geometry [as seen at Josh Goot], sequins [hello, Vena Cava], AGGRESSION [via Prada], sheer/cutouts [errr, everywhere], and all things NUDE [by way of Jil Sander]) have been around for at LEAST the last two seasons. What WAS new? A really, really horrible 1980s REVIVAL that I'm not touching with a 10 foot pole. Nor am I bothering to even post pictures. Thanks but no thanks, Marc Jacobs, etc.

Granted, there WERE standouts during each of the Fashion Weeks - I loved Vena Cava, Hayden Harnett, and especially Proenza Schouler in NY; in London I actually GOT cuckoo-crazy Giles Deacon for the very first time; Milan's Dolce & Gabbana, Marni, Roberto Cavalli shows did it for me; and thus far in Paris I'm big-time into Balmain. Still, though, what's NEW? Even within the lines that showed MAJOR personal growth and maturation (and I'm going to focus on the Americans here, but Vena Cava, Hayden Harnett, and Alexander Wang all grew up in leaps and bounds this season) it just seemed like more a REORGANIZATION of the already-established trends. There was no breath of fresh air.

While I can appreciate this, if only on an At-Least-It's-Kind-To-My-Wallet level (I'd shopped for the trends I dug at their first runway inception, and am actually kind of delighted to ALREADY have gotten SO MUCH WEAR out of one leather skirt) I had to fill the usually inspiration-saturated VOID of the last two seasons with other, non-runway sources. This was the opposite of difficult, which, in turn, leads me to wonder if whether the dearth of runway inspiration has to do with the PLETHORA of availability of well, everything else. One of my friends always says that the underground doesn't exist anymore - every book/photograph/image/song/inspiration exists now, online, for the masses to glean from in the same manner as the tastemakers. I know I'm not the only one who gave a mere shoulder shrug to the latest output from the designers (which did little more reinforce what we already knew) - have we, in the digital age of the FASHION BLOG, of online cool-hunting and Forever 21 - pre-empted runways altogether? There will always be a call for luxury goods and craftsmanship and QUALITY - yes - but who, now, is calling the shots - us, or them?