Does Fashion Need Fixing?

Fashion People

In this episode of Fashion People, host Lauren Sherman interviews journalist Eugene Rabkin, author of 'Torn: Fashion and Post-Modernism,' to

Key takeaways

• The consolidation of the luxury fashion industry has stifled innovation and creative risk-taking.
• Virgil Abloh's impact is debated as both revolutionary and commodified—his genius may have been co-opted by mainstream capitalism.

Main topics

• The decline of creativity in fashion
• Virgil Abloh's legacy as genius or villain

Notable quotes

We don't live in the end of history. There will be alternative modes of existence and alternative modes of culture.

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a call to re-imagine fashion not just as commerce but as cultural

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:03) Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Puck's Fashion and Beauty Memo Line Cheat. And today with me on the show is Eugene Rapkin, author of Torn, Fashion and Postmodernism. We debate about the lack of creativity in the industry, the genius of Virgil Abloh, the proliferation of so-called nice clothes, and so much more. Speaker 3 (0:28) Before we get going, I wanted to remind you that if you like this podcast, you'll definitely love Puck, where I send an email called Line Cheat. If you're a fashion person, you get that reference. It's an original look at what's really going on inside the fashion and beauty industries. Line Cheat is scoopy, analytical, and above all, fun. Along with me, a subscription to Puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment, media, sports, politics, finance, the art world, and much more. If you're interested, listeners of Fashion People get a discount. Just go to puck.news slash fashion people to join Puck or start a free trial. Speaker 3 (1:12) Happy Friday, everyone. Hope you had a great week. It's been a good week being back in Paris. I feel like everyone is bouncing back. Jonathan from Lucien Pagès is back from his crazy vacation. I even went to Delphine Arnaud's husband's private members club for a meeting. Mr. Neil. I ran into... It's very nice. It's a private members club, so I'm not going to disclose anything. Not that I signed an NDA, but I did put a sticker on my phone. Anyway, I also ran into the great writer, Lindsay Tramuta, who is meeting up with another amazing writer, Lauren Collins, who I sadly missed, but I'm very impressed by the success of her fabulous book, They Stole a City. Congrats to Lauren. I can't wait to see them for fall cocktails. Anyway, this weekend line sheet, we hopscotched around the world. Malik wrote about Abercrombie after its TikTok phase. Their CMO is going to Viore. Rachel wrote about Westman Atelier, the health of that business, and whether it'll get the exit it deserves. We love this brand. It's a great brand. And the business has, as Rachel reported, really improved in the last few years in terms of margin and things like that. So I think Estee Lauder should buy it, but I don't know if they're smart enough. Anyway, again, I looked into the truly wild succession drama at Estee Lauder L'Exotica. And as someone said to me, the Delvecchio family makes the Arnos look like Sesame Street. I'm sorry. We care more about the Arnos because they own Dior and Louis Vuitton and all that stuff. But like this company is important to the fashion industry. They make a lot of glasses and I wear in sunglasses that you wear. So anyway, I had a great, anyway, three times in one intro. How lucky are you? I had a great time talking to Eugene. whose purpose in life is to make people question things. And that's a pretty great way to be. So let's get going. Speaker 3 (3:09) Eugene Rabkin, welcome to Fashion People. Speaker 1 (3:12) Thank you, Lauren. I'm happy to be here. Speaker 3 (3:15) I'm thrilled to have you. What did you have for breakfast this morning? Speaker 1 (3:19) The same thing I've had for the last 15 years, unless I travel, which is just yogurt and granola. Speaker 3 (3:26) It has carbs. It has protein. It has salt, fat, acid, heat. It's perfect. Speaker 1 (3:34) Exactly. And you know what? It's hard to get good granola when you travel, as I've found out. So I just, you know, I treat myself to eggs and bacon. Speaker 3 (3:44) Yeah, that's true. Have you ever tried Round Swamp Farm granola? Speaker 1 (3:50) No, I got to note that down. My default is Bola granola, which is close to where I am in the Berkshires. Oh, nice. And Speaker 3 (3:57) it's phenomenal. Speaker 1 (3:58) Yeah, yeah. I just buy from them. like in bulk. Oh, Speaker 3 (4:01) nice. I like Round Swamp a lot. I've ordered from there two summers in a row. It's quite expensive, but it is a nice treat and extremely salty. Yeah. Well, Speaker 1 (4:13) you know, the industry we're in, we're used to paying for quality, right? Speaker 2 (4:16) Exactly. Speaker 3 (4:17) We're used to paying a lot for a lot of things. So you are here because you are a veteran journalist, but you also just published a book that is, well, this is going to run. a couple of days before you publish. So it's, it's for all you, your Europeans who I have to say will not overspend on anything. It's out in Europe already, but it will be out in September 1st in the U S so pre-order or order, depending on where you are, maybe at an independent bookseller. But yes, Jean, tell us about, tell us a little bit about your background and. your experience and your, because I came to know you as obviously a writer, you contributed to BOF when I was there, but also because you are sort of a legend on, you had your own forum. And can you talk a bit about how you like got into journalism, the forum culture of the 2000s and how that sort of shaped your work? And then we can talk about Torn. Speaker 1 (5:21) Yeah, absolutely. So I started out as a fashion fan as I I think like many of us have, right? I fell in love with fashion around like 98, 99, walking into Barney's and seeing all this creativity, which I did not realize existed, mainly the Belgians and the Japanese designers. And being an immigrant kid, there was absolutely zero people around me in my Brooklyn immigrant neighborhood. who was remotely interested in that. And one day, by chance, I was Googling something and I came across the fashion spot. which is kind of the OG fashion forum. And I thought, oh my God, there are other people who know who Andy Milimister is. It's incredible. So I joined quickly, gained a reputation for firing off funny one-liners, but also knowing my fashion avant-garde. And after a couple of years, I decided to start my own. So I called it Style Zeitgeist, which I thought I should make it as difficult as possible. I don't know why I do that. And that forum blew up because it was the golden age of fashion message boards before social media and Reddit killed it off. And it was a place that people came to mostly discussed fashion forward menswear, but not exclusively. And how I got into fashion journalism was another accident. I got a message. on the forum on stylezyga is from someone who turned out to be an editor of the weekend magazine at haaretz which is israel's most prestigious newspaper it's kind of like their new york times and we were chatting and i just blurted out hey you think i could write about fashion for you and he said well send me something and i sent him a couple of my essays about fashion from my master's program that i wrote at the new school And he loved them. And I wrote first article that did well. And then and that was my beginning. And everything else kind of snowballed from that, including styles, I guess, becoming magazine and on and on. So, yeah, I'm Speaker 3 (8:00) curious. Do you go on Reddit? Like, do you have any do you engage on there? Because to me that. has sort of, I don't spend, I only go on Reddit if I'm like looking into. Speaker 3 (8:15) usually something to do with like retail workers because there's a lot the thing I will say about Reddit to me is like it's the one place where there's still truth on the internet yeah Speaker 1 (8:24) yeah yeah yeah well that's what forum culture was exactly Speaker 3 (8:27) so do you are you did you grow out of it do you still or do you run any threads on there like how do you engage with Reddit Speaker 1 (8:37) I've never used Reddit in my life honestly Yeah, so I don't know. And I've never really used Twitter also. I purposefully limit, and I know I'm shooting myself in the foot somewhat, but I purposefully limit my social media time, like exclusively to Instagram, just because otherwise there won't be enough time to do all the other things that I want to do. Speaker 3 (9:02) Yeah, no, I think that's fair. I used to be really into Twitter. I was never a forum person. But I was very into Twitter and I really miss it. I miss like I feel like I post a lot on Instagram more than I want to because I have a lot of little things I want to say. I sort of use Twitter as like a running diary almost. And I loved it. I really enjoyed it. And then it got. Speaker 3 (9:30) when the change. Yeah, it's the insurification of the internet, Speaker 1 (9:35) right? It's inevitable. But I think you're touching upon something very important that the level of discourse on the internet is like in the toilet. Yeah, Speaker 3 (9:47) I mean, there is a lot of discourse on TikTok and Instagram, but the challenge with it is it is so, it's not, back and forth, there's just a lot of people like spitting stuff out. And so it doesn't feel, and the comments, the engagement is not as thoughtful. Yeah, exactly. Speaker 1 (10:11) Exactly. I think we should ban emojis. I think that's a big problem. Even though, you know, I use them, everyone uses them. But, you know, you put a heart on something instead of saying something and there you go. Speaker 3 (10:22) Well, it's also like, I like... almost every single post I look at. And it doesn't mean I, it's like, what does a like mean? Speaker 2 (10:32) I found my, I Speaker 3 (10:33) liked something the other day and I was like, oh, I better unlike this because if someone sees me liking this, they're going to think it's some like statement. Speaker 1 (10:40) Whereas it's just Speaker 3 (10:41) like you either supporting the friend or you're supporting the idea, but sometimes you don't, it can be read. So I have a friend who uses the melting guy emoji a lot. And I'm always like. What does that actually mean? Yeah, Speaker 1 (10:54) yeah. Well, that's another thing. I mean, so much gets lost. I always talk about this with Derek Guy, who also came up on the forums. And we constantly talk about the degradation of discourse online, how intelligent forum culture used to be and how it's not. Speaker 3 (11:12) Well, he's a remarkable figure in that he has been able to use Twitter. to change people's minds and educate people, but by beating them at their own game. So it's not like he's too clever. He's just clever enough. And that is a very hard balance Speaker 1 (11:31) to... Speaker 3 (11:33) to figure out. So tell me about torn and how you, I say in the last few years, what you really become known for are these op-eds that really make people in the industry kind of stop and think you've done them for BOF. And I feel like maybe the FT as well, a few different publications. Um, Speaker 2 (11:50) and Speaker 3 (11:50) they kind of, I don't always agree with you, which, you know, but I definitely really admire the fact that you. bring stuff up that no one else wants to talk about and um and you as do you Speaker 1 (12:03) exactly yes um yeah it's Speaker 3 (12:07) but i wanted i think it's interesting thinking about i feel like you and i don't cover the same thing you Speaker 1 (12:13) know Speaker 3 (12:13) we don't cover the same industry Speaker 1 (12:14) and Speaker 3 (12:15) that's what is interesting about you make me think a lot about solutions and and what are possible solutions um but So what brought you to Torn and why did, can you kind of, I think laying out the thesis for the book would be helpful and what made you compelled to do it? Speaker 1 (12:36) Yeah, sure. So I want to preface that I write, I don't want you to necessarily agree with me. And I'm actually glad when people don't. All I want is to get people to think. That's it. That's the point of these op-eds. Think about the state of the industry,