Honesty In Fashion
You know what’s rarer than honesty in fashion? Honesty with depth and intention.
It’s easy to be honest. For many people, it’s actually not hard to be honest. It is not hard to say you don’t like something or you like something, or to tell people what you think went wrong here and there.
But honesty does not mean you are helping anyone, honesty isn’t the ultimate standard.
Just now, I saw a post from Hypebeast (as seen above), and it’s about honesty, whether it is honesty from brands or honesty from journalists; it’s getting rare. But we are more aware of the situation than ever before that many journalists are in a bind, they are bound by the publications they work for and are, in a way, forced to shut up about their honest critiques. Quoting the post “editors consider brand relationships before offering up critiques.”
Many writers and creators online are starting to fight back with unapologetic and uncompromised honesty as they realize that the industry needs honesty to move forward, I rate that.
However, blindly pursuing honesty isn’t quite the solution I have in mind because honesty does not matter if it’s without intention and depth. My problem with the current state of fashion criticism isn’t that there are no people who dare to be honest; in fact, social media has given birth to a generation of brutally honest fashion journalists and critics. But what is the point of honesty if it’s just well-packaged superficial comments?
Someone’s very straightforward and honest comment of “this isn’t good at all, it’s unlike the designer’s usual work” has the same effect as a fashion journalist forced to say nice things about the brand, they are both ignorable. One is honesty that gives no constructive criticism or any further comments on how things can be better, or at least ways to show that the comments are aimed at bettering something, perhaps offering an angle that isn’t seen by the brand’s team. So, without anything helpful, why should anyone care? How did honesty make a change here? If anyone with a slight bit of critical thinking can come out and blurt out a few very honest sentences about why they like or dislike something, honesty has no effect in pushing the industry forward. Ignorable. On the other hand, it’s paid advertisement, journalists praising a visibly bad collection; once again, we can also ignore it. Let those who wish to operate like that continue to do their thing, we do not need to interfere. Once we notice, we can just comfortably ignore it and move on.
In both situations, one with utmost honesty and the other not, serves no purpose or value. My hope for fashion criticism is that perhaps there exists a nice space between critics and brands, both holding mutual respect and understanding of each other’s craft and intention, where critics will be able to provide constructive criticism that’s backed by not just fierce honesty, but with knowledge and insight, maybe a few unique angles. Brands would perhaps be able to even vaguely hold spaces for those who seem like they know what they are talking about and are not coming from a place of blind hatred or shallow comments packaged as criticisms.
Stop chasing brutal honesty, that’s not the solution here. Of course I understand the current emphasis on honesty, but I do think the spotlight on ‘honesty’ being the celebrated trait to have as a writer or critic can be misleading for many people.
Thank you for listening to my rant. Sorry for the sloppy writing, I wrote this in 15 minutes.