In 2010 the fashion designer Alexander McQueen who was struggling with depression, hanged himself after taking cocaine, sleeping pills, and tranquillisers.
Recording a verdict of suicide, the Westminster coroner, Dr Paul Knapman, said “It’s such a pity for a man who, from a modest start, climbed to the top of his profession only to die in such tragedy.”
Knapman concluded that the designer “killed himself while the balance of his mind was disturbed”.
The designer’s psychiatrist said he had mixed anxiety and depressive disorder for at least three years and had twice taken drug overdoses as “cries for help”.
Dr Stephen Pereira, who arranged for McQueen to be seen by a consultant psychologist, added that the designer’s workload had a direct effect on his mental state.
“He certainly felt very pressured by his work, but it was a double-edged sword,” said Pereira. “He felt it was the only area of his life where he felt he had achieved something. Usually after a show, he felt a huge comedown. He felt isolated, it gave him a huge low.”
In 2011 John Galliano, the creative director of Dior was sacked from his post as creative director of the French fashion house Dior when he was arrested in a drunken state after the anti-Semitic incident in the Parisian bistro.
At his trial, Galliano described the stress of the fashion industry and the success of Dior and how he could not cope without alcohol or drugs.
“I started having panic attacks. I couldn’t go to work unless I had taken some Valium,” he said.
He started drinking “in a cyclical way” in 2007. “After every creative high, I would crash and the drink would help me to escape.”
These two aforementioned examples of how burnout in the industry could result are probably extremes, because here we are talking of two legends, genies, two personalities who became game-changers, and their lives and impacts on the fashion ecosystem are taught at the fashion schools.
Although there are hundreds of people working in fashion who are struggling with depression and subsequently burnout silently or with very little attention from their peers. The price to pay for being part of this elitist, highly competitive world that is supposed to make “less mortals” dream dreams of beauty and perfection unreachable for most of us?
The frenetic rhythm of the industry is getting more and more insane. The conversations about slowing down, producing less, and consuming consciously, so popular during the Covid-2019 lockout seemed to sink into oblivion with the post-pandemic shows and fashion-related events doubled in their number and related expenses.
Feast during the plague? Dancing on the edge of a volcano?
The creative directors are changing at the speed of a season, or even faster: some of them leaving the house after just one collection (Ludovic de Saint Sernin exited Ann Demeulemeester fashion house a little over two months after showing his debut fall 2023 collection).
Some die before even showing any collection, just after an appointment at the creative head (Davide Renne, the newly-appointed Creative Director of Moschino and former longstanding stalwart of the Gucci design team, has died at the age of 46 in 2023, ten days since he assumed his new role at the Italian fashion brand).
Why and when all this illness which is corrupting the fashion ecosystem did start?
Delving into the origins of this phenomenon brings us to the times when designers ceased being independent in favor of big conglomerates who were buying stakes or the totality of the house and, subsequently installed the system where financial reports dictate what (as cheaply as possible in terms of production ), when (as often as possible) and how (with an immediate effect of desirability reached through social networks and influencers) to create.
High fashion, its garments, and very private shows used to be the privilege of happy few. The names of the clients of the French Haute Couture houses were regulars of the high society timelines: cinema stars, princesses, wives, daughters, and mistresses of rich men. It remains relatively so even in our days.
By contrast, its visual aspect has been much more democratized through the recent decades. Nowadays nearly everybody can have access to the streams that enable online experience of what the people physically present at the runway can see and feel.
As a result, even if the very high prices keep high fashion away from the mass market, the looks that could be more or less easily reproduced without resorting to the artisans of art (who are a keystone of haute couture) are adopted by the fast fashion chains and spread to the wide audience. Making haute couture much more attractive and popular. What’s wrong with that would you naturally ask?
The problem is that surprisingly here is where the vicious circle starts: the more the high fashion shows are democratizing, the more the derivatives of high fashion looks descend to the mass market, and the more the market wants the Haute Couture Houses to produce their products. Not just to keep the offer at the same pace but, to follow the rules of capitalism (the system within which we are all functioning) to endlessly increase the offer and the resulting revenues.
Following the above logic, burnout occurs once the people who work in the industry cannot keep up with the frenetic demand this industry sets. Experiencing constant pressure, be it deadlines for the next collection delivery, fear of being dismissed at any time in case they are considered not enough happy with their “highly privileged and creative job” lacking productivity or ideas, or simply too busy at work to live anything else besides it.
Looks like a trap?
There is always a solution!
What if we remember the resolutions we were all so enthusiastic about while COVID-19 made all of us slow down and look around back in 2019?
Do we need all these tons of clothes most of which end up in landfills? Polluting our Planet and people’s lives.
Consuming less would undeniably lead to less production. Less production would lead to better quality of the final product and the development of new technologies and skills linked to the recycling and mending the existing garments.
Probably the whole capitalist system as it exists today, needs to be reimagined.
High Fashion is an important part of our society. It has turned into a powerful industry generating billions of dollars every year.
It’s time to return to the roots of Haute Couture and remember how much the Art and Craft play in it, notions which are to be free of any market constraints. This very part is what capitalists cannot buy.
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