The Fashion Industry Seems Detached From The World Around It. Can It Reconnect?

At the menswear industry’s opening-night party, waiters passed picture-perfect hors d’oeuvres and bartenders poured booze. Common was on the bill. Cadillac sponsored it all. The party conversation, half-heard over the fashionable din, was about which shows might be good — and which might be a bore. Folks nodded and smiled even if they heard only one-third of what was said. It didn’t matter; just small talk after all. But then the topic changed. Dallas. They leaned in close — heads almost touching, don’t want to miss a word — when the fashion director of Neiman Marcus began to talk about the mood back in the gleaming Texas city where the company is based: Why here? Why did the shooter target our police? Fashion — as an industry — feels disconnected from today’s news. Like some oblivious bystander. The industry en masse seems diffident. The power of its collective voice goes unused in matters of social justice, national turmoil, political pandemonium. Read more at The Washington Post.