Y/Project. Fall 2024 - Paris Fashion Week
For the First time since Glenn Martins debuted his runway shows for Y/Project at Paris Fashion Week in 2015, during Milan Fashion week 2024 he canceled his runway showing for Paris due to financial difficulties. Only setting up a studio/showroom setting in conjunction with the Y/Project Fall 2024 lookbook.
You don't have to be a market guru to know the economy is a mess. And without getting overly technical, which essentially is needless to the everyday person, inflation has embedded itself into the global economy. For whatever reason Central Banks have been, in the sense tardy, in their response to inflation. The reality is, interest rates should be higher, but the conundrum that these massive money printing institutions have is it could lead to recession. Is that such a bad thing? There is probably a deeper philosophical discussion on boom and bust economies, but for the last two decades we have not gone into a recession, instead, there has been massive interventions by Central Banks and Governments to keep this thing rolling, but at a cost. Massive debt piles have to be financed at some point and can't, financial speak here, be rolled over for ever. Inflation is a day of reckoning, as interest rates will blow out the lending markets. Left unchecked, businesses have to keep upping prices, and basically pricing themselves and the consumer out of existence. Materials and goods become so much more expensive. This is the worst case scenario for the independent creator, the artist, fashion designer and seller. And I would argue that deflated prices, with a recessionary economy actually invigorates creativity, and toughens businesses more than the long standing inflated hyperconsumption one, which has gone on unabated for awhile now.
And even worse for creatives in a priced out world, are the conglomerates like Kering and Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) who have sucked up luxury brand names and churned through countless Creative Directors to source newer markets. All very detrimental to the smaller fashion designers who are already struggling, and with no chance in competing with these corporate entities. They simply do not have the financial weight to offset rising prices. All the while Kering and LVMH have cornered the fashion market, with their extravagant runway shows. To which Demna Gvasalia of Balenciaga (Kering) comes to mind, with his latest show at Paris Fashion week that was so ridiculously over-the-top, yet his collection, overall had an amateurish backlash feel to it. As noted in my review of his Fall 2024 showing, it was almost like a mockery of the challenge that newer fashion designers, and their brand names will have, in trying to enter this cost expensive fashion industry.
I have been reviewing Y/Project for over 6 years, as one of the key Avant-garde brands which emerged in 2010 created by the late Yohan Serfaty, whoes artisan inspired, black drapey ensembles assisted in defining the trend. To which Martens, who took over Y/Project brand after Serfaty passed away in 2013, and so did the late designer's dark and edgy stylizations. Rather, Martens upped the ante of Y/Project with his take on the pychosexual, unisex, denim arrays. But, despite the gothic overtures of the late Serfaty laid to rest. Martens's has enviograted his version of the Avant-garde as more of a defined architecturally inspired, postmodern offset to the modenst trends that lined the runways from 2010 onward. After all dark, asymmetrical and drapey avant-garde styles, and labels, began to fade out. However, I feel Martens tenure with Y/Project could be also fading out? Considering the cash flow issues that Y/Project has, and Martens honesty to the fashion press on how dire it was for Y/Project's Fall 2024 collection, hence the showroom, rather than runway show, and his friends as models posing for the latest Y/Project lookbook. Hypothetically, if Y/Project was to get a cash injection from a conglomerate or an offer to be acquired, of the many times this has occurred. It has been the creative director, who is usually asked to leave.
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(A.Glass 2024)
All my Y/Project reviews to date: chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/search?q=Y%2FProject
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