There was a time when fashion houses had unmistakable signatures. Not just logos, monograms or marketing campaigns, but something deeper. A system of codes.

You could recognise them from a line of a jacket, the architecture of a silhouette, the rhythm of a collection.

Fashion houses behaved like languages. Each had its grammar, its vocabulary, its syntax.

Chanel spoke in tweed, pearls and bourgeois rebellion. Dior spoke in structure and controlled femininity. Balenciaga spoke in sculptural experimentation.

In The Fashion System, Roland Barthes famously described fashion as a system of signs, arguing that garments function like language, communicating meaning through repetition and structure. A brand’s identity was built through the consistent re-articulation of its codes.

For decades, creative directors were not expected to erase this language. They were expected to translate it. Karl Lagerfeld reinvented the house continuously, yet the Chanel grammar remained recognisable:

Tweed. Camellias. Chains. Black and white. Bourgeois restraint mixed with irreverence.

The codes evolved, but they remained legible.

Today, that relationship feels increasingly different. Each appointment triggers the same question. Are these designers preserving the DNA of their houses? Or being invited to rewrite it entirely?

And perhaps this is the real shift happening in fashion today. Designers are no longer interpreters of house codes. They are protagonists whose personal identities often become stronger than the brands they inherit.

When the designer becomes the brand, the house becomes scenery.

The designer’s vision often overrides the house’s original vocabulary, raising a larger question: do house codes still exist, or are they simply dissolving into the personalities of the designers who run them?

The last two Paris fashion weeks have made this especially visible. The industry is watching closely as Matthieu Blazy continues to redefine Chanel, playing with the house’s classic tweeds and silhouettes while introducing new materials and unexpected proportions. Meanwhile, Jonathan Anderson’s arrival at Dior has been framed as one of the most significant creative shifts of the season, another moment in fashion’s constant cycle of reinvention.

Alessandro Michele’s latest vision for Valentino feels unmistakably like Alessandro Michele. The layered romanticism, the archival references, the theatrical collage of eras. It is beautifully executed. But it also raises an uncomfortable question: When the designer’s identity becomes so dominant, what happens to the identity of the house?

Demna’s Balenciaga operated in a similar way. For nearly a decade, the house ceased to be primarily about Cristóbal Balenciaga’s architectural couture legacy, becoming instead a platform for Demna’s cultural commentary on luxury, irony, and spectacle.

His recent work at Gucci only reinforces this shift. Watching the latest collection, one cannot help but recognise familiar gestures from his Balenciaga universe. The designer’s language travels with him, moving from house to house.

Seen together, these examples reveal a deeper shift in the fashion system. Matthieu Blazy, Jonathan Anderson, Alessandro Michele and Demna each bring a personal language so distinctive that it can overshadow the identity of the houses they lead. In this sense, the DNA no longer belongs entirely to the house. Increasingly, it belongs to the designer.

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The rhythm of fashion has accelerated dramatically. Once, fashion moved with the seasons. Today, it moves at the speed of the algorithm. Collections are no longer digested slowly across seasons or decades. They are consumed instantly through images, short videos, and endless commentary on social media.

But watching the reaction to these shows reveals something even more curious. Not the collections themselves. The commentary.

Because if house codes seem increasingly fluid, fashion criticism has become strangely uniform.

Once, fashion houses had codes, designers interpreted them, and critics judged the result.

In earlier decades, fashion criticism was sharper. Reviews could be analytical, sceptical, sometimes brutal. That tension was healthy. Criticism forced designers to clarify their ideas. It helped audiences understand fashion as culture rather than spectacle.

Critics also had their own voices. Their own language. Their own editorial DNA. When you read a review, you knew immediately who had written it. Cathy Horyn’s surgical precision. Suzy Menkes’ historical authority. Each critic brought a recognisable point of view.

Even in the early days of fashion blogging, personality was the point. Writers such as Bryanboy or Susie Bubble built large audiences not by repeating the industry consensus, but by developing distinctive perspectives and a critical eye. Their voice was their identity.

Today, that sense of individuality feels harder to find. It is increasingly rare to read a genuinely critical review of a fashion show. The tone has become overwhelmingly celebratory. If you read many of the major reviews after the latest Paris collections, the language often feels strangely uniform. The industry’s largest publications celebrate almost everything placed in front of them.

Everything is extraordinary.

Every show is “remarkable”.

Every collection is “a triumph”.

Fashion criticism has not disappeared. It has simply been replaced by public relations.

Yet speak privately to people in the industry, to buyers, stylists or consumers, and the conversation sounds very different. Doubt still exists. Disagreement still exists.

But the public narrative remains overwhelmingly celebratory.

Fashion journalism has always existed in a delicate symbiosis with the industry it covers. In a system built on advertising, partnerships and access, the boundary between journalism and promotion has always been fragile.

In the digital era, that relationship has only intensified. Editorial increasingly merges with marketing, and reviews sometimes read more like press releases than criticism.

And in a world where fashion images circulate instantly across social media, the function of the critic has shifted. Authority has fragmented. Commentary has moved to TikTok, YouTube, Substack, and Instagram. Ironically, some of the most honest criticism now comes from outside traditional media.

The comment section has become one of the few places where disagreement about fashion still exists.

Perhaps fashion houses are not the only institutions whose DNA is changing.

Fashion criticism itself may be mutating. Has fashion criticism quietly disappeared?

A negative review risks damaging relationships. Access can disappear overnight.

So the safest option is enthusiasm.

Or silence.

Walter Benjamin wrote about modernity as a constant stream of images, fragments of experience that dissolve before we can fully interpret them. The runway once allowed critics to slow that stream down, to translate what they saw into cultural meaning.

Today, that spectacle has become continuous.

Images arrive faster than interpretation. And perhaps that is why the language of criticism has softened. When everything must be immediate, diplomacy replaces judgment. But fashion without criticism becomes something else entirely. It becomes promotion.

Without criticism, fashion risks becoming a monologue.

Which brings us back to the question of DNA.

If no one is interrogating the codes of a house, do those codes still exist in a meaningful way? Or have they become simply aesthetic references, recycled and recombined season after season?

The current generation of designers is extraordinarily talented. Jonathan Anderson, Matthieu Blazy, and many others possess remarkable creative intelligence. But they are also operating in a system where identity must constantly adapt to speed, visibility, and global attention.

So perhaps the real question after these past fashion weeks is not whether brands still have DNA.

The question is whether fashion journalism still has one.

Because once upon a time, fashion had critics. And critics had opinions.

Today, it mostly has cheerleaders.

I’ll admit it. Like everyone else, I’m about to jump on the Bad Bunny bandwagon.

The Super Bowl. The Grammys. Spanish on one of the biggest stages in global pop culture, delivered without translation, apology or explanation. By now, the headlines, opinion pieces, Instagram posts and TikToks have done their rounds. We’ve all read some version of the story.

But what interests me isn’t Bad Bunny himself, nor the spectacle of the moment. It’s what that moment quietly confirms, that language itself has stopped functioning as a cultural checkpoint.

For a long time, it did.

What interests me is not the moment itself, but the quiet assumption that preceded it, and why it took so long to disappear.

Growing up in the 1980s, while living in South Africa, I remember a small pattern among my group of friends on my street. Our mothers all listened to the same artist, but never in the same language. In my house, it was Italian. Next door, Portuguese. And if you went to Pilar, my mother’s hairdresser, Spanish. Same melodies, same voice, different linguistic skins.

The artist? Julio Iglesias. (At this point, I should probably acknowledge that I’m showing my age.)

Looking back, that memory says more about the cultural logic of the time than any chart statistic. Julio Iglesias was an international star, but his internationalism depended on adaptation. He didn’t expect audiences to meet him halfway; he met each of them exactly where they were, linguistically and culturally. Spanish alone wasn’t expected to travel. So it travelled in translation.

The same could be said of Charles Aznavour, whose international reach was built on singing in multiple languages rather than asking audiences to adapt to one.

That logic wasn’t unique to pop music or to Europe.

Consider Miriam Makeba. Pata Pata became a global hit, but the versions that travelled most easily were the ones adapted for Western audiences. Even her so-called “Click Song” was renamed because its original Xhosa title, Qongqothwane, was considered unpronounceable.

The music moved. The language had to bend. It was never about talent. It was about legibility. Culture was welcome, as long as it arrived already translated.

Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, this was the prevailing model. Artists who wanted to cross borders learned to soften their edges. They recorded multiple versions of the same album. They adjusted accents. They translated not just lyrics, but identity.

You could be enormous within a language and still remain outside the idea of the “global”. Luis Miguel was a pan-Latin icon long before the global industry took notice. His success didn’t lack scale; it lacked recognition within an Anglophone framework that decided what counted as universal. Long before Bad Bunny, Luis Miguel filled arenas across Latin America and Spanish-speaking communities worldwide, remaining largely faithful to Spanish, with a small foray into Italian (coming second at the 1985 San Remo music festival by the way!) He didn’t chase crossover; he deepened his own territory.

His career is a reminder that Spanish never lacked reach. It lacked institutional confidence.

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, the rules hardened. English became the passport to global pop legitimacy. The crossover era wasn’t subtle about it.
Artists like Shakira navigated this with intelligence and precision, building parallel careers in different languages. Ricky Martin became the emblem of a moment when Latin energy was embraced by the mainstream, the kind of era where María, Whenever, Wherever or Bailamos were impossible to escape, whether you asked for them or not.
Enrique Iglesias, in many ways, refined that model, sustaining a bilingual career designed to move seamlessly between markets.

The burden was always on the artist. The audience stayed still.

What’s often forgotten is that Spanish was never marginal. It was simply unevenly recognised.

Italian artists understood this early. Rather than turning to English, many released entire albums in Spanish, recognising its reach across Europe and Latin America. Domenico Modugno, Raffaella Carrà, Eros Ramazzotti and Laura Pausini didn’t treat Spanish as an accessory, but as a second creative home. The language carried emotion, intimacy, familiarity. It didn’t need validation.

Audiences, meanwhile, were already fluent in culture if not in grammar. We didn’t need to understand every word to feel something. That was always true. What changed was whether institutions acknowledged it.

Then something shifted. Not abruptly, but unmistakably.

I lived in Miami from 2017 to 2022, exactly the period when Bad Bunny was rising. What struck me wasn’t just his popularity, but how no one spoke of crossover. There was no sense of translation or accommodation.

Spanish wasn’t a statement. It was simply the language of life. Miami revealed something global commentary often misses: for millions of people, the audience had already moved. The industry was catching up to reality, not leading it.

In 2020, I was invited by TelevisaUnivision to be one of the analistas de estilo on the red carpet of Premio Lo Nuestro, live from what was then the American Airlines Arena. Surrounded by artists, media and audiences who had long moved past the idea of linguistic adaptation, it became clear that the shift had already happened. Later that evening, the lineup told its own story. Ricky Martin, Alejandro Sanz, J Balvin, and Bad Bunny on the same stage. Different generations, different strategies, different relationships to language, sharing one cultural space without hierarchy.

Culture was welcome, as long as it arrived already translated.

Today, audiences don’t approach music expecting translation. They expect authenticity. Language has become texture rather than threshold. Streaming didn’t invent multilingual listening. It removed the gatekeepers who pretended it was risky. That’s why Bad Bunny matters, but not because he sings in Spanish on big stages. He matters because he doesn’t adjust his language to inherited hierarchies, and no one seriously expects him to anymore.

The idea of “crossover” itself begins to feel outdated when the audience is the one doing the crossing.

What we’re witnessing isn’t the replacement of English, nor the rise of a new monoculture. It’s something more interesting and more fragile: a recalibration of cultural confidence. It’s about the collapse of an assumption that language must be neutralised to be understood.

Language is no longer an apology. It doesn’t need to be justified, diluted or explained. It can arrive whole, carrying history, politics, humour and contradiction without asking permission.

From Miriam Makeba to Julio Iglesias, from Luis Miguel to Miami’s everyday soundscape, artists have long navigated systems that demanded adaptation. What’s changed is not our ability to feel across languages, but our willingness to let artists stay where they are.

Looking back, that childhood street in South Africa already contained the future. We shared culture across languages without ever questioning whether we were “allowed” to. What’s changed is that artists are no longer required to translate themselves to make that sharing legitimate.

The burden has moved. Quietly, decisively.

And perhaps that is the real cultural shift of our time. Not that we all understand each other’s languages, but that we’ve finally stopped demanding it as the price of belonging.

A photo framed in soft light, a caption that begins with “Being in sustainability means questioning yourself all the time.”
There’s gratitude for a recent feature, a nod to perseverance, and a reminder that “one person who cares matters more than a thousand who don’t.”

eguipireuvhqdisxmcvwdfbn^qetooteq....Apologies, I must have fallen asleep on the keyboard.

I am so bored by this overused narrative, because that’s exactly what it’s become, a narrative. Scripted empathy. A template for a purpose that circulates endlessly through social feeds, detached from the reality it pretends to address.

It’s the language of purpose. Polished, emotive, hashtagged. And yet, scroll a little further and the same voice is trying on designer outfits, filming from a walk-in wardrobe the size of a Parisian pied-à-terre, and tagging luxury brands under the banner of “rewearing with intention.”

Disclaimer: what sparked this reflection wasn’t the concept itself, but a recent Forbes feature celebrating so-called sustainability advocates at a Fashion Week in the US. The article paired a respected designer genuinely integrating sustainability into his craft alongside a lifestyle figure whose “mission” revolves more around optics than overhaul. That kind of pairing says everything about the state of fashion storytelling, where visibility often outweighs veracity.

Profiles like these blur the line between those doing the work and those performing it. They reduce complex, systemic change into digestible human-interest stories. None of this is new. Performative sustainability keeps getting repackaged as revelation. “A tale as old as time, reason over rhyme,” as Angela Lansbury once sang. Exactly that. The storyline hasn’t changed, just the lighting and the hashtags.

Somewhere along the way, sustainability turned from a verb into an aesthetic.
It’s not about doing differently, but about appearing aware.

We’ve traded systemic change for soundbites and spotlights. And too often, the loudest voices are the ones least willing to change their own habits of consumption, travel, or self-promotion.

Sustainability has become performance art. Beautifully staged, algorithmically sound, and entirely detached from the uncomfortable reality it claims to confront.

We rarely talk about this contradiction because the industry thrives on polished narratives and personal branding. But maybe it’s time we do. Not to shame individuals, but to protect the integrity of the movement itself. Otherwise, sustainability becomes just another aesthetic, and we lose the point entirely.

Beautiful words. But when they arrive perfectly framed, filtered, and hashtagged, I can’t help wondering who the message is really for.

Fashion doesn’t need more sustainability influencers, sorry, sustainability thought-leaders! It needs practitioners, people willing to trade visibility for value, content for contribution. Let’s start celebrating those who quietly dismantle systems of overproduction, who share their resources, and who embody the message they preach.

Real change doesn’t happen in curated captions, carousel posts or TEDx soundbites, or under ring lights or filters. If your version of “doing better” still involves constant newness, first-class flights for shopping sprees, and unboxing content, then maybe it’s time for a different kind of reel.

I, on the other hand, am happy to fly premium economy. Credibility travels lighter. ;)

It’s a contradiction to talk about circularity while posing amid fabric waste, and amassing wardrobes big enough to rival a showroom. It erodes trust and turns one of the most urgent conversations of our time into a marketing strategy. In these narratives, the waste rarely comes from their own wardrobes.

Maybe next time, the Get Ready With Me video could be something different.
Get ready to pack those untouched designer pieces and deliver them to young designers who’d actually upcycle them.
Now that’s a reel worth watching.

Let’s normalise calling this out; not out of cynicism, but because credibility in fashion depends on accountability. If you claim to stand for circularity, start by consuming less. If you talk about re-wearing, show your wardrobe doing the work.

True sustainability is uncomfortable. It demands humility, restraint, and re-evaluation of privilege. It’s about the quiet work: donating, repairing, repeating, mentoring, not the content-friendly moments of “intention.”

And it’s not just influencers who shape this narrative. Media outlets and event organisers share the responsibility.

When Forbes profiles someone as a sustainability leader, or when fashion weeks invite influencers to sit on panels about circularity, education, and upcycling, without verifying the depth of their contribution, the result is predictable: visibility replaces credibility.

Before handing someone a microphone or a magazine feature, do the homework. Look beyond the hashtags, the curated closets, the soundbites. Does this person live the message they preach? Do they actually support the next generation, share resources, or redirect privilege where it’s needed?

This isn’t a criticism of schools or emerging brands collaborating with these figures. I understand the need. Access to visibility, guidance, or even a kind word can feel like gold when you’re starting out. Many young designers will take advice from anyone who seems established enough to offer it. The issue isn’t their openness. It’s that the loudest voices often set false expectations. When sustainability is presented through the lens of affluence, it risks deceiving the very audience it claims to empower.

That’s why education and mentorship carry responsibility: to show the real work of building a brand responsibly, the constraints, the financial strain, the unglamorous process, not the illusion of effortless luxury disguised as consciousness.

When platforms fail to fact-check, the damage goes beyond bad optics. It’s not just about image, it’s about influence. When someone whose lifestyle is built on luxury consumption mentors small brands or students scraping together funds for a collection, something feels deeply off.

Conscious creation requires credibility, not affluence. If you’re going to teach it, you should live it.

Because there are people walking the talk. The Giuggioli siblings, for starters. Livia and Nicola, first through Eco-Age and now with Quintosapore, consistently champion change through action, not aesthetics. Livia, who also produced The True Cost documentary and is the founder of the Green Carpet Challenge, helped redefine responsible fashion storytelling. There’s also Matteo Ward, advocating for ethics and equity in production systems. And with them, countless others who have built careers on integrity, not curation.

As someone who has spent years teaching and mentoring within fashion education, I’ve seen what true responsibility looks like. It’s not about scale or spotlight; it’s about integrity, and that’s something no algorithm can fake.

Watch out, Marina Abramović. There’s a new performative thought-leader artist in town.

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“England really welcomed me, in Germany, you had to climb up the ladder, have certificates, be an assistant. In England it didn’t matter. You showed your work and they gave you a chance.”

The 90s were messy, honest, and gloriously unfiltered. A decade where we learned who we were through magazines, the music scene, grainy photos, and the chaos of culture itself. So when Juergen Teller and Edward Enninful took the stage at Petit Palais during Art Basel Paris to revisit that era, it didn’t feel nostalgic; it felt like a reminder of when things were raw, imperfect, and alive.

Teller began the conversation by recalling his arrival in London from a small German village, barely speaking English, and how his story started out not with fashion, but record sleeves.

Sinéad O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U became his entry point, and he had been welcomed by the London creative circle that defined the decade: Judy Blame, Zoe Bedeaux, and Ray Petri. They were the creative energy that moved between photography, styling, and sound. “They let me be part of it,” he said. “That warmth meant something,” remembering the openness of that scene.

Teller says he wasn’t grunge. He was an observer, part of the scene yet always outside of it, photographing it as it lived. As he spoke, images of the 90s flashed on the screen: a young Chloë Sevigny, Harmony Korine, a pink Kate Moss, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, and an iconic Kristen McMenamy naked for Versace. A contradiction to his words. They were a reminder that his refusal to belong helped define the look of that decade.

Enninful smiled, reminding him, “You said you were an outsider, and I said you were an outsider but also the ultimate insider, because everybody wanted to work with you.”
“Yeah, I guess. I mostly said no,” Teller replied, “Because, you know how it was, you had to think, what do you want to do? And when you’re young, it takes a long time to think about what you want to do. I didn’t want to churn out the work.”

It was a time of experimentation before everything became categorised or turned into a commodity. “You went to record stores and studied sleeves; magazines were few, so you had to really look,” he recalled. “Things were slower, and they could develop in time. You had to survive doing what you believed in.”

Teller’s reflections carried a quiet pride in process, in the craftsmanship of photography itself. He described learning light, film, and printing as a kind of apprenticeship in patience. What struck me most was his insistence on time, and how creativity once relied on slowness, and how that rhythm has disappeared. “You need time to play,” he said. “You need time to fail and learn from your mistakes. It’s good to go to a bad movie, because you learn how bad it is.” That idea of learning through failure hung in the air like a quiet protest against today’s culture of optimisation, a reminder that everything was already there, if only we could see it.

That sense of restraint, and of knowing when not to belong, defined much of his journey. When American Vogue flew him over on Concorde, he quickly realised how narrow the system could be. “You’re suddenly in New York and you do not photograph black and white, it has to be colour,” he said. “I got bored by it. So instead of me flying over the ocean, I thought, why don’t I be in the studio and turn those things upside down and let them come to me.”

What followed was Go-Sees, his year-long conceptual project that blurred documentary, portraiture, and fashion. “I was sure it was good,” he said. “Conceptually interesting, even politically. The same power it had when I started working with Helmut Lang.”

That partnership, built in 1993, with Helmut Lang redefined visual language: raw, minimal, intimate. He shot what was already there: models arriving, waiting, leaving. No fantasy, just reality reframed. Helmut was part of his “German connection”, a small, tight-knit circle that included Ellen von Unwerth, Karl Lagerfeld, and a few others who spoke the same language, literally and visually. “We understood each other,” he recalled. “We were the few who could talk German to each other, everyone else was English or French.”

When Enninful asked what he now looks for in a subject, Teller’s reply was simple:

“Everything which touches my heart, which comes from life experience. Walking through the forest with my mother, photographing a cookbook, people who touched my heart and my intellect.”

It’s the same instinct that led him to Auschwitz, a project he described as a responsibility.“ It took me half a year to recover,” he admitted.

But Teller’s sharpness never dulled when asked about today’s art-fashion circuit, “They’re desperately eating each other up, bulging out the arm of everything is like an overdose of this shit.”

For someone known for raw honesty, Teller was remarkably restrained, having said “fuck” only four times throughout the whole conversation. Yes, I kept tabs, politely rotating through all its conjugations: “fuck,” “fucked,” and “fucking.” That’s fucking (if I might add) polite, by 90s standards.

He’s not cynical, just precise. His refusal to conform remains almost punk. “I want my work to be alive,” he said. “Not trapped in a white cube.”

Contracts? They were never part of the plan. “Those young photographers in the 90s, they all swooped to New York and got contracts. You’re handcuffed and you’re fucked.” He’s worked with Marc Jacobs, Phoebe Philo, Vivienne Westwood, JW Anderson, Loewe, Dior, and yet, “I never would say I want to have a contract and have to be doing this. I say yes or I say no.”

That independence, Enninful notes, is rare. Teller smiled: “It’s instinct.” You have to be clever about what excites you, he explained. “Other things you turn down. You need to stay curious.”

Even Enninful, who has known Juergen for over thirty years, acknowledged this uncompromising clarity. “You’ve always known what you want and what makes you happy,” he said. “That’s something you’ve really carried on.”

As the conversation continued, Enninful asked, “How can a young photographer in today’s world have a singular vision and be able to perfect it?” To which Teller replied, half-laughing, half-philosophical: “Would one even want to be a photographer now? It’s a very difficult environment, everything has to be so loud. But in the 90s, we didn’t mind being poor. We were naïve, enthusiastic, experimenting. We had time to play.”

Listening to them, I realised I wasn’t just in the audience.

In the 90s, I was in my early twenties, a fashion student in Milan, discovering everything for the first time. I remember the Helmut Lang campaigns, that raw energy that felt so new. The first time I saw Teller’s portraits, I didn’t quite understand why they felt real. I remember Sinéad O’Connor and Buffalo Stance on the radio. It all blurred together, fashion, music, and attitude, a cultural moment that defined how we saw ourselves.

Hearing him speak, I was reminded of the innocence of that time, the creativity born from having so little. We made things with what we had. There was no fear of failure, if it worked, it worked. If it didn’t, it didn’t. It reminded me how unpolished everything was, and how freeing that could be.

It also echoed something I often think about as an educator: how the creative process itself has changed. Back then, we had to go out and look for things. You went to exhibitions, record shops, libraries, and galleries; creativity demanded curiosity. We were hunters, searching for creativity and inspiration by accident, not by algorithm. Everything happened more slowly and organically. That thrill of discovering something by accident is missing.

That innocence, that energy, that hunger that made you believe anything was possible. Today, everything feels faster, more direct, but also less surprising. Maybe that’s what Teller means when he speaks about failure, not as loss, but as freedom. The freedom to explore, to experiment, before everything became so instantly accessible.

“We had a deep enthusiasm, and it was a way of living and experimenting and playing.”

That idea feels almost utopian now to fail without fear, to play without an algorithm waiting to measure it.

As a last question to the conversation, Enninful asked what advice Teller would give his younger self. He paused, then said, “Just keep doing what you’re doing. Have your moral compass right. Even if you’re unsure, be sure of yourself. I wouldn’t have changed anything.”

It was a moving expression of acceptance rather than confidence. The sense that a creative life is built on instinct, on following what feels right even when the outcome is uncertain.

After the conversation, outside the Petit Palais, Teller stood in his grey tee, jeans, and the now-famous pink sweatshirt thrown over his shoulders, relaxed, grounded, fag in hand, and disinterested in polish. A bright contrast to my monochromatic uniform. Maybe that’s what we’ve lost in the rush for polish, the right to be unsure.

It struck me that he hasn’t really changed. The honesty that shaped his pictures in the 90s, imperfect, immediate, human, is still there.

Maybe the real nostalgia isn’t for the decade itself, but for that kind of freedom. The 90s weren’t cleaner or better; they were just truer.

And that’s the real lesson. Creative integrity isn’t about reinventing yourself endlessly, but about staying true to the impulse that started it all.

“Does MTV still exist?” That was my first reaction when I read that MTV was shutting down its European music channels. Slowly, a wave of nostalgia hit. Then came the realisation that something bigger was ending: a shared ritual that shaped not just how we listened to music, but how we understood ourselves. For my generation, MTV wasn’t just a TV channel; it was the place where we discovered who we were.

To be honest, MTV only arrived in Italy in the late ’90s, long after it had already transformed pop culture elsewhere. But we had all heard and read about. We all had that one cousin or friend who holidayed in the US and came back with MTV filled stories.

Before that, we’d had a decade of VideoMusic, our own local attempt at a 24-hour music channel, whose first video clip ever played was Lionel Richie’s All Night Long, Club Tropicana (Wham!), and Radio Ga Ga (Queen). A new era was upon us in Italy. Despite its modest, a la mano appearance, compared to MTV’s slick animated aesthetic, VideoMusic shaped many of our musical tastes and introduced ideas to Italy that we would not have otherwise known.

Then, on the 1st September 1997, everything changed: MTV finally launched. The “I want my MTV” slogan became part of our vernacular. Broadcast from London, the world suddenly felt closer. The music, the fashion, even the slang, it all arrived through that small TV screen. Ah, and the VJs!

At that time, the Italian VJs were based in Camden Town. They were effortlessly cool, full of attitude, fluent in pop culture, the bridges between our teenage bedrooms (or kitchen table in my case), and the rest of the world. Their accents had that perfect MTV blend that made even a simple “ciao ragazzi” sound like a passport to somewhere cooler. They spoke perfect English, but with that unmistakable hint of Italian-ness that made everything sound a little more stylish, a little more ours. We all wanted to be a VJ. They became iconic; they were our first crushes!

The faces of MTV Italia, fluent in pop, fluent in us

Thanks to MTV, we were introduced to subcultures some of us had never heard of, from grunge to hip-hop, via Britpop and techno. Watching MTV Brand New or Unplugged was a crash course in aesthetics and emotion. You didn’t just hear about new bands; you saw them perform live. For me, Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York, the first thing transmitted on MTV Italy, remains one of the most honest, intimate, and raw cultural moments I’ve witnessed.

MTV didn’t just broadcast music; it broadcast aspiration. It taught us how to be seen, how to perform, how to belong to a world that was moving faster than we were. It’s strange to think that an entire generation learned aesthetics, self-expression, and even confidence from a television channel.

With MTV came what I often think of as the second Americanisation of Italy, through music videos, pop icons, and the global youth culture of the late ’90s. It wasn’t imposed, it was embraced.

The videos themselves were portals that connected us to fashion, subcultures, and attitude. They weren’t just visuals, they were moodboards for how to dress, move, exist, and let’s be honest, the cause of many of our fashion faux pas! I’m definitely guilty of that. For us, fashion and music had become inseparable. It made us dream in colour but also taught us what cool looked like; an education in taste that shaped how we judged ourselves and others.

There was also a profound sense of community. That shared experience of waiting for a video premiere, recording it, and talking about it the next day. I remember attending Total Request Live in Piazza San Babila, later moved to Corso Vittorio Emanuele, in Milan. Or MTV Day, these weren’t just concerts; they were collective moments.

Daria, Beavis and Butt-Head, and The Real World were shows that helped shape our sense of identity, defining the humour, irony, and introspection of our generation. They reflected our 90s youth culture; messy, funny, and authentic, something today’s hyper-curated feeds rarely are. They also gave voice to youth in a way Italian television rarely did; no other channel was made entirely by young people speaking directly to other young people.

And for me, there’s a personal connection too.

I still remember watching All Saints perform on MTV and, not long after, seeing them perform live at my first Versus show at the Rolling Stone Club in Milano. Or back in October 2000, while working at Versace, Britney Spears, one of MTV’s brightest icons at the time, was in town for her Oops!... I Did It Again world tour, which happened to coincide with Milano Fashion Week, and Donatella seated me next to her for dinner. From seeing her on MTV, miming to her songs, to passing her the salt. That was iconic for me.

Photo: Author with Britney Spears, Milan, 2000

And a moment that felt surreal was seeing Robbie Williams wearing pieces I had designed for the Versus menswear collection in one of his music videos.

To me, it felt that MTV wasn’t just part of pop culture; it had become part of my own story.

“Eternity” music video, Robbie Williams, 2001 (Versus Menswear)

But somewhere along the way, reality TV killed the video star. The MTV that once defined a generation shifted its focus to reality shows. It moved from discovering artists to creating personalities. The dream changed, and no one wanted to be a VJ but a reality star. What youth aspired to shifted, the aesthetic of aspiration transformed too: less about authenticity, more about visibility.

It’s not my nostalgia talking; the whole ecosystem has changed. Today’s youth are discovering music through algorithms: YouTube, TikTok, and other streaming platforms. The access is easier, the range wider, but the sense of community is fractured, the magic feels different. There’s no longer that collective ritual of tuning in at the same time, waiting for your favourite song, or finding out who made number one that week. Music has become more personal, but maybe less shared. Even artists are dropping singles rather than releasing albums. The whole industry has shifted.

Music has never been more present. It fills every platform, every feed, yet somewhere along the way, the music video, once the purest expression of sound and image, stopped being the heartbeat of pop culture and has quietly lost its cultural pulse.

Even the biggest artists who once built their entire identity through video now often release singles without any visuals at all. Isn’t it ironic (sorry, Alanis!) that in an age ruled by images, the format that once defined them all has lost its magic? As Télérama wrote, “it’s the end of an era when music was listened to with the eyes.”

A world where four minutes of video could change everything has faded from collective memory. The age when a single clip could define a generation, from Vogue to Smells Like Teen Spirit, Richard Ashcroft’s endless walk in Bitter Sweet Symphony, to Kylie’s iconic white jumpsuit in Can’t Get You Out of My Head, has passed. (You can’t imagine my pain in only citing four examples!)

Still, for those like me who grew up with MTV, it remains part of our creative DNA. It taught us that music was never just about sound; it was about identity, expression, and community. It shaped how we dressed, how we moved, and how we imagined the future. As Rolling Stone Italia put it, MTV “was a temple where youth culture reinvented itself every day.”

For us, MTV will always be more than a logo. It taught us one essential thing: that music could be seen, not just heard. It was our mirror and our stage, the place where creativity met conversation and culture felt alive, spontaneous, and global. Maybe that version of MTV is gone, but its spirit continues in every visual artist, designer, and dreamer who once sat in front of a screen thinking, I want to be part of that world.

As for me? I’ll be somewhere with The Cardigans on repeat, channelling Nina Persson (well, trying to), in My Favourite Game, music loud and no algorithm in sight, riding quietly into the sunset of a generation that once lived through music television.

Maybe that’s the real legacy of MTV, not the music videos, but the confidence it gave us to shape our own soundtrack, one frame at a time.

Two decades on, Victoria Beckham’s story is no longer about reinvention, but endurance, and the quiet power of credibility hard-earned.

The past week, most of us have been indulging in Netflix’s Victoria Beckham series, well, most of us Mrs B aficionados, that is. And what a guilty pleasure it was.

While there have been documentaries before, this is the second to focus on her career as a designer. Back in 2013, The Skype Collaboration Project was launched as a platform to inspire and enable young creatives to have exclusive access to experts in the industry through its online platform.

One of these projects was Five Years - The Victoria Beckham Fashion Story; it promised a rare view into her creative process: video calls, fittings, fabric swatches, and all. It was meant to show the woman behind the myth. And for some, there was a chance to ask questions via video messages with Mrs B herself! (Skype up your life! sorry). I remember all too well watching it. A small Skype blue logo flickered on-screen and connected the world to Victoria Beckham’s studio, a designer in motion, a team at work, a brand finding its language.

At the time, the idea felt radical. Fashion films weren’t yet streaming phenomena. Sure, we’d had Signé Chanel (2005), Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton (2007), and Le Jour d’Avant (a backstage of the catwalk shows released in 2009), all by journalist, documentary filmmaker and YouTuber Loïc Prigent, who offered us glimpses into these exclusive creative worlds, but “access” still meant glossy editorials, not webcams. Vogue UK described it as a “ground-breaking storytelling format,” one that invited audiences to see her as more than the poised figure on the front row.

But it was also a risk: an early experiment in digital transparency. That, and the fact that the world wasn’t ready to believe that a former pop star could also be a serious designer. The documentary’s tone was almost cautious; she was proving herself, showing the work, trying to build trust in real time. For every viewer intrigued by her precision and discipline, another dismissed it as branding dressed up as intimacy.

On a side note, it was also a strategic way for Skype to attract a younger generation, and essentially lure them away from Google Hangouts; we know how that ended.

Fast forward to more than a decade later, and Netflix’s Victoria Beckham arrives in a very different world. One that no longer questions her legitimacy. The tone has shifted from Can she design? to How did she get here?

The new series is polished, cinematic, structured, and self-aware. It is populated by a more refined circle of voices: Jürgen Teller, Tom Ford, Anna Wintour, and Donatella Versace. A cast that reinforces how far Victoria Beckham has come since those early Skype days. There’s a brilliant irony, too, when she recalls years ago, during her Posh Spice era, how she once “redesigned” a Versace dress, an act that left Donatella less than impressed.

Mentors like Roland Mouret grounded her early ambitions in rigour. “From the top, where she is, I had to bring her back to the bottom to learn,” he recalls in the series, a reminder that humility is often the foundation of craft. It also nods lightly to the elephant in the room: the long-held suspicion that Mouret was the real hand behind her early collections, a reflection less of fact than of how reluctant the industry was to believe her skill could match her fame. Yet those doubts only seem to underline how deliberately she earned her credibility, one collection at a time.

It’s through these relationships and lessons that the series gains its depth, weaving past and present as it builds towards her Paris Fashion Week show, with a pacing that recalls Loïc Prigent’s Le Jour d’Avant: the fittings, the late decisions, the weather threatening to ruin everything. It captures the tension that never quite makes it to the headlines.

This series is a portrait of someone whose credibility within the industry has been hard-won. It’s a full-circle moment that says everything about how far Mrs B has travelled, from playful imitation to genuine recognition. The storytelling is refined, deliberate, and strategic. But it’s also surprisingly human. She talks about scrutiny, body image, and the endless need to prove herself.

What it shows is not reinvention, but perseverance. And the woman behind it all is still very much Mrs B. There’s a tenderness that runs throughout, especially in the moments with David: the teasing, the laughter, the quiet partnership that grounds all the discipline. It’s a reminder that behind the brand, there’s a genuine connection built on love and respect, proof that authenticity doesn’t have to shout to be felt.

It’s the honesty about the struggle that makes the Netflix series striking. It shows how fashion isn’t easy, not even for the famous. She speaks openly about her company’s financial challenges, about what it takes to keep a brand alive. There’s vulnerability in her transparency, a quiet admission that success isn’t selective. Even for celebrities, creative work demands resilience. Even Victoria Beckham, with her fame and fortune, needed twenty years to be taken seriously and eventually profitable.

For some, the series is too polished, too curated. But perhaps that polish is the story, after all, it is Posh Spice we’re talking about.

The contrast between Skype’s raw immediacy and Netflix’s cinematic calm mirrors not just Victoria Beckham’s evolution, but fashion’s too. The first was a plea for credibility. The second, a meditation on endurance.

In the end, the series is about a woman who outlasted opinion by trusting her own rhythm. In a culture obsessed with immediacy, that’s the quietest, and perhaps most powerful, victory.

For emerging designers, her journey is a reminder that credibility is built quietly, not overnight; that the work of being taken seriously is often invisible. Victoria Beckham’s path from Skype calls to Netflix screens isn’t a rebrand; it’s proof that perseverance can outlast perception.

Because sometimes, the most radical thing a designer can do is stay long enough for the story to change.

The recent appointment of Jaden Smith as Creative Director for Louboutin’s men’s line has once again sparked conversation about how fashion chooses its creative voices, and the role of celebrity and lineage in design.

For some, it’s a sign of fashion’s ongoing shift towards storytelling and influence; The appointment of a celebrity or a famous offspring guarantees headlines, engagement, and a short-term boost in cultural relevance. These are talented, creative individuals whose influence across art, music, and culture is undeniable, but their success also reflects a broader reality of our time, that visibility and cultural reach often weigh as heavily as experience and craft. For others, it raises the question of what space remains for the next generation of trained designers.

The industry has always thrived on personality and story. But the balance seems to be shifting. In today’s attention economy, fame has become the new form of credibility. The logic is commercial, not creative. A global audience recognises a Jaden Smith or a Pharrell instantly; their appointment sells a lifestyle before a single sketch exists.

The “nepo baby” and celebrity designer phenomenon has become shorthand for a generation of instant creatives, individuals handed creative director titles or capsule collections not through craft, but through connection. Yet, as we celebrate these cultural icons, we also must ask: what space is left for those still learning to build their own language?

Perhaps there’s another way to look at it.

Rather than seeing this as a threat to emerging talent, we might see it as a moment to redefine what creativity in fashion truly means. The industry has always evolved through cultural currents, from couture to streetwear, from ateliers to algorithms. Each era challenges the next to adapt, to sharpen its voice, and to rediscover its essence.

For today’s graduates and young designers, this moment is an invitation to double down on what celebrity can’t replace: craft, curiosity, and point of view. These are qualities that can’t be inherited or performed. They’re built through process, reflection, and perseverance.

Every year, I see graduates emerging from fashion schools who remind me that design is still about discovery, with ideas rooted in connecting research with intuition, experimentation, and identity with innovation. They work quietly, shaping narratives around sustainability, heritage, and culture. They may not have millions of followers, but they have ideas that resonate deeply with the times we live in. Their collections don’t just dress the body; they express who we are, and who we’re becoming.

This is not a criticism of celebrity or heritage, nor does fashion need to reject celebrity. It needs to rebalance it. To remember that the runway began as a space for ideas, not influence. Behind every movement in fashion history, from couture to counterculture, stood designers who built their language stitch by stitch, not post by post.

The visibility of figures like Jaden or Pharrell reflects fashion’s fascination with storytelling, but it also opens a new conversation about where stories begin. For graduates, it’s not a reason to feel excluded, but a call to claim their space differently: through substance, originality, and integrity.

Fashion will always need spectacle, but it also needs sincerity. It needs those who can turn research into narrative and vision into form. The next chapter of the industry won’t belong only to names we already know; it will be written by those who keep creating, learning, and questioning what comes next.

Perhaps that’s what makes fashion still exciting, that its future remains open to those who approach it with purpose, humility, and imagination.

Because in the long run, fame fades, but craftsmanship endures.