The accelerating pace of fashion came under serious scrutiny last year after designers like Raf Simons and Alber Elbaz stepped down from their positions. Following their departures, both designers made comments about the speed of fashion and the affect it can have on creativity.
To find out if others were feeling the same pressure, Dazed caught up with designers at London Collections: Men to see if fashion should slow down. Their responses reveal that there might not be a clear answer on this one.
Several of the designers, like Astrid Andersen feel that the pace is too much since it can be hard to find that much inspiration in such a short time.
Matthew Miller agreed, explaining, "Yeah it needs to chill out, it really does. I don’t think it’s necessarily the pace of fashion, it’s more so the pace of the technology that delivers the fashion," says Miller. "Things are consumed far too quickly – this is one of the big killers of subcultures; things don’t have a chance to spread progressively and naturally through word of mouth or through magazines."
But, others like J.W. Anderson and Craig Green actually enjoy developing their collections at a quicker pace.
“I think it’s at the perfect speed, because fashion has to articulate where we are today and fundamentally we are in a day where media is incredibly quick, boredom is at an all time low – the minute you see something you’re over it," says Andersen. "So if you don’t conform to that speed then you don’t operate in a modern culture you know? I think you have to deal with it...it’s a part of it...it’s exciting."
