What excites you in fashion right now?
The continued integration of outerwear and outdoor performance wear in fashion, as I've always loved the interplay between ornament and function. The revival or resurgence of many dormant “heritage” brands from Europe and North America in the last three decades, and their enduring impact on the runway is satisfying to me personally.
What is one reason to be optimistic about the state of fashion going forward?
It’s suffered from so much greenwashing especially in the last few years, but I’ve always believed that the revived ethic of reusing, adapting and mending clothing, and the desire to collect the past is one cause for optimism. It doesn’t at all contradict the impulse for novelty.
In what ways do you think Al might benefit fashion?
In the margins, mostly for communication and merchandising, automating certain production processes? I am still convinced that the warp and weft of fabric, the materiality of it, its structural properties, its existential relationship with the human body is what has given garments and fashion meaning since the dawn of civilization. I work in books, and their bound form — the codex — has not changed for two millennia, so I have very old-timey notions about durability.
Who or what will drive the greatest change in fashion this year?
This is less a prediction and more affirmation, and I’m not an objective observer here, but Pharrell’s appointment at Louis Vuitton is a culmination of many things. The luxury industry has been commodifying American streetwear and hip-hop tropes for three, four decades now. It’s crucial to have someone that The Culture has genuinely admired, emulated and ripped-off for close to three decades be the one finally setting the pace. His name had been bandied around for a similar brief as early as 2007 or 2008, and it was more of a surprise that it took as long as it did.
What impact might you hope to have on fashion through your work?
I say it all the time, books are not about now, they are about forever. I have played a hand or have personally documented the complete work (so far) of many figures and brands in the industry and am always grateful to have had the opportunity to help build a canon of fashion and accessories books. I do have an agenda, and it isn’t amplifying the modality of fashion culture — you have social media for that. It took a long time for fashion to secure its place in the applied arts in the last century. And it took the erudition of pioneering fashion historians — people I consider my mentors, Harold Koda and the late Richard Martin at the Costume Institute — to bring home the realisation that a Lanvin, McCardell or a Fortuny dress was as full an expression of modernity as any work by Walter Gropius. It sounds awfully grand to want to keep playing my small part in positioning fashion within the modern project.
Can you suggest a fashion mantra for '24?
Oh no, with the world such as it is right now, I want to emphasise that whatever we do in fashion is explicitly secondary or tertiary. I love the aspiration explicit in the conception and making of fashion, it’s intimation of a beautiful world, the way that it can suggest a prosperous future for as many people as possible, but we aren’t saving the world here. It’s important work, but so is being mindful of context.
This interview has been lightly edited.
