1. Tom and Montana did not have to think too
hard about what to wear in order to be in perfect
harmony. He wears a shirt and jeans by Uniqlo U,
a vintage belt and socks by Pantherella. Montana
wears two tops and a jumper worn as a skirt by
Uniqlo U. Her socks and shoes are both vintage.
Children of the
revolution: fashion
is in the midst of a
seismic generational
shift.Words by
Tamsin Blanchard,
photography by
Alice Neale, styling
by Hamish Wirgman
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2. The fashion industry has enjoyed a certain status
quo for as long as I can remember. Fashion weeks
happen at pretty much the same times each year,
producing the same old circuit of New York,
London, Milan and Paris, the press (and bloggers),
the buyers, the game we all play. Perhaps the last
big shake-up that had a lasting effect was Martin
Margiela’s show in a rundown playground in north-
eastern Paris in 1989. Before that, it was Yohji
Yamamoto and Comme des Garçons’ arrival in
Paris in 1981. And before that, you have to go
back to Yves Saint Laurent’s debut in 1962.
But there is one event that arguably has more reso-
nance today than any other: Helmut Lang’s Autumn
1998 show that he decided to show in its entirety
online. Those were still the days of dial-up internet,
more than a decade before Instagram. It was a time
when fashion was suspicious of the world wide web,
paranoid about copying, anxious about too many
people seeing what they were doing, being allowed
into the inner circle.
The year before Lang’s iconic show, a young
Slovenian designer called Natasa Cagalj had gradu-
ated with a Master’s from Central Saint Martins
under Louise Wilson and had gone to work at
Cerruti. She spent her first pay cheque on a pair
of Margiela boots and she avidly followed Helmut
Lang. “I really loved his designs with all of my heart.
Unfortunately, back then I never had the money to
afford them,” she remembers. “I could just buy his
jeans, which I wore religiously, and his T-shirts.”
Cagalj went on to work at Lanvin with Alber Elbaz
and then with Stella McCartney, before taking over
as creative director at Ports 1961 two years ago.
There, she is taking the brand in her own direction:
clean, modern, sometimes masculine, but also gently
feminine, functional and, most importantly, relevant.
It speaks to women who love fashion but who do not
want to look “done”. It speaks both to the generation
who bought Lang in the 1990s and the Yeezy gener-
ation who may not even be aware of Lang’s influence
on what they are wearing.
Today we are experiencing a moment of funda-
mental change (some might say chaos). The circus
of the grand old fashion institutions picking new
designers as a replacement for old ones is not enough
to challenge the deeper transformations shaping
the industry. Designers are creating new rhythms
with their manufacturers and stockists, increasingly
beating their own drum in the way that Azzedine
Alaïa always has, the line between menswear and
womenswear blurs further, and fashion shows –
for the designers who continue with them – blend
further into the customer’s shopping experience.
Technically, the world has moved on in terabytes
since 1998. But in a world of social-media previews,
that Helmut Lang collection was 20 years ahead
of its time. I was reminded of this in July, while in
Paris during the haute-couture shows. There was
the usual parade of overblown ball gowns, outdated
codes and off-kilter references. Sure, Vetements
has injected the whole thing with a shot of adrena-
line, making up its own rules as it goes along,
but fundamentally, really, who gives a damn
about haute couture?
Certainly no one at Uniqlo’s brand-new, bright,
white research and development lab on Rue de Rivoli
was giving a second thought to the rarefied gowns
on the runways. Especially not Christophe Lemaire,
a man who is no stranger to the luxury world, but
who is now focusing his attention on an altogether
more mainstream challenge in his new role as
artistic director of the Uniqlo Paris R&D centre.
Arriving there I was greeted by a bank of recep-
tion staff all dressed in clinical white, and shown
into an open studio space. This is where Lemaire
spends half his time (the rest of the time he is at his
own brand) with a dedicated team, many of whom
have also come to Uniqlo from luxury brands. I
spoke to one designer who had previously worked at
Balenciaga. “Has high-end fashion lost touch with
reality?” I asked. She nodded, matter of fact. “I think
so, yes. At first, it was a great fantasy of mine to get
lost in embellishment or in advanced techniques,
but the final product is so expensive that it’s out of
touch with reality. Clothing is a product people are
supposed to move around in, have a life with, so if
it is something you can’t run in, you can’t wash, you
have to dry clean and is too heavy to spend the day
in, then it doesn’t really make sense.”
This seems to be the crux of the matter: while high
fashion is having an identity crisis, the world has
moved on, and it wants to dress itself with the same
ease that it dresses an avatar in a computer game.
From late September, Christophe Lemaire’s Uniqlo
U collection will make this even simpler. It is a
brilliant and concise collection, in a low key it’s-just-
what-you-want-to-wear kind of way, just three or
four rails of of what are now being called “elevated”
basics for both men and women. The colour
palette ranges from bright white through to various
shades of concrete, plaster and a touch of mustard.
There’s just one T-shirt – apparently The One, the
holy grail, the perfect T. It is made from heavier
cotton, the side seams slant to the back rather than
going straight up the side. I notice one of the team
wearing a sweatshirt where something indefinable
but brilliant has been done with the shoulder seams.
There is the archetypal A-line skirt in corduroy,
two little pockets at the hips. And there are shoes,
almost plimsoll-like in their simplicity.
“As a designer, I have always been interested in
trying to bring quality to everyday life, always
thinking of designing clothes that start from reality,”
says Christophe Lemaire. We have been shown
into a quiet meeting room, and I ask him why he
is making this shift from luxury to everyday, from
rarefied to universal. “I think there is a switch in
the textile industry and fashion industry now where
everyone thinks there is something a bit obscene
about the circus – the demonstration of power –
and that it does not really relate to people’s lives.
I think Uniqlo is a democratic brand, made for all.
Ninety-nine per cent of people do not care about
the fashion shows.” He laughs.
Not that he is not taking this seriously – Lemaire
really gets it. He is in tune with something bigger
than fashion. There is, he says, a shift in the way
people want to consume, the way we should be
producing stuff, a whole new mindset. “I think it
is just a moment in history where a certain way of
life, of consuming, is being questioned. There is an
ecological disaster going on. That is the truth. So
I think everyone is interested in rethinking every-
thing. For us, this line is proposing that we
consume less but consume better.”
“There is this crazy version of the fashion industry
that is about running after sensation and occupying
the media,” says Lemaire. “It is completely discon-
nected from reality. Every morning I have to get
dressed, and I ask myself: do I have the clothes that
fit my body, my personality, and in which I don’t feel
disguised and I feel at my best? This is what we are
interested in.”
That is the generational shift: if you have grown up
swiping at an iPhone, it is most likely that you have
a different relationship to your clothes. You relate
to brands, big brands with smart logos, whether it
is a swoosh, stripes, or, for old time’s sake, a Juicy
Couture crest. It is an approach and especially visible
among some of the most recent graduates. You like
your clothes to be fairly generic, like your tech-
nology, but you do not want to be bland.
New labels like Atlein mirror this trend. Antonin
Tron’s collections are made in France at a factory
that specialises in knitwear and jersey, and can realise
his vision of clothes that are functional, sporty even,
but glamorous and elegant. A graduate of the Royal
Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, he has worked at
Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and Balenciaga (where he
still freelances). His own collection has a cool eye on
the future, and a sense of tradition, drawing on Jean
Muir’s minimalism and Azzedine Alaïa’s craft, but
honed into something affordable and easy that his
generation will make their own.
For the MFA in Fashion Design and Society
programme at Parsons New School in New York,
course director Shelley Fox is on a mission to make
sure that the next generation are as connected to
the world as they can be. Her students leave with
a strong sense of their own identity, and an under-
standing of a society outside of the fashion elite. One
of this year’s graduates is the Siberian-born designer,
Maria Lavigina, who describes herself as a visual
artist, but whose medium is menswear. Under her
pseudonym, Jahnkoy, she has redesigned the Puma
cat as a Rastafarian lion for her logo and uses pieces
of existing sportswear to create heart-stoppingly
visceral collections. For her, fashion is an outlet
to comment on everything from consumerism to
economic, racial and cultural inequality, and what
she describes as “the perverse effects of globalisation”.
In contrast she has created an ecosystem around
her of friends and collaborators who share her
values, work on the clothes with her, who bead,
stitch, craft and graft together. She describes her
work as “a bricolage of cultural heritage, today’s
reality and an artist’s own identity”. Like Charles
Jeffrey and LOVERBOY in London, Jahnkoy has
created her own movement, her own subculture.
While fashion is globalised, it is also becoming
distinctly atomised as independent designers refuse
to play the bigger game, preferring instead to build
their own communities that they relate to – and
which relate to them. It is part of the whole ethos of
new London-based start-up ONEBYME. Founders
Elsa Ellies and Miles Dunphy describe their start-
up as “the birth of a new movement”. They work
with dancers and krumpers who they cast from
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3. Instagram to model their clothes – and they often
get involved in making them, too. Their clothes are
made entirely from patterns cut from a single piece
of cloth, a technique Ellies honed training with
Rick Owens in Milan before she started at the Royal
College of Art. It reduces waste and means people
can either buy their clothes ready made or in the
form of a kit to stitch, safety pin or staple together
themselves. In July, the pair were accepted as part of
the Innovation RCA incubator scheme, which offers
investment and mentoring to young businesses that
it believes have the potential, credibility and scal-
ability to succeed.
The designers met on the RCA Fashion MA
programme and graduated this year with their joint
project. Their approach, they say, “addresses the
ever-so-changing social, political and economic
landscape through the rebuilding of a new fashion
system”. Much like the designer John Alexander
Skelton who completed his MA at Central Saint
Martins with a collection that is so well researched
and traceable, that he can tell you about the seaweed
diet of the rare breed of sheep whose wool he uses.
Sustainability is key for ONEBYME: the whole
process from how the raw materials are sourced,
to how they are made, and ultimately, how they are
disposed of has been a part of their business model
from the start. “As emerging designers, sustain-
ability should be part of our ethos,” Ellies explains.
“It should be embedded in our designs.” Do they
think fashion has become disconnected from reality?
“Completely!” says Dunphy. “Nike is fashion today,
whereas ten years ago it wasn’t. It’s real people
wearing real clothes.”
A similarly iconoclastic approach is seen at Chin
Mens. The Taiwanese designer uses traditional
tailoring techniques but is not constrained by the
codes of menswear, using drapes, ties or cutting
into business shirts to reveal previously unexposed
erogenous zones – shoulders, navel, glimpses of
skin through the side seams. For Chin, this is
about sensuality, not androgyny – a mainstream
preoccupation that he is far beyond.
There is a rawness – and a realness – to this new
generation of which Helmut Lang might approve.
It is an authenticity and a spontaneity that Natasa
Cagalj relates to. “I grew up as a designer in the
1990s and I loved that raw approach,” she recalls.
“Things were quite spontaneous, on the go, not so
polished and this is a little bit how I like to work.”
When she was approached in 2015 to take over the
direction of the Italian fashion house, she agreed
as long as she could do it on her terms. So Cagalj
relocated the Ports 1961 design studio to London,
to the building that was once home to The Face.
“I think we have something really special going on
here,” she told me when we met there. “I thought
there was maybe a place for a brand like this
that offers quite a wide range of something very
high-end and then something affordable.”
Helmut Lang questioned the status quo of the
system even if he did not change it himself. He
knew that if the product was strong enough, it
would stand on its own. Lang was powerful enough
to turn the fashion calendar upside down – he
decided to show his collection at the beginning of
the season rather than at the end. He understood
that truly great fashion was about the subtlety of
the seams rather than the scene. Ultimately he was
a free spirit untethered by the rules of the game.
Still today, the clarity of his vision is like a laser
cutting through fashion’s insular obsession with
trends, superfluous detail, overblown concepts
and its slavery to celebrity endorsements.
You can draw a line from Lang’s work to that
of Cagalj, Yeezy, Uniqlo U, and in many ways,
to ONEBYME and the raw tribalism of Janhkoy.
The influence is tangible, and Cagalj is the first
to admit it: “For me, he is one of the most impor-
tant designers of our era. I don’t think he even gets
enough credit because the brand is something else
now. Lang and Margiela were my heroes. But I think
he was doing everything that people are trying to
do now. The kind of practical way of wearing
clothes, the advertising he did, it was always
different. It is fascinating because he was a male
designer, but there was something so gentle and
practical to his clothes. Even on the rails, jackets
and coats were not separated as men’s and women’s
– they were one thing”. He was, she says, completely
revolutionary. And it is perhaps only now that the
revolution is really happening. §
It is all about the elevation of basics. Opposite,
Montana wears a jacket and trousers by Ports 1961,
which has recently been given a fresh start by Natasa
Cagalj, with a T-shirt from American Apparel, socks
by Pantherella and vintage shoes.
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4. It is as much an attitudinal shift as a generational one.
Under her mother’s watchful gaze, Montana wears a coat
and shoes by Azzedine Alaïa – a designer who has always
played by his own rules. Her mother, Karen, wears a dress
by Azzedine Alaïa, socks by Pantherella, vintage boots
and her own ring. Opposite, Montana wears a skirt by
Atlein as a hat.
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5. On this page, Tom can change the world in his
jumper and trousers by Chin Mens and socks
by Pantherella, while right, he wears a jacket by
Chin Mens with the very same trousers and socks.
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6. On this page, Montana wears a dress by Atlein
and socks by Pantherella. Karen also wears a
dress by Atlein, with her own ring. The dog wears
nothing. Opposite, Montana wears a hat and vest
by John Alexander Skelton with vintage earrings.
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7. On this page, left and right, Montana wears a top
and skirt by Atlein with socks by Pantherella and
vintage shoes. Opposite, Montana calmly balances
a plate while wearing a dress by Atlein with the same
socks as before. Overleaf, Montana wears two tops
by Uniqlo U and mushrooms.
Photography assistant: Alessandro Tranchini / Models:
Tom A at Tomorrow is Another Day, Montana and Karen
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