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In these uncertain times, futurologists are in high demand. Lidewij Edelkoort, the famous Dutch fashion forecaster, in an recent interview said that in the future our creative attention will be directed more towards our local landscape, more on what is near than on what is far. We’ll reconsider a local perspective instead of a more global one. We’ll travel less, we’ll have to source more locally, the economic crisis will profoundly impact the fashion system as a global community. She claims that the crisis will bring about a DIY aesthetic, arts-and-crafts will flourish, anticipating what she calls the Age of the Amateur. What are your thoughts on this vision?
As much as I hold Edelkoort in high regard, I’m afraid I disagree with her. I think that her vision always refers to a past that cannot exist anymore. Even her controversial Anti_Fashion, A Manifesto for the Next Decades, where she claimed that the system was dead and that we would go back to craftsmanship, to slow living, to more human and sustainable practices, seems to me more a catchphrase than an assumption based on reality. What she proposes is actually just a nostalgic vision. We cannot go back, we have to move forward—fashion isn’t dead, because it’s a very powerful system that brings about wealth on many levels—wealth of talents and creativity above all, not just lucrative businesses. It’s a system producing quality and culture—if we have a contemporary art museum in Milan, we owe it to Miuccia Prada, who happens to be one of the most relevant designers of our time. It’s a system that generates ideas, contents, values, communication.
I also disagree with Edelkoort’s assumption that the pandemic is a sort of ‘amazing grace’ for the planet and for our fashion system, forcing it to review its functioning from the ground up—in my opinion, this is actually an anti-historical attitude that doesn’t convey any true vision of the future. It’s just bringing back an idea of a past that can no longer return. It’s obvious that craftsmanship holds a fundamental place, especially in our Italian culture—it has been like that for centuries, so there’s nothing new. Not only do luxury brands depend on craftsmanship and savoir faire, but also small fashion companies and indie designers—we know that very well, there’s no discovery to be made. Giving value to diverse local productions is already a reality that feeds the system on many levels. But the market is global, we cannot ignore that. Traveling less in the future won’t mean we’ll have to stop and go back to a bartering system. What we’ll have to do is work on new ways—but the culture of exchange and interaction has to continue. We cannot be nostalgic—we can have nostalgia of embracing our loved ones, but not of old rituals. What the pandemic has taught us is that the world is one and we’re all together in this fight—we’re a connected system, we won’t go anywhere by ourselves. We have more than ever to share resources and knowledge—for example, how will we be able to have a vaccine to fight the virus ready in the near future, if the international scientific community won’t work together on this?
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