Fashion, my mother always told me, is a reflection of the sensibilities of the time. The designer Christian Dior, whose hourglass silhouettes revolutionized post-war fashion in the 1940s, called it “ephemeral architecture.” And yet, too often fashion is written off as a frivolity, an apolitical or politically clueless display of ostentation. It’s no surprise, then, that fashion criticism is not given the time or space for good, thoughtful critique.
It wasn’t always this way; intellectuals didn’t consider fashion beneath them when Susan Sontag wrote about beauty for Vogue. But over the years, intellectual figures who dedicated brain power and effort to serious analysis of form in runway collections and on the bodies of powerful people have faded from the fore. We can rattle off innumerable book or film or music critics, but can you name three fashion critics? Can you name one?
This lack has become more apparent recently. As the January couture shows wrapped, I was enraptured, like many were, by the elegant opulence of Schiaparelli, whose creative director Daniel Roseberry has revivified the brand over the last five years. Roseberry has drawn on the plethora of Surrealist motifs bequeathed by Elsa Schiaparelli herself; the Jean Cocteauian faces, the Daliesque forms. This most recent couture collection dipped into a different creative well. In the show notes for his Spring/Summer 2025 show, “Icarus,” Roseberry writes of finding a trove of vintage ribbons from the 1920s and 1930s, manufactured in Lyon and hidden away during Germany’s invasion of France. Rediscovered by Roseberry, they served as the leitmotif for the show, from the endless thread running up the corseted backs to the bows adorning the designs:
As I ran my hand among them last year, I realized what I wanted to do: Create something that feels new because it’s old. I’m so tired of everyone constantly equating modernity with simplicity: Can’t the new also be worked, be baroque, be extravagant?
As something of a sybarite myself, I found Roseberry’s proposal thrilling. His collection was met, as with most of his collections, with the oohs and ahhs of the seated crowds, peopled by clients and journalists alike. It was an elegant homage to the gilded years of fashion: the designs of Madame Grès, Charles Frederick Worth, and Paul Poiret were reimagined and reshaped in the baroque style that Roseberry dreamed. I think that one of the reasons Schiaparelli is consistently adored is because of a desperation for sublime beauty, for the kind of awe inspired by a force of nature that his pieces provoke.
As a work of art, the collection is stunning. As a collection of wearable pieces, however, it is less successful. Only one review I read, by the independent fashion critic Martin Lerma in his Substack “No Sale,” bothered to ask the question: Who is this for?
Couture is a state of mind. For most of its history, couture was led by designers who offered an aesthetic, yes, but also made propositions based on how the women they dressed lived, or even more daringly, how they felt those women could live. Chanel created a uniform with the versatility of a man’s suit and practical bags with shoulder straps so their owners could traverse the day hands-free. Balenciaga used architectural volumes to flatter clients of every size and shape while ushering in high-low hems to eliminate tripping on long skirts. Saint Laurent took the women’s tuxedos previously only seen in pre-code Hollywood films and elite lesbian circles to offer women an easy way to dress for the evening. How Roseberry’s clothes look to serve Schiaparelli clients is less clear.
How can these pieces actually be worn, Lerma asks, when some of the corset lacing goes from the top of the dress down to the bottom? How can one sit down, let alone move freely? These are the applied arts; being beautiful simply isn’t enough. Functionality must be considered. Couture, with its few thousand clients worldwide (the number is constantly in flux, and frankly, I distrust the numbers that any house puts out) may only serve the rarified one percent, but don’t women deserve something more exciting than a six-figure dress that they can’t wear? Some of these questions were alluded to by New York Magazine’s Cathy Horyn — arguably one of the last mainstream fashion critics left standing — but I didn’t see anyone aside from Lerma ask the question outright.
There is an argument to be made that couture no longer serves the same purpose it once did, that the costs are so exorbitant that the clothes only serve as a marketing platform, rather than wearable — albeit beautiful and painstakingly constructed — clothing. For some brands, this is undoubtedly true; Chanel, which claims to have the highest number of couture clients, does not rely on couture sales (which have not been profitable for quite some time) but on the many women who see Chanel couture, believe it is the highest expression of elegance, and buy their $48 lipstick so that they can carry a small piece of Chanel in their purses. Schiaparelli, conversely, does not have a beauty line to sell to the masses, and the ready-to-wear line, though probably tenfold cheaper than the couture pieces, is also prohibitively priced for the average fashion connoisseur. (And only fashion connoisseurs know what the house of Schiaparelli is in any case.) So, aside from the delighted crowds who sit at the shows twice a year in Paris, we should be asking who does this serve.
But perhaps one needs to be independent, like Lerma, in order to ask such questions. The famous critics of yesteryear were banned from shows — and then re-admitted, then banned again, in fashion’s merry go round — for penning unflattering reviews. Writers once dared to be critical of money and power; of the clothes, of the designers, and of the people who were wearing them.
There was a time when the world — the fashion world, at least — anxiously waited for critic Suzy Menkes’ latest dispatch. As a fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune (now the International New York Times), a position she held for twenty-six years, Menkes was fearless. She, too, had the honor of being temporarily banned from attending certain shows due to her critiques; she didn’t care. A perusal of Menkes’ couture reviews from two decades ago feels like a blip in a time machine. She was alternatingly effusive and cutting. Consider some highlights — in a 2004 review on Yohji Yamamoto: “Yamamoto has some claim to couture status with his beautiful and romantic tailoring. No matter that we have seen most of it before”; and on John Galliano for Dior: “The show was both superb and disturbing. Is Galliano the most amazing, evocative and extraordinary designer couture has ever had? Or is he a costumier who has invented a new two-dimensional haute couture, where the house of Dior builds up salable products behind a superbly decorated façade?”
All of it has withered away. Menkes now writes fawning Instagram captions rather than thoughtful reports. It’s hard to pinpoint precisely when, but something has changed in the last few years. In a 2022 interview with 1 Granary discussing the shrinking world of true criticism, Menkes blithely commented, as if looking into a crystal ball: “I have this feeling that there isn’t much willingness to make a strong and powerful comment.”
This has proved especially true as of late when critiquing the outfits worn by the elite. Beyond the clothes themselves, the people in power who wear them must be considered. The relationship between fashion and politics is a long one; entire political movements have created carefully curated aesthetics in uniform and style. And the choices of those at the top have been under scrutiny since they started making them.
Consider Marie Antoinette. Public opinion of the French Queen was already extremely negative in the 1780’s, and she likely would have ended up on the guillotine regardless, but perhaps her most fatal mistake was wearing a cotton muslin dress. At the height of summer, the light gauzy gown was undoubtedly more comfortable than the stiff and heavy silks she would wear for court receptions. In 1783, at her first Salon as an inductee of the Académie royale de peinture, the Queen’s court painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun boldly displayed her portrait of the monarch enrobed in the white muslin, waves of fabric billowing and swirling around her as she looks at the viewer, the rosy flush of her cheeks matching the flowers she stands beside.
Uproar ensued. Vigée Le Brun was quickly asked to remove the painting from the Salon. It was not only indecent for a queen to be displayed in such pastoral regalia, it was a slap in the face to one of the backbones of France’s economy: the silk makers in Lyon (the same ones who, generations later, would make the ribbons that Roseberry so loved). It was unpatriotic, and possibly even traitorous. The material she was wearing was considered an English fabric, manufactured in their colony in India. Ten years later, Marie Antoinette would be executed on charges of treason and conspiring with foreign powers — for reasons more significant than fashion choices, but the dress itself embodied her betrayal.
The implications of dress are manifold, down to the very threads of the fabric. It is therefore a fashion critic’s job to spend as much time writing critically about the dress of those in power and the significance of what they wear, as they should spend writing about the latest collections. Far too few are doing that: there is a dereliction of duty en masse.
Due to her position of power, Melania Trump and her wardrobe has been the subject of much writing and theorizing from fashion critics. Much of it falls flat. One of the former beacons of criticism, the Times’s Vanessa Friedman, wrote a review of the outfit worn by Melania in her White House portrait (perhaps the word “review,” which implies critical judgment, is too generous). Under the banner “Critic’s Notebook”, Friedman writes:
The portrait, featuring Mrs. Trump in a slick Dolce & Gabbana tuxedo complete with cummerbund and white shirt, two buttons undone, shows her silhouetted against a large window, the Washington Monument jutting up behind her right shoulder. Her hands are tented atop a broad desk polished to a mirrored shine. She is gazing directly into the camera, mouth set in a straight line with just a hint of amusement at the edges. Her hips are tilted slightly to one side, hair in carefully controlled waves. She looks ready to school the country.
Friedman makes no further mention of designers Dolce & Gabbana, and the significance of the First Lady’s continued relationship with them, so I’ll fill in the missing context. The designers have a history of racist comments; online vitriol (flying in the face of Melania’s previous Be Best campaign); and have publicly expressed staunch opposition to both IVF and the right for gay couples to have children. It is especially glaring that Friedman omitted these details since a cornerstone of this election was reproductive rights, and since a new effort is currently underway to reverse the national legalizing of gay marriage.
And Friedman does not mention that this is the second time that Melania has worn Dolce & Gabbana in her official White House portrait. The first time, at least, Friedman (gently) pointed out the blatant hypocrisy of exclusively wearing European designers while promoting an America First administration. Although the First Lady does not have a clearly defined role, it is well known that what the First Lady chooses to wear can have quantifiable impacts on the economy; when former First Lady Michelle Obama chose to wear brands like J. Crew and Gap during her husband’s presidency, the Harvard Business Review reported a skyrocket of interest in those brands, with Michelle Obama generating $2.7 billion in value for a total of 29 companies. And on a purely symbolic level, it’s an exercise in patriotism; France’s First Lady Brigitte Macron almost exclusively wears French designers as an expression of patriotic pride.
As an art form, fashion deserves thoughtful criticism. As a means of communication strategically used by the wealthy and powerful, fashion deserves dissection and careful analysis. The former requires a discerning eye and a facility for communicating stylistic analysis in language; the latter requires proficiency in history, politics, and morality. Both require a spine. In fashion, as in most places, fearlessness must make a comeback.