Is Fashion Stuck in Its Simulation Era?

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Welcome back to Tech Mode, your monthly guide to how AI and other technologies are changing the fashion industry.

First up, ICYMI, here’s some of our top tech coverage from last month:

• The boom in AI wealth is fueling a surge in demand for luxury beauty and wellness, Daniela Morosini reports for The Business of Beauty.
• The Phia scandal took another twist as Bloomberg revealed that co-founders Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni were aware their app was claiming credit for sales it didn’t drive.
• I took a look at how one basic practice is often the difference between getting good returns on your AI investments or coming up short.

Let’s get to our main topics.

How Images Ate Fashion

Eugene Rabkin has established himself as an incisive and cutting critic of the fashion industry, decrying what he sees as the triumph of commercial interests over creativity in the fashion system on his site, StyleZeitgeist, and in publications like The Business of Fashion, where he’s a contributor.

His new book, “Torn: Fashion and Post-Modernism,” seeks to explain how we got here. The culprit isn’t just corporate pursuit of profits — although it’s that, too, Rabkin says. But he also traces the problems that have left fashion, in his view, so creatively impoverished to wider cultural and technological shifts which have given rise to a postmodern society so heavily mediated by images that they are often more powerful than the physical world. According to Rabkin, the fashion imagery we see on our phones has become the primary way we engage with clothing, superseding the real garments and accessories themselves.

Fashion’s multi-billion-dollar marketing machine harnessed and accelerated this upheaval, and for a long time the formula worked: Big fashion conglomerates experienced extraordinary growth over the past few decades as they churned out photogenic campaigns, runway shows and other made-for-Instagram events while cutting corners on the quality of the their goods.

But as the gap between marketing image and physical product has grown — amid rapid price hikes and macroeconomic pressures that squeezed all but the wealthiest shoppers — many consumers have questioned whether luxury fashion is still worth it, contributing to a deep downturn in demand.

I spoke to Rabkin about what role he thinks technology has played in creating the problems confronting fashion today, whether AI will make it all worse and whether technology can be part of the solution to these challenges. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Marc Bain: You argue in the book that tangible things like fabric quality, construction and attention to detail are not as important as they once were, because garments are valued less than the signifiers imposed on them, meaning logos. The context around that was the growing supremacy of the image in society. What role has technology played in creating this situation?

Eugene Rabkin: Technology has played the biggest role in the way we assign worth to things — and by extension to people. The way we assign it is really through image, because what we consume most is images. Whether it’s on television, the internet, social media, we judge tangible things through intangible means. Our cues for what [luxury fashion] to buy and where to buy it come from images, to the point where what I hear from a lot of retailers is that, especially younger people, come in already with the image on their phone and say, “I want this.” Stores are no longer the taste makers they used to be. Taste is made on the internet, and it’s made through the media.

That is why I argue that the quality of the garments no longer matters, and signifiers matter much more. The primary signifier is the logo, because that translates very easily onto the image. It’s an immediately recognisable marker of status. And if that is how we judge luxury fashion, then there is no incentive for luxury producers to produce things that are judged on the merit of quality of the garment themselves. They’re going to cut corners in quality, because why not? If the consumer just cares about the signifiers, why not put the most effort into the signifier?

If the smartphone screen, as you say in the book, is the number one destination for fashion imagery today, does that change not just the way clothes are manufactured, with quality being less of a priority, but also how they’re designed?

Rabkin: In my opinion, yes. I was actually a little bit surprised by the resurgence of so-called quiet luxury, because minimalism does not translate well onto an image on your phone. What translates well is not texture or small details, but colour, logos and just maximalism I guess we could say. So I do think it drives design on some level — maybe not design as much as merchandising, but yes, image is paramount. We now have entire brands that have been solely image first, and by the time you look at the product itself, you often can realise that the product is quite subpar.

You refer in the book to French theorist Guy Debord’s idea of “the alienation of the consumer,” saying we now relate to products primarily through the image rather than the item itself. We’ve talked about how social media can play into this paradigm, but do you see online shopping contributing to this effect as well?

Rabkin: I think alienation of the consumer is very important. The less we are connected to the tangible things, the more alienated we become. The way e-commerce contributes to that is, again, we now judge the merit of a product solely by the pictures we’ve seen of them, so we are often as dissatisfied as not once we receive that box, open it and look at the product and realise that it does not look like it looked in the pictures, or it doesn’t fit the way it fit the model in the photo or the fabric in real life does not feel good. Repeat that cycle and the more alienated we become from tangible things. I think the resurgence of people going back to stores and the collapse of [multibrand luxury] e-commerce we have seen is the direct result of 20 years of such behaviour. There is a resurgence of the desire to go to a physical store, handle the garments, talk to the salesperson, try things on and have an experience.

What effect is this technology-driven change in priorities having on fashion and its customers?

Rabkin: The point of the book is that what we have sacrificed in the past 25 years is creativity. We have sacrificed the tangible aspects of creativity in order to live in the simulacrum of [French sociologist and cultural theorist Jean] Baudrillard’s image-driven consumption. Now, if we sacrifice [tangible qualities], then the question becomes, “Why should people be excited about luxury fashion?” Because I don’t even think at this point even luxury consumers are excited about what they’re buying.

I think the success of Matthieu Blazy is incredibly telling. I think people have been so starved for creativity and the kind of energy he has imbued Chanel with. I think we’re witnessing that creativity is important, that you can only coast so long on the simulacrum.

You point to what you call a “deskilling” in the discourse around fashion, where critics have been displaced to a degree by influencers. Some would argue the more opinions the better — and there’s certainly no shortage of opinions online. Why do you see this as bad for the fashion industry?

Rabkin: I think influencers and critics have different roles. The role of the influencer is to tell people what to buy. The influencer is basically a commerce-driven operation. Even if they start out as critically minded, the industry very quickly co-opts them. A trained critic, or a trained fashion journalist, operates by a different code of conduct. Hopefully, their knowledge is deeper, but the biggest difference is that the critical apparatus existed to counterbalance the commercial apparatus. The job of the critic is to make judgments based on the merit of the work and not on the desire to sell the work.

I think this postmodernist mentality of relativism of taste — that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and “who are you to judge?” — displaces the critical apparatus, and the void was filled by commercial interests. People still desire to have someone at least take the temperature of the industry and to have a voice against which they can compare their own worldviews.

One thing you don’t get into in the book is where AI could take things. An image is at least a reference to a physical object. With AI, you might not even have that physical object anymore.

Rabkin: My philosophy when it comes to technology is that the man is the measure of all things. You can use technology to good ends. You can use technology to bad ends. Technology is amoral. It’s people who give that technology the moral dimension. When it comes to AI, it will probably make operations easier for smaller brands, and I think that will be beneficial.

But the main problem with AI is that, at this point, it’s pretty much regurgitation of what’s been done. AI is actually an extension of postmodern malaise, because postmodernist aesthetics is about recombination of past styles. It’s not about genuine innovation.

Technology has been a key force driving these problems you outline, but you aren’t exclusively pessimistic about technology in the book either. Obviously without the internet, your site, StyleZeitgeist, wouldn’t exist. What are some of the ways things like the internet and social media benefit fashion?

Rabkin: The internet and social media have been incredibly beneficial by allowing independent voices to filter through. Like you said, there would be no StyleZeitgeist without the internet, and I would not be a fashion critic and a fashion writer without the internet. It has enabled a new class of independent journalists, musicians, artists, all kinds of creators, and also has been beneficial for small brands and small retail because it does allow them to access new audiences. I’ve been marketing my book on Instagram. In that way, of course, it’s wonderful.

At the end of the book, as part of the solution to fashion’s current predicament, you propose a scenario where like-minded people connect with one another and create independent scenes. Could the internet be a tool for these scenes to grow, and could our algorithmic social-media feeds even help to direct people to the things they will like? Or is that not realistic? Do we have to get off the internet and be out in the world connecting with people in person?

Rabkin: No, we don’t need to get off the internet. Social media and the internet can provide a layer in the building of what I call the alternative fashion ecosystem. But we will need independent brands, independent stores, independent fashion media and independent-minded consumers to create this alternative ecosystem. I am absolutely convinced that the simulacrum we have built, the internet-driven simulacrum and social media-driven simulacrum, is not enough, and I think that’s what we’re finding out right now.

Meta’s Big Settlement

By the numbers: Last week, Meta agreed to pay as much as $17.1 billion to settle a series of lawsuits brought by dozens of US states, alleging it designed Facebook and Instagram to encourage compulsive use by young people, harming their mental health. The full amount it ultimately pays will depend on whether TikTok, YouTube and Snap join it in the settlement. It reached a separate settlement of about $1 billion with Texas.

The company still faces some similar lawsuits, but this case was seen as a landmark — social media’s version of the 1990s trials against Big Tobacco. Maybe more important than the numbers was Meta’s concession that it would make major changes in how teens are able to use its platforms, such as ceasing the infinite scroll of social feeds, imposing two-hour usage limits and limiting features like beauty filters.

Why it matters: Instagram and Facebook are some of the most important marketing channels fashion and beauty brands have for reaching young consumers. If TikTok, YouTube and Snap join the agreement, brands could see their access to those shoppers significantly curtailed.

But the effects aren’t just about brands’ connections to young shoppers. “Teenagers are some of the industry’s most powerful content creators, with some amassing followings in the millions before they’ve even graduated high school,” BoF’s Diana Pearl noted last week. The new changes could potentially disrupt the wider social-media ecosystem, affecting overall engagement among teenagers.

Yes, but: The other social-media companies have yet to say whether they’ll sign on with Meta. Even if they do, it’s unclear what changes will ultimately materialise and how effective they’ll be. The changes are aimed at teens, which means tech companies will need to verify a user’s age, and the measures they have to do so are notoriously easy to get around. Last week, Bloomberg reported that in Australia, which is eight months into a social-media ban for users under 16, the share of kids between the ages of 13 and 15 on TikTok was down just one percentage point in July compared to before the ban, according to a maker of parental control software. The share of kids between 10 and 12 actually went up.

Meta has said it will invest more in parental controls and age verification, and it will have to if it really wants to change how teens use its platforms. Potentially big shifts are coming, but to understand their impact, we’ll have to wait and see what they amount to.

Why Multibrand Retailers Are Watching a Court Battle Over AI Agents

See you in court: A court case that didn’t get quite as much attention as the big social media trial involved Amazon’s attempt to bar a shopping agent from AI company Perplexity from accessing its site on the grounds that it violated a federal hacking law. Amazon had initially gotten an injunction against Perplexity, but a US appeals court overturned the ruling last month.

The decision was a milestone of its own, being the first by a federal appeals court to look at whether an AI agent had the legal right to access online platforms to perform actions like browsing, shopping and making purchases on behalf of a user.

Why it matters: The implications aren’t just limited to Amazon. Of course, Amazon had an interest in keeping Perplexity’s agent off its site. It wants shoppers to think of it as the place to start their product searches, ideally subscribing to its Prime membership programme. It could lose some of that hold if consumers are going to another company instead, in which case Amazon could become just one retailer in the vast online universe drawn on by another company’s online shopping agent as it makes a recommendation or purchase.

But the same is potentially true for any e-commerce company whose value proposition is gathering a large number of products to make it easier for human customers to find what they want, including multibrand fashion retailers. In theory, they could be bypassed as AI takes on the work of scouring the internet for the perfect product for shoppers, making their curation less necessary.

On the other hand: We’re still in the infancy of people shopping through AI platforms, and even earlier in the journey of consumers turning to autonomous agents to find and buy products. It’s far too early to assume that these forms of shopping will become the standard. Already, people can Google just about any product they want and find it — yet they still visit specific retailers because they value their curation and judgment.

That said, it would be foolish for retailers to ignore the changes happening right in front of their eyes. Shopping agents could become one more tool shoppers use to find what they’re looking for, and as it stands, retailers shouldn’t count on courts blocking them.