Fashion shows aim to be creative not only in the clothing they showcase, but also the setting they showcase them in. A mud pit is definitely unique, because certainly no other fashion shows parade their clothes around while simultaneously ruining them. There is no functional point of creating designs and turning them into clothing, which costs thousands of dollars, to intentionally let them get covered in mud. If it doesn’t wash out then congratulations Balenciaga because you’ve poured thousands of dollars into a piece of clothing that can never be worn again, aka the fastest fashion there could ever be. If the mud does wash out then you’re going to spend thousands of more dollars on specially dry cleaning these pieces. And for what? An original fashion set at the expense of French wetlands, which is where the mud came from? Do better. There are a few ethical ways to disrupt an environment with the intent of extracting over 500,000 pounds of mud, but hopefully Balenciaga was kind enough to return most of the mud back to where it came from without exposing it to any harmful chemicals or bacteria. Brands like Balenciaga, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, etc. are a step up from fast fashion brands like Forever 21 in the sense of how rapidly they produce new clothing and promote new trends, but how much better can they really be?

At the heart of it all is the true problem: overconsumption. These name brands are targeted towards celebrities and the ultra-rich who can afford to spend the equivalent of my college tuition on something like a crocodile-skin handbag. These "elite" people hoard a disproportionate amount of this country’s wealth, and with that they can often afford a multitude of luxury products like these. These extravagant pieces of clothing take over more than half of Kim Kardashian's closet, and I could bet many of these pieces are to be worn once for a fashion-based event and left to hang on display for the rest of their shelf life. To create a new clothing line then to display the pieces covered or dragged in mud laughs in the face of ethical fashion. Balenciaga’s fashion show promotes the notion of wearing a piece once and never again, which is odd considering how little commentary Denma (the collection and show designer) had for the collection. However, he did say this: “Individualism in fashion is downgraded to pseudotrends dictated by a post in stories of some celebrity of the moment,”. Hey Denma, didn’t Kanye West (a man who continues to be infamous across pop-culture media) walk in your show? …Just an observation. This isn’t the traditional framework of fast fashion, nor are this company and companies like it the root of fast fashion, but it’s undeniable that it questions the ethics of these designer brands. Top fashion companies are truly just fast fashion for the rich and, they are another blow to hit the proverbial environmental punching bag.

Sources:

https://www.balenciaga.com/en-us/summer-23

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/style/balenciag...