Fashion journalism needs to improve. This weekend, Dior is perceived to have made a “slur” by an ad using Native American imagery for a perfume named Sauvage. I certainly get the absurdity of Jonny Depp dressing and dancing like a Native American. I understand that Dior had consultants from that community but surely…
Adam Smith’s 1759 The Theory of Moral Sentiments is beyond a classic. To my mind, it is one of the most astute books ever written. One of his many brilliant contributions to ethical theory is his analysis of the spectator. It is the idea that our lives are monitored by the sense we have that…
Arguably, the master of fashion, here is a super review of an exhibit in Madrid that draws out the religious and Spanish character of Balenciaga’s creations: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190724-what-inspired-the-master-of-fashion It’s a very good read and some lucky enough to be in Madrid will get to see the beautiful clothes he made.
Commercial Civilization, Apollonian or Dionysian?
These doctors certainly mean to try (https://fashionista.com/2019/06/psychodermatology-mental-health-skin-care). The skin care business is a vast one in the West, and a vast, vast one in China, and other Asian countries. It has even attracted the attention of the CIA (https://www.lawliberty.org/2016/11/28/beauty-and-the-beast/). Psychodermatology is an intensification of the blending already offered by the industries devoted to…
Over the last few days, I’ve read some articles with good and bad moral news for the fashion industry. For example, young Chinese consumers of luxury care less about the artisanal background to a product and more about the sales experience (https://jingdaily.com/chinese-millennials-the-future-of-luxury-brand-experience/). Sales can be carefully and beautifully wrought, and all to the good, but…
A recent innovation in advertising is the use of AI or predictive analytics to target readers via emotion. AI has learnt: ““sadness” ads are popular with “socially responsible brands targeting women.”” The NYT has been collating the data and selling it to advertisers so they can better key their product to the consumer (https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/5/21/18634323/new-york-times-emotion-based-ad-targeting-sadness). …
A recent opinion piece at BoF argues that rapidification is necessary to bridge the gap between sluggish production and intensified consumer expectation: “Speed, tightly and newly coupled with data science, enables opportunity across each tier and partner of the supply chain” (https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/opinion/op-ed-fashion-needs-a-new-business-model-speed-is-the-answer). V&R Chapter 2 discusses Pope Francis’s critique of this ideology of technoscience…
There is no chapter on Caillois at V&R but blog readers will have seen his name plenty. I have just finished reading his unusual 1970 The Writing of Stones. It’s a thin, beautiful volume, published in English by UVA in 1985. Long out of print in English, copies run $700! It’s a shame, as few…
Aurel Kolnai observed that hierarchy is ineliminable from our moral psychology, and since hierarchy is also manifested in privilege, certain aristocratic tones in our shared life are ineradicable. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the passing of Karl Lagerfeld has seen him cast as an aristocrat, a Baroque glittering returning us to the salons of…