From personal memory to heritage and social questions, fashion does more than shape how we look, it reflects where we come from and who we want to become.
Sometimes, we wear the clothes of someone we have not yet become. We choose a jacket for a job interview and look at our reflection as though we are meeting a version of ourselves waiting for its moment. We imagine how that person will enter the room, how they will speak, and where they will stand. Appearance gets a head start on experience, and getting dressed becomes a small rehearsal for the life we want.
There is something of the familiar idea of “Fake it till you make it” in this: we act with the confidence we aspire to have, while experience gradually gives us reasons to feel it. A jacket does not guarantee a path to success, but choosing one can be our personal way of declaring that we are ready, even when the feeling of being ready comes later. What draws us to a particular look may be the person we imagine ourselves becoming in it.
Fashion shows operate in this space between the person we are now and the person we want to become. They present clothes and give them bodies, movement, music and a setting, suggesting along with them different ways of being present and belonging. Here, the personal question grows broader: Do we choose what brings us closer to ourselves, or do we learn to desire an image that others have chosen for us?
Look from Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer 2001 collection, known as Voss. (Archive)
At Alexander McQueen’s “Voss” show, held in London in September 2000 to present the Spring/Summer 2001 collection, the audience sat before a huge box whose mirrored surfaces reflected their own images. Before the models appeared, those in attendance were watching themselves. When the lighting changed, the interior was revealed, and the models began moving through an enclosed space, unable to see the spectators behind the glass.
The scene can be read as a reversal of the usual relationship between the viewer and the viewed. Those who had come to assess bodies and clothes found themselves, first, confronted with their own image. McQueen made the act of looking itself part of the show, opening the door to questions about the power we exercise when we decide who is beautiful and who deserves attention.
In this sense, reading fashion shows simply as a mirror of society is not enough. A mirror reflects what is placed before it, while the runway carefully chooses the image it presents: it revisits a past, gives one group a presence, and leaves another outside the picture. It participates in shaping the image that society wants to believe about itself.
Look from Elie Saab's Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2015 collection, inspired by his childhood memories and Beirut of the 60s. (Vogue)
In his Spring/Summer 2015 Haute Couture collection, Elie Saab returned to his childhood and to 1960s Beirut. A photograph of his parents appeared in the show booklet, while a tulip-print dress belonging to his mother inspired some of the collection’s details. A family photograph was transformed into clothing presented before an international audience, turning a childhood memory into material for design.
What makes this example distinctive is that Lebanese identity emerges through an intimate experience. In fashion, belonging can sometimes become a feeling that can be translated into cuts, colors and embroidery, allowing its expression to extend beyond familiar heritage symbols.
In Zuhair Murad’s Spring/Summer 2021 Haute Couture collection, the Lebanese cedar appeared as a visual reference through embroidery evoking branches and the rings of tree trunks. The designer linked the collection to his attachment to Lebanon and his desire to deliver a message of hope.
Between Saab’s image of his mother and Murad’s cedar, we see two ways of presenting identity: personal memory and a shared symbol. The comparison raises a question that goes beyond the two examples: How can a designer renew their relationship with heritage so that it becomes part of a contemporary language while retaining its distinctiveness?
For Dior’s Spring/Summer 2020 Haute Couture show, Maria Grazia Chiuri collaborated with artist Judy Chicago to create an artistic space titled “The Female Divine.” The show took place inside a monumental structure representing the figure of a goddess, accompanied by banners centered around the question: “What if women ruled the world?”
The collaboration brought a feminist artistic practice into the heart of the show’s staging, allowing its questions to reach an audience that might encounter, through fashion, experiences it had not been seeking out in museums. But bringing the idea into a commercial institution also subjects it to a different test: What remains of the question when it is transformed into a desirable image?
This questioning makes the reading of the show more serious. Raising a slogan about women calls for examining their place in the workplace and in decision-making, just as celebrating craftsmanship calls for asking about the people behind those skills and recognizing their contributions. The strength of a cultural message is also measured by the relationship between what an institution presents and what it practices.
Chanel Fall/Winter 2014–2015 show in Paris. (Stéphane Mahé)
Chanel presented the intersection of culture and commerce with striking clarity in its Fall/Winter 2014–2015 show, when Karl Lagerfeld transformed the Grand Palais in Paris into a supermarket, complete with aisles, shelves and products bearing the house’s branding. The models moved through a space that recreated the experience of everyday shopping, which the luxury brand had completely reimagined.
