Batting For Baseline

Is fashion tired of using a loudhailer to make an entrance? On the ss’20 runways, there seems to be a consensus

- Andrea Sim

The half a decade indoctrinated a style guide of extreme measures. At Gucci by Alessandro Michele, every day was the Met Gala: Camp Notes on Fashion. With Vetements, football-sized shoulder pads had a home off the playing field. Under Moncler Genius, Craig Green built down-filled armour fit for Bubble Boy. The list goes on. Collectively, fashion designers had posed a question: Why whisper when you can yell?

The noise also extended to the circumstances under which clothing were unveiled. Show sets like a custom-built cruise ship raised its voice over the statement a flame-print puffer shirt was making on the runway. Hype art pieces, meant to serve as centerpieces or backdrops, rivalled the collections in the fervour they ignited on social media. There was a fresh flower dome built over night. A plexiglass catwalk erected over the 18th century Trevi Fountain. A pseudo airport, a functioning amusement park, a rocket that could actually levitate; just having models, clothes and a runway no longer sufficed. Show locations got far flung and then even farther flung: guests were regularly jetted off to Provence! Oxfordshire! Havana! Marrakech!

Of course, social media had a not-soinvisible hand in this. What used to transpire for a coterie behind closed doors was now ‘grammed real time for all to see. A runway’s audience was no longer just one percenters, but anyone from a teenager in Toronto to Singapore. And like the best sort of reality TV, we all love witnessing a spectacle worthy of leaving its mark on cultural history — whether it’s Scott Disick taking up Lordship, or Derek Zoolander doing Blue Steel on a Valentino runway.