London Fashion Rubbish Week
There’s a memorable poster I pass each day, from the Training and Development Agency for Schools, recruiting for teachers. It shows a trio of students having a laugh in a classroom as two of them dress the third in an outfit made of carrier bags. The TDA advert is memorable for two reasons. First, because it has a clever strapline that I like: “Think outside the box? They didn’t even know there was a box.” And second because it reminds me of a particular kind of lesson we had when I went to school: the kind where the teacher went to a lot of effort to put together a really entertaining afternoon which involved no exercise books, and we entered an unspoken pact where we would bestow upon them short-term popularity and favour in return for which no-one would question the fact that we weren’t actually learning anything.
Yes, making a dress out of carrier bags might make us think momentarily about recycling and waste and the folly of consumerism. But only momentarily. No-one ever seriously thought it would change anything. Apart from anything else, we all continued to proudly walk around and want the latest clothes and games and toys. No-one took it seriously.
Or at least, we thought no-one did. Apparently Robert Cary-Williams wasn’t with the rest of us in those lessons. Yesterday at London Fashion Week he exhibited “a dress made out of photocopied paper”. It got onto the front page of the Guardian, so he’s got the publicity he no doubt wanted. But really, beyond that, what is the point? Sometimes designers’ outfits are spectacular if impractical; sometimes they are thought-provoking if unlikely. But this is just vacuous. Even if a designer persuaded their models to walk onto the catwalk naked it would demonstrate some imagination and daring. But this demonstrates no imagination or effort. Not even the school children in the TDA advert would take him seriously.
