Our Unity is the Power to Transform

The avant-garde merit of a women’s beauty honours her intelligence, compassion, and self-assurance.  Notably we see this shift in beauty standards communicated on the June cover of British Vogue with the debut of the oldest Vogue ‘cover girl’ with 85-year old Dame Judi Dench (a record previously held by Vogue Italia with 73-year old Lauren Hutton), – A statement that defies the false notion that beauty is reserved for the young. 

Transformation requires honesty and vision–so, we look to artists for inspiration.  According to The Complete Artists Way,  “Artists are visionaries…Seeing clearly and moving toward a creative goal that shimmers in the distance—often visible to us, but invisible to those around us.  It is our work that creates the market, not the market that creates our work.” 

This notion of market impact by artists is particularly true when it comes to fashion creatives who communicate what the rest of the world is trying to say, but with faster speed. There has been a lot of recent talk from fashion on post-pandemic fundamental business shifts. However, now is the time for fashion action– a redesign of the future by going back to their creative roots and owning their role by engaging creative talent that moves society forward with magnanimous change that promotes ethics over profits. 

In societies where economic and political systems are made of privately-owned industries, for-profit focused business practices can be legal yet unethical where the means often justifies the end with layers of policies that give the appearance of ethics with practices that are not genuinely equitable.  Industry secrets often don’t protect sustainability, profit equitability and production quality. According to The Fashion Transparency Index 2020 , the average transparency score across 250 brands is 23% with Tom Ford at the bottom of the list. 

There is no fashion greeting committee that ushers you into a chiffon filled magical world—that experience is reserved for the privileged few who are considered deserving enough to belong.  Perhaps, the new role for fashion gatekeepers should be seen as industry ambassadors with the focus on bringing people together rather than keeping people apart.  The antidote to a closed culture is its democratization—And for fashion, that means fashion belongs to the people who wear it instead of the powers who control it.  

A personal relationship to fashion does not require permission from any fashion authority. Fashion can be seen as frivolous, but it is not trite when you acknowledge its power to not only impact happiness, joy and self-acceptance, but to also tackle humanitarian issues.