Has Fashion Lost Its Soul?
Jelena Soldatovic Ristic on Fashion's Current Battle for Creativity
Fashion Month SS25 exposed the industry's duality—a conflict between creativity and consumerism, where some brands played it safe, while others plunged into commercial mediocrity.
In its first collection post-Virginie Viard, Chanel failed to redefine itself, delivering another round of tweeds and ladylike looks. Balenciaga took its oversized, dystopian aesthetic to absurd new heights—more caricature than innovation. Prada took a step forward, investigating playfulness and avant-garde with structured femininity, while The Row gave us elegant minimalism, but where was the risk? In some cases, staying true to your DNA and keeping the course is the real risk. Meanwhile, Off-White exploited Virgil Abloh’s legacy with a birthday sale, proving once again how fashion is now about selling sentiment, not innovation.
One bright spot was Chemena Kamali at Chloé, who gave us two beautiful boho collections—a much-needed injection of beauty in a season plagued by monotony. However, even she fell into the trap of repetition, with this latest collection offering little that felt truly new.
As we already know, Pierpaolo Piccioli has jumped to Fendi, and Gabriela Hearst left Chloé. Fashion’s musical chairs syndrome—the rapid turnover of designers and CEOs—shows no signs of slowing down. The industry is moving at such a breakneck speed that either the chair will break, or the music will stop altogether, leaving behind a broken system. And maybe that's the point: suffocating individuality under a tidal wave of trend-chasing mediocrity.
The Ozempic Lie & the Death of Real Diversity
Beyond the runway, the post-COVID shift in street style and everywhere is shocking. Before the pandemic, street style was about individual expression; now it’s a cookie-cutter parade of brainwashed TikTokers and copy-pasters, all chasing the same viral trends. The diversity the industry claims to embrace feels fake, especially as Ozempic thins out celebrities, one by one. Ultimately, everyone is still trying to be thin, beautiful, and popular as the key point, no matter what it takes. Diversity has been turned into another trend—a distraction from the reality that thinness remains the only real standard of beauty.
A Broken System or an Intentional Destruction of Individuality?
Fashion has become a race to the bottom, as brands sacrifice creativity for profit. Leadership changes—Sabato De Sarno at Gucci, Piccioli at Fendi, Jonathan Anderson at Loewe—have only sped up the **musical chairs**. If the pace continues, the system risks collapsing, unless it finds a way to balance innovation and **commercial demands.
Or maybe this is the plan—to create a world where individuality no longer exists, and everyone is chasing the next empty trend without substance or meaning. Buy until you die.
100%—look at street style before and after COVID, and it’s obvious. What was once about personal expression is now dictated by Z-list celebrities aka Zelebrities and influencers with bloated egos, feeding off of fear and fake freedom. Fashion’s soul is being suffocated, and true creativity is slipping away.
The question is: will fashion reclaim its identity, or continue its downward spiral into irrelevance?
The general feeling is after being at the concert where you still try to find the music within so much noise.