Discussions about the fashion industry thread

[London]

Kanye did not really start any of these trends though.... other than shutter shades of course. These things all already had steam in trendy cities like Tokyo, Paris, NYC, hell even superfuture, before Kanye blew it up mainstream. In the early 2000s there was a big enough gap between fashion internet and hiphop culture which Kanye bridged with enough quickness that to the avg music fan it looked like he was the person who started them.

"He blew it up mainstream." That's the very definition of influence.

 

[sushijerk]

Never said he wasn't influential. There's a difference between being a famous early adopter of a trend versus creating it. You guys might as well give him credit for drawing all the frames in Akira.

 

[London]

Never said he wasn't influential. There's a difference between being a famous early adopter of a trend versus creating it. You guys might as well give him credit for drawing all the frames in Akira.

Adoption and influence overlap but are not one in the same. It takes tremendous power to take those trends to the masses and the H&M's of the world. There are ton of early adopters, but there probably a handful of people who can scale trends like that continuously.

 

[blacklight]

I never used the word created. What I did use was the word "co-sign," as in an endorsement of something that came from somewhere else first. It's not really relevant to the impact discussion whether he created those things or that PeaceUponYohji324 wore it first on Sufu in 2005.

 

[cb200]

BOF and McKinsey annual report on fashion/apparel is out. Big section on metaverse stuff. Still, very skeptical on that front personally. Some other interesting thoughts too...

Available here:

https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/retail/our%20insights/state%20of%20fashion/2022/the-state-of-fashion-2022.pdf

 

[Zamb]

"He blew it up mainstream." That's the very definition of influence.

lets take this argument to a logical extension.......

if this is the case then a company like Zara should be considered MORE INFLUENTIAL that Givenchy because Zara may have sold more Givenchy knock offs than Givenchy sold authentic products..........

I remember Theyskens at Rochas, where he created that "humpback" silhouette on jackets and coats and it was so knocked off that on a sunday morning in any church you could see 8 to 10 women wearing these jackets and blouses that had the shape that Theyskens created at Rochas.
They had no idea who Theyskens or Rochas was but was wearing clothes that existed as a result of HIS influence and design.

I suggest you guys seriously consider your positions and what you are trying to articulate because there is no way in hell no matter how much money he made, how big a company he developed that Kanye is more influential in men's fashion than Raf or Hedi Slimane was IN THE LAST 15 YEARS............Matter of fact I'd like to posit here that it was RAF for the most part who started this HIGH END Dad sneaker trend with those crazy colorful adidas collabs that he paired with suits

There is a story of Kanye writing a whole damn song because HEDI SLIMANE told him if he invited him to his show he couldn't attend any other for the season.....................that's power

 

[London]

lets take this argument to a logical extension.......

if this is the case then a company like Zara should be considered MORE INFLUENTIAL that Givenchy because Zara may have sold more Givenchy knock offs than Givenchy sold authentic products..........

I remember Theyskens at Rochas, where he created that "humpback" silhouette on jackets and coats and it was so knocked off that on a sunday morning in any church you could see 8 to 10 women wearing these jackets and blouses that had the shape that Theyskens created at Rochas.
They had no idea who Theyskens or Rochas was but was wearing clothes that existed as a result of HIS influence and design.

I suggest you guys seriously consider your positions and what you are trying to articulate because there is no way in hell no matter how much money he made, how big a company he developed that Kanye is more influential in men's fashion than Raf or Hedi Slimane was IN THE LAST 15 YEARS............Matter of fact I'd like to posit here that it was RAF for the most part who started this HIGH END Dad sneaker trend with those crazy colorful adidas collabs that he paired with suits

There is a story of Kanye writing a whole damn song because HEDI SLIMANE told him if he invited him to his show he couldn't attend any other for the season.....................that's power

You're entitled to your beliefs man. The average person on the street doesn't know Raf or Hedi, but they know Kanye and many have emulated his dress code wether they know it or not.

 

[BlakeRVA]

lets take this argument to a logical extension.......

if this is the case then a company like Zara should be considered MORE INFLUENTIAL that Givenchy because Zara may have sold more Givenchy knock offs than Givenchy sold authentic products..........

I remember Theyskens at Rochas, where he created that "humpback" silhouette on jackets and coats and it was so knocked off that on a sunday morning in any church you could see 8 to 10 women wearing these jackets and blouses that had the shape that Theyskens created at Rochas.
They had no idea who Theyskens or Rochas was but was wearing clothes that existed as a result of HIS influence and design.

I suggest you guys seriously consider your positions and what you are trying to articulate because there is no way in hell no matter how much money he made, how big a company he developed that Kanye is more influential in men's fashion than Raf or Hedi Slimane was IN THE LAST 15 YEARS............Matter of fact I'd like to posit here that it was RAF for the most part who started this HIGH END Dad sneaker trend with those crazy colorful adidas collabs that he paired with suits

There is a story of Kanye writing a whole damn song because HEDI SLIMANE told him if he invited him to his show he couldn't attend any other for the season.....................that's power

In 2013, I saw Nick Wooster walking around in Soho. He was considered by many the “King of Street Style” and at his peak popularity during this time. I started freaking out because he was a celebrity in my mind.

I enthusiastically told my friend and he blankly looked at me replying “Who?” I looked around and noticed nobody else seemed to care either. Later I realized, sometimes when you’re really close to something, people and personalities seem much bigger than they really are.

Respectfully, I can see where you’re coming from and understand you’re a designer who’s been in the business for years. Hedi is a big star in the fashion world. However, if you stopped 100 people on the street, probably 99 would look back at you like my friend did.

In terms of culture and influence, it really doesn’t matter who “came up” with an idea. I think trying to trace the origin of anything within the arts is a futile exercise. So many creatives are directly and indirectly influenced in their work - who really has the right to claim they originated something?

Regardless, it’s human nature to fixate on a single person to credit any sort of accomplishment. Often times, what’s more important than who “originated” an idea is who popularized it. There’s a reason everyone cites Edison as the inventor of the light bulb instead of Joseph Swan or Henry Woodward.

Lastly, Zara is more influential than Givenchy. You can argue for the influence Givenchy has in what clothes get designed, but I don’t believe people are shopping at Zara because they saw the Givenchy SS22 runway show and want the exact look. It’s usually some millennial girl who goes to their store because they trust Zara will make them look cute. Zara gets to decide which looks from each designers they’ll steal, and their customers trust their taste to dictate how they dress. You can’t get much more influential than millions of young women and men trusting you to dress them each season. As far as they’re concerned, they’re Zara designs. And as far as many are concerned, it doesn’t matter if it was Raf, Hedi, or Superfuture. Kanye put them onto it and that’s all that matters.

 

[gdl203]

Yea I think all the links in the chain are due credit.


For example:

Geller’s vision of tonal clothes expressed in his main and Seconds line -> Kanye digs it, wears it so it’s natural to get Geller to help him put together the first Adidas/Yeezy collection -> that amplifies dramatically and expands this vision to reach the masses -> becomes Yeezy signature aesthetic -> becomes a mainstream aesthetic because of the magnitude of his reach, the pretty good execution and the fact that it captured something that was countercurrent to streetwear (and closer to fashion)

 

[dieworkwear]

The Duke of Windsor was the first to put cuffs on non-country trousers, but Mafoofan is the one who made me want to wear them.

 

[London]

He took Hedi and Raf and made them pop culture, taking them out of the rarified air of fashion - contextualizing the clothing and making it more approachable. This had a knock on effect with the secondary market, archive pieces, grailed, etc. Once he wore the pieces, the prices went up.

 

[IJReilly]

If you want to assign influence in this context, ask yourself which link in the chain had the biggest effect on mass adoption. I'm pretty sure that if Kanye hadn't worn certain looks, they would not have seen mass adoption. Influencers like Kanye amplify the reach of an aesthetic for the mainstream, just like certain people amplify the influence of an aesthetic in a more narrow group of enthusiasts. Certain people are indirectly very influential through other people (which I think is the case for certain designers and their influence via Kanye). There is rarely a single originator of anything, and I think ranking influence is pretty pointless and mainly serves to satisfy our innate desire for lists of things.

 

[London]

If you want to assign influence in this context, ask yourself which link in the chain had the biggest effect on mass adoption. I'm pretty sure that if Kanye hadn't worn certain looks, they would not have seen mass adoption. Influencers like Kanye amplify the reach of an aesthetic for the mainstream, just like certain people amplify the influence of an aesthetic in a more narrow group of enthusiasts. Certain people are indirectly very influential through other people (which I think is the case for certain designers and their influence via Kanye). There is rarely a single originator of anything, and I think ranking influence is pretty pointless and mainly serves to satisfy our innate desire for lists of things.

In the age of social media, data and tracking, it is pretty easy for an attribution perspective to measure this stuff nowadays. That's why brands hire influencers and run a ton of data metrics and KPI's on how they perform.

 

[Reginald Bartholomew]

Is he the biggest amplifier because he did it in a unique way (blended these trends well, made them more approachable, or whatever else), or were these style ideas going to blow up and he was there with the right combination of reach + early?

I feel like it was the latter, but I'll admit to it being a feeling, and perhaps I was standing too close to the proverbial Nick Wooster. Sales is a talent, and Kanye is probably the best salesman of self of his generation (it's basically him or Kobe: both really good at what they do, both given more even credit than that because they made sure they would get it, both attained legendary status off the synergy). But it feels weird to give him all this credit for a thing that was already happening. It's not quite calling Malcolm McLaren the father of punk (Ye has a lot more actual talent and a lot less cheap huckster), but it's not not that (I feel like SuFu absolutely should get more credit here, given those dudes were dressing like Kanye while he was still in his Polo hangover phase). As much as the ideas don't matter in world where cash in the register is the measure of us all, they do obviously matter on some level.

Who was the most influential men's fashion figure before Kanye?

 

[nahneun]

Who was the most influential men's fashion figure before Kanye?

yo G of the mountains