Fashion Drama

An essay on a tumultuous relationship with fashion by fashion writer Mrs. Mo Veld.

My mother was the it-girl of her village on the riverside. As the daughter of the multitalented shoemaker nicknamed ‘the luxury’ she had a reputation to uphold. Back then it was nothing special to make your own fashion using your own sewing machine. Fashion was simple in those days. Magazines for homemade fashion like Burda could be found in every Desperate Housewife’s home. With a bit of fantasy and dexterity you could easily steal the show with the widest petticoat, the most pastel of skirt suits, the most floral boho skirt or the prettiest embroidery on your jeans. An avid ice skater, my mother knew very well that her pirouettes looked so much better if she wore a spruce little outfit. She had a beautiful Vespa scooter to complete her look of tight cigarette trousers and polka dotted tops. That is how she seduced my father, a fashion icon himself from another village on the riverside. A real James Dean but better: he wore the most beautiful tailored suits and ever polished pointy shoes with his Norton motorcycle. In short, a rebel with style and lots of Brylcream. They made for a good couple.

So what was I to do, as the righteous daughter of my parents, but to go and work in fashion? But then, all of a sudden, it was the eighties. A whole different chapter in fashion, although now, from a retro sentiment, we make it out to be an amazing period. My innate love for fashion mixed with an intense hate from the first day I realised my dreams by entering the fashion department of the art academy. I was admitted because I could draw well and because I was abusing that horrible fashion for the entire duration of my application meeting. I was anti, but anti what? Now I know why: fashion became power dressing (those damn yuppies) and especially Big Business. But back then I started on a long journey full of detours through a field of profession that looks so glamorous on the outside but that is a big drama in reality. A fantastic drama, but not one you get off scot-free for. Get me right; my hatred was fed by an intense love, and with my laptop and my wallet I will defend fashion until the grave.

The inevitable happened — capitalism, marketing, mass media, globalism, Hollywood, MTV and Madonna. Thankfully for us anti-people, this coincided with conceptual fashion, decontructivism, street, Comme des Garçons, Margiela, the internet, vintage and DIY. It is of no use blaming it on the Netherlands, a country of compromising grocers, frugal moralizers and driven opportunists, the country that just didn’t want to be a fashion country. Luckily the ways of the fashion gods are incomprehensible et voila: is it me or can I spot fashion bubbling up from our clay soil?

Fashion was discovered as marketing tool and tadaa: the whole of Holland was watching the TV finale of the Robijn Fashion Awards [a predecessor of TV shows like Project Runway red.]. In the mean time Viktor & Rolf have finally reached world fame – and last but not least national fame - through a dizzying detour of Vogue covers and cult actresses. With their exhibition in the Gronigner Museum and later in the Louvre in Paris, Viktor & Rolf made it to the national news whilst Dutch princess Mabel said her vows in a Viktor & Rolf dress. Reason for a party.

Meanwhile ArtEZ, Fashion Institute Arnhem has spent years fighting for decent export opportunities and the necessary skills to match of new Dutch fashion talent. Through his collaboration with Puma, Alexander van Slobbe is making his way to the broad audience after years of admiration by insiders and the Japanese and taking young designers under his wing. I’ll just fast forward to ‘Karl Lagerfeld turns H&M upside down’, because more importantly, I mean this hysterical summery to be a bit cynical. Why?

Want to hear my indiscrete opinion? Fashion is for everything, for the industry, for trade, for brands, for slick Ads, for glossy magazines, top models, perfume, luxury handbags whether fake or not, for everything there is fashion culture. And culture is from the people. Culture is not the icing on the cake as it is unfortunately often seen as in the Netherlands, but culture is our identity, our root. Fashion should not only be paraded as a commercial message on a billboard. Fashion also belongs in the museum, not only as a costume historical display but also as a universal modern art, as design innovation, as philosophy. Fashion belongs, just as it belongs to pop music, to theatre and modern dance. Fashion belongs in the galleries. Fashion should be in the newspapers on a daily basis. Fashion is an ordinary phenomenon. It can be found on the streets. What’s more, that is where fashion gets its inspiration. From real people, rare people, normal unsuspecting people. Fashion is beauty, associative force, sex, aggression, collectivism, and individualism. The cloths in which we dress ourselves say essential things about our dramatic human existence. About our fantasies, our fears, power and resistance. When exposed to fashion in that manner more often, we will start to understand fashion in that sense and we will buy clothes because they give us a means of expressing ourselves. And as a result, the Netherlands will become a luminous fashion country with a flourishing fashion industry.

But first, go home, sew up the most beautiful dress you can think of using the most beautiful, most expensive fabric you can find. And for the men: first buy Fantastic Man, the international style journal made on our home soil. Because you are worth it. Just like my mother and like my father. Go on a razzle, go all out. Go fashion.

Visit the website of Mrs. Mo Veld.