The Future Of Fashion, Seen By Ludmila Corlateanu
By Ludmila Corlateanu on April 25, 2009
BUCHAREST (Herald de Paris) - I hate that word “crisis” because it’s been overexploited by the media. But it’s what made me think about the future of fashion. Fashion as business, art, and craft or as a phenomenon, as it has become such in the 20th century.
My fears were not necessarily related to the drop of my sales because my sales where as low as of any beginning designer’s. They were rather connected to the fact that I should have a strategy for the future, if I want to continue doing this and live from it.
Firstly, it always seemed weird and not having much sense to me to see branded cotton t-shirts selling for 200 Euro. Ok, it’s the finest cotton, but the cost to produce it was 5 Euro and the rest were the marketing expenses. Or how my pattern making teacher in school put it: “Oh please, any **** can sell as long as it’s all over the fashion magazines!!”
After only 2 years, I can witness the dawn of that era. No, marketing still exists, it hasn’t disappeared. But even the worst fashionistas are now questioning the logic of the price and more and more of them aren’t willing to pay just for the label.
I am from the industry, and I can tell you for a fact that the biggest part of the cost of a garment is the cost of the making it. You can find good quality fabrics for very small prices, because the fabric production is a very technological process, unlike garment production. So we’re watching now how prices drop on “luxury” lines. The fabrics are the same; the garment production is moved to places where work force is cheaper. But this process is a transit, because you can get only that low on these costs. The change, the real change will come only when technology will come to the garment making too.
I don’t believe that there are no technologies for that. I also don’t believe that fashion in general and clothes in particular should be part of any discriminatory process. I do believe that every human being has the right to have beautiful, crafted and individualized clothes at affordable prices (or no prices at all. I don’t remember seeing Jean-Luc Pickard paying for anything on Enterprise or anywhere else for that matter). And I am sure that technology can deliver that.
The way I see it, is that in the future we will have clothes divided only by the purposes they’re supposed to serve for: work clothes will be uniform-like, clothes for outdoor activities and leisure/personal time clothes. The designer will engineer fabrics, play with 3-D shapes, perform fittings, produce patterns and supervise the forming process from a computer. The result will be delivered directly to the final customer (in case of a individual order) or places on website where people could see and simulate fittings of products and place orders that will be delivered directly to them. “Haute couture” gowns will be worn for personal pleasure, and not only for social events. Clothes will loose their “snobbism” factor, and will be regarded as objects of creativity and body comfort.
Call me a dreamer, but I truly believe in that. Whether I will or not live to see those times, is another question.
With lots of love,
Ludmila Corlateanu
www.ludmilacorlateanu.com
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