Material World

Fashion, I understand, is a seductive target. It’s hard to resist attacking such a big, glossy, seemingly superficial industry. But please, can we stop? Yesterday, reading another  treatise (this one by Tom Sykes in the Sunday Telegraph) blaming fashion for John Galliano’s descent into addiction, which led to his arrest for alleged anti-Semitic remarks, which led to his firing from Christian Dior and the house that bears his name, which led to a trial last week, I wanted to rip my hair out. Come on. Can we get some perspective?

Pressure can exacerbate problems, yes. And the fashion world is full of public pressure: few other sectors require someone to perform creatively on demand, two to six times a year (or in Mr Galliano’s case, more). Performance anxiety is pretty much par for the course. And I have been as vocal as anyone about pointing out that this cycle is getting faster and faster and harder to handle, and should perhaps be slowed, for everyone’s sake (consumers included; whose eye can really digest so much stuff?). But that is different from saying, as Mr Sykes does of Mr Galliano: Bbeing found guilty may mean he is one of the lucky ones – one of those who gets out of fashion alive.”

Really?

How many designers are there in the fashion world? How many brands? Well, on the  women’s wear schedule there were 306 shows last season (the season of Mr Galliano’s discontent). Of those few hundred designers, there were two high-profile departures: Christophe Decarnin of Balmain and Mr Galliano. I would say most people in fashion get out alive. There are a number of highly successful designers under the same amount of pressure as Mr Galliano who manage to handle it, who are self-aware enough to understand what they can handle and what they cannot. It seems to me that is part of being an executive: understanding how to handle the pressure and how to structure your job so that you can manage it.

Which brings me to Dior. Is it the company’s job to force a designer into rehab? Over the weekend Sidney Toledano, CEO of Dior, told Cathy Horyn of the New York Times: “There were concerns, and we warned him officially. I’ve talked to the lawyers for years.” It seems to me that is fair enough, though it’s unclear how stark the terms were: do this or you are fired? It would be understandable that the company did not want to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.

It is the job of friends and family to make their loved one go through rehab: when Marc Jacobs had personal problems, it took Robert Duffy, his very close friend and business partner, to  get him to rehab. So where were Mr Galliano’s friends in this situation?

Instead, everyone is blaming fashion, it seems. The same way fashion is blamed for body dysmorphia among young girls (it’s those skinny models!). The same way it is blamed for forcing consumers into debt by pushing all those newer/bigger/better buttons we all seem to have.

But here’s the thing: what happened with Mr Galliano and what happened earlier, as Mr Sykes points out, with Isabella Blow and Alexander McQueen (both of whom committed suicide) are tragedies, unquestionably. But they are personal tragedies.

Designers’ personal lives don’t deserve to become pawns in a cultural/political battle over the value (or non) of the fashion world. That debate should be fought on its merits.