Fashion has been relegated to a sqaure frame in social media that last as long as the moment it takes to scroll to the next post.

Finally.. got my copy of ANTI-FASHION MANIFESTO by Lidewij Edelkoort.

I’ve been in fashion longer than I’d like to admit, and I’ve always looked at my craft and industry with so much reverence and passion. But sadly, fashion as a creative profession has diminished consistently over the years.

The context of quantity and visibility has overwhelmed what fashion once was. It used to be a dynamic form of self-expression and cultural reflection, a discipline that held a mirror to society, challenged convention, and moved people emotionally. Now it’s largely a race for brands to acquire CTR and create conversions through piecemeal designs, engineered for the scroll rather than the soul.

Edelkoort’s manifesto doesn’t mince words, and neither should we. She indicts the entire system, the fashion schools churning out trend-chasers instead of thinkers, the retailers reducing clothes to units, the media collapsing editorial depth into content volume. What strikes me most is that this isn’t a crisis of creativity alone, it’s a crisis of purpose. We stopped asking what clothes mean and started asking only what they sell.

The democratisation of fashion was supposed to liberate it. Instead, it flattened it. When everything is visible, nothing is truly seen. When everything drops, nothing truly lands. The industry traded its cultural authority for algorithmic relevance, and quietly, without much protest, we let it happen.

I still believe in fashion’s capacity to matter. In its ability to carry identity, memory, craft, and intention within a single silhouette. But recovering that will require something the industry has grown deeply uncomfortable with,

restraint, slowness, and the courage to make things that don’t immediately perform.

Because a culture that cannot dress itself with meaning has already begun to undress its soul.