The Future of Fashion

The question itself is meant to provoke new thinking, even dreaming. What is the future of fashion? the editors of Vogue ask 100 leaders in the field and spell it out in their September issue. It's the kind of self-assessment happening in every field.  What are schools without classrooms, performing arts without audiences, fashion without anywhere to wear the latest look?  Things are shaking down.  Like trees shedding their golden coronas, each area of our life is slowly baring its architecture of branches. We're vulnerable.  We're visible, stripped of our leafy golden faces in the world.

And it's just such honest moments as these that things begin to change.

The leaders of fashion dreamt a new world, as told in Vogue, and painted it in consistent calls to action.  The future of fashion?
- needs to represent talent from diverse cultures, backgrounds and races
- must reduce industry waste and toxic effects on the environment
- will turn to slow fashion, with fewer collections, fewer pieces per collection, timeless quality garments
- demands a new respect for the makers as well as the designer, elevating the artisanal
- must learn to give back to the communities where garments are made
- will reflect deeper values, purpose, stories; will value substance over spectacle. 

When fashion's extravagence is blown away, exposed is a longing for an authentic, empathetic, and more just center.  I couldn't help but notice that all of the changes hoped for are exactly those which have guided Ibu for the past five years.  The future is now. It is here. 

It's time to ask what really matters. It's exactly where we need to be. Putting it down. Making it clear.  Designing a new world.  

with big hope,
Susan Hull Walker