Fashion criticism is now dead according to Tim Blanks The now mentor of Polimoda's course in Fashion Writing and Curation talks about the future of fashion writing
«I was never a fashion person, I will always choose music over fashion,» says Tim Blanks sitting in a beautiful greenish marble-floor room of Villa Favard, where Fiorella Favard de Langlade used to host artists’ meetings in 18thcentury Florence. Immersed in this artistic context, together with the Business of Fashion’s editor at large we talked about his views of the future of fashion both as a business and as a creative escape for young artists to flourish, the funniest part of a fashion conversation in which he is actively partaking as a mentor of the prestigious Fashion Writing and Curation Master Course by Polimoda in Florence. Contextualization, unpredictability, and the death of criticism are the main highlights of this interview I have the pleasure to call a conversation.
Approaching his career as a fashion writer, Blanks used to work with people who are nowadays considered the icons of an age that still inspires creativity, for which he is very grateful. But the thing that kept him working for years in the fashion industry was its unpredictability, a value that only exists thanks to the beautiful creative minds that build this system from its foundations, before billions of dollars began to revolve around products and creativity. Blanks has a radical view on what fashion after the pandemic needs in order to protect this unpredictable vital power and keep it relevant and interesting: «Fashion after the pandemic is not as thrilling as it used to be, it's a bigger machine with less personality now, with trends and “cores” popping up every minute. How about apocalypse-core? This strain of humankind is ending, whatever is here on earth 50 years from now will be so different. I feel there will come a time when billionaire status won't be the goal when we’ll come back to tailors, dressmaking, cobblers, and fashion will go back to being a village rather than a jumbo empire. But I think we'll need some kind of apocalypse to get back in contact with nature.»
«It is all about finding a point of contact with what you’re watching, thinking relatively, it’s the curiosity with which you approach life. But you can’t grab it if you don’t have it to begin with». So says the mentor of the Polimoda ‘s Master in Fashion Writing and Curation about the way of thinking that unites the 4 graduating students who presented their final projects during the Relative Thinking exhibition in the majestic Villa Favard, a soirée which showcased their evolution from students to magazine writers, editors, curators, artists, photo editors and graphic designers. The four editorial projects were printed magazines narrating a concept connected to the students’ inner conflicts and feelings, which vision was brought to life from print to immersive installations at the Villa. The installations aimed to engage the viewer in a multisensorial path towards understanding the student's individual visions, like the “Impossible Conversations” Between past, present and future created by Maria Callaba, or the “Anthe” roundtable happening created by Rhiti Choudhury around the subject of cultural taboos or Heide Julie Halama’s “Body Claim” which scrutinized image and body positivity. Florina Jacqueline’s “mUSED” took a startling look at the think line between pleasure and pain. The way the students wrote and structured their ideas responded to the way Tim Blanks sees fashion nowadays: «When reading about fashion, you want to understand what the designer wanted to say. And you want to see what the designer wants you to see. Christian Lacroix used to call me his therapist because through my writing he could read in words what the concept he had in his head represented to the world».
Talking about his writing experience, he summarized fashion’s role nowadays, a concept similar to what the Polimoda students followed with their work in helping the reader, and the viewer, to empathize with their point of view and find themselves in it too. Blanks defined the night as a “Biennale Arte” situation, where the primordial steps of creatives that will perhaps be shaping the industry in the future are shown to a selected audience, able to embrace – and hopefully understand - their views.
