DECEMBER EDITORIAL

I read a very interesting article about the current crisis in fashion. I’ll try to tell you about it and share my opinion. There was a time when fashion had a clear distinction between what represented luxury, reserved for a few, and the products that were instead accessible to everyone. The language was clear, identity-driven, and not commercial. Not anymore. Today this entire framework has collapsed, and fashion itself has turned into a big melting pot staged on a global platform. For a long time, fashion worked as a cultural code, a way to mark belonging and to express who we were, as well as to sell products. Clothes were worn stories, roots, projections of desires. But luxury had its own discretion: it didn’t flaunt, it suggested. Think of the absolute and timeless elegance embodied by women like Jacqueline Kennedy, Marella Agnelli, or more recently Franca Sozzani.

Today that structure has crumbled, and fashion has become a huge showcase that lives on instant visibility. Distinction has given way to exhibition, identity to mere appearance, creativity to the performative logic of social media. Within the rhythm of digital platforms, fashion no longer speaks as it should, it simply flows. To me it all feels like a fast, replicable stream, designed to be consumed instantly. Why is this happening? Collections multiply faster and faster (between pre-collections, resort and cruise, every luxury brand replicates and floods the market with an endless number of new products) and 24 hours after every show or presentation, the same pieces are reproduced in fast-fashion store windows, with different materials and prices, but with an image not always so distinguishable from the originals.

In this way, the value of luxury becomes hollow: it is no longer a sign of distinction but a device that creates uniformity. Because what matters now is not the unique quality of each object made with care and savoir faire by artisans, but the immediate recognizability of that bag everyone photographs or the sneakers everyone shares. Whether they are real or fake matters little at this point. And this is where the crisis begins, because the iconic object that was supposed to distinguish its wearer is no longer exclusive, but instead creates homogenization.

From an ethical point of view, it is absolutely right that fashion becomes democratic, that everyone can share it. I am firmly convinced that to be elegant you don’t need to wear Chanel or Valentino, but to have a personality and a clear style that makes every outfit, even the cheapest, suitable for your body and your aesthetic. But what I don’t agree with, and what undermines the meaning of luxury in fashion, is the race to produce more and more, to move in an unnatural, distorted way. This, in fact, marks the loss of the intrinsic value of a market born to be exclusive and special.

At Crida we feel the need to slow down, to step away from the frenzy of instantaneity, and return to what truly matters in fashion: substance, fine and natural fabrics, research, the intuition of something special. I believe that creativity is born before an algorithm measures it and that the idea takes shape before it becomes a trend. Bringing luxury back to its healthy and natural dimension, giving it back a selective rather than purely spectacular function, is, I believe, the challenge the fashion world must face today. Only this way will it regain its original voice that speaks of identity and differences, that tells the story of social change and people’s needs. And luxury, freed from the obligation to show itself, will be able to truly stand out again—not through exclusion, but through real elegance.

P.S. P.S. Merry Christmas, happy holidays and… happy fashion to everyone.