Thirty years ago, Franco Moschino, the designer who, with both clarity and irony, first questioned the world of fashion and fashion itself through his runway shows and creations, passed away. While respecting the traditions, he criticized the rituals and myths of the golden years of Italian prêt-à-porter. “I’m not a designer,” “Stop the Fashion System” were his iconoclastic statements in interviews and on T-shirts.
He anticipated by decades what was bound to happen: that fashion, understood as aspiration and as a dream, no longer existed. In the 1960s and 1970s, real fashion—the kind that set trends—was in the hands of couturiers who, from Rome and Paris, launched long skirts, wasp-waisted dresses, H-shaped and A-shaped silhouettes, and dictated fabrics and colors with the help of Italian textiles. They influenced sophisticated magazines like Vogue, Bazaar, Linea Italiana, with their author-driven photography, which in turn set trends for stores and seamstresses to follow. Fashion shows were attended in their ateliers, seated on golden chairs, with no more than two or three rows of guests.
The models were called “mannequins.” The photographers were house photographers, and they allowed very few photographs to be published in advance: Balenciaga released only two, and Givenchy three. Elegant women adhered to the dictates. Others sought out imitations or sewing patterns made by seamstresses—or even by themselves. Meanwhile, the cultural and sartorial revolution began, eventually dismantling the old system. Elio Fiorucci, to whom the Triennale is dedicating an exhibition from now until April, opened his democratic emporium in Milan in 1967, a melting pot of ideas that announced a new direction, one already started in London with the first concept store Biba and its contemporaries. By the 1980s, Haute Couture became even more exclusive, while tailors and seamstresses vanished, swept away by the unstoppable rise of ready-to-wear, which combined individual creativity, industrial vision, youthful desires, international expansion, new design, and the pursuit of youth, with mothers dressing like their daughters. Fashion still set trends, now easier, more democratic, and more inclusive, multiplied through the secondary and tertiary lines of designers, whose names spread like a kaleidoscope through perfumes, makeup, accessories, bags, luggage, and even furniture, hotels, and restaurants—everything, becoming a symbol of fame and success.
Giorgio Armani graced the cover of Time in 1982, symbolizing national pride. A moment of glory for him and for “Italians,” which, fortunately, still endures thanks to his talent and resilience. The minimalist trends of the 1990s did not diminish the value of fashion, which had reached the peak of its influence. Designers shaped lifestyles; they became the new stars and demiurges. We knew about their families, loves, vacations, and passions (almost all of which revolved around work, like true workaholics). Movie divas were replaced in the collective imagination by international supermodels, launched by Gianni Versace and then sought after by everyone.
Another key moment: fast fashion emerges. Zara and H&M opened large stores around the turn of the century in European capitals, inviting customers to enter, offering continuously updated fashionable collections at low prices that changed often—not every six months like prêt-à-porter collections.
The Golden Years were nearing their end, but few noticed. With the turn of the century, we entered the Age of Chaos—social, economic, political, aesthetic, and fashion chaos. The internet arrived like a hurricane, sweeping away all old habits, and nothing was ever the same again. For Millennials, who were handed a computer to keep them calm as babies and grew up accustomed to traveling the world and buying anything with a click, everything that came before them seems like history.
Today, as Moschino predicted, there are no longer designers who become the emblem of an existential philosophy you can either embrace or reject. Instead, there are "creative directors" working for various international funds who replace them without hesitation when marketing directors spot a sales decline. These creative directors bring their style to another brand, often diving into archives and reworking them in their own image. This is what happened with the idolized Alessandro Michele, who, after making a name for himself at Gucci with his eclectic mix of vintage pieces, moved to Valentino. His debut there drew on the 1970s archive of a designer devoted to feminine beauty, now mixed with the faces, makeup, tattoos, and facial accessories of today’s youth. The set design, with veiled furniture and a broken mirror floor, like an abandoned house, seems to evoke ghosts of the past and a pessimistic vision of fashion. “Stop the Fashion System!” Moschino shouted, and little of it remains when we see how rock stars, with their hybrid styles and provocations broadcast to millions by TV and social media, have become the first influencers of their own fashion trends. When we’re surprised to see tattoos, nudity, and gender transformations as common forms of self-expression beyond clothing. When we cheer for spectacular fashion shows like a masquerade ball and wonder, "Who would actually wear those clothes?"
All Narcissists, young people look into the mirror and create their own image without relying on others' ideas—celebrating their uniqueness. The fashion that the baby boomers created no longer exists, dissolved into extreme individuality over time.
Thanks to democratization, self-communication, e-commerce, fast fashion, and now the ultra-cheap online fashion giants like Temu and Shein, who deliver fashionable clothes at such low prices that you wonder how it's possible, the number of clothes has skyrocketed—too many clothes, flooding us from every communication channel, a little less from women's magazines, but much more from advertisements and smartphones. Does fashion still matter?
I don’t think so, even though the question lingers. But I’m waiting for the moment when those who hold financial and industrial power will realize this and give new momentum, resources, and confidence to the visionary young creators working quietly within the system—creators whom companies ignore today because challenges aren’t "on trend."