First Post!

Thoughts of a kooky fashionista

Do MY fashion people really live in a “creative hermetic bubble” as Simon Doonan creative director of Barneys department store in New York suggests in a recent SCMP article or, are they in sync with the depressive mood of today’s financial world?

By MY fashion people I don’t mean the multi-millionaires who perhaps have lost some small pocket change and are now thinking twice if they should buy that third pair of Louboutins, or their ninth Birkin in hot pink. Nor do I mean the Marc Jacobs and Karl Lagerfeld’s of our world, but instead I mean the small start up designers and creative’s of today who regardless of talent, dreams and inspiration still need to stay in touch with the real world to ensure the survival of the fittest.

It would be lovely indeed to not have to worry about what the next 9 months will bring and how many small businesses will carry through. But with wads of cash invested in stock which sits each day, depreciating on the shelf untouched, the depressive mood creeps through at the wee small hours of the night when one should be dreaming of the beautiful fuchsia silk brocade that could be sourced for collections to come.

If we look to the past often born out of difficult times comes great creativity. The punk movement emerged due to the alienation and recession of the 70’s, the peace movement acted as a counter culture to the war machine of 60’s America and the mod scene developed when British teenagers began to reject the "dull, timid, old-fashioned, and uninspired" British culture around them, with its repressed and class-obsessed mentality. Hence engaging with the times might not be a bad idea, it would be tragic not to be involved in being part of the creative process that goes into great revolutions.

I sit on the fence between the two worlds secretly wishing to live fully in the creative bubble but being dishearten by client’s stories about their husbands losing their jobs and that they needs to control their credit card spending otherwise would have bought that red dress or by reading how the average person has cut their Christmas spending budget by half.

I believe that being young, crazy and passionate, and having a true love for fashion and the arts alone can lead us through this time. As Peal S Buck once said “The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible and achieve it generation after generation”.

Waking up everyday I realize that it does not really matter which side I pick both perspectives have a balanced number of positives and negatives attached to them, rather it is about which experience I want to live into. For the moment all I know is that my fondness for fashion will charter me thought these uncertain times.

Money is dead…long live fashion!