I just think that it's maybe fashionable today to try to take individual actions and individual failures and take the broadest possible brush and try to paint a company.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Fashion is always seen as somewhat frivolous and self-indulgent. And I think people on the inside maybe don't see or understand how exciting and diverse a business it is.
One cabbie chastened me by saying that the fashion industry was doing harm to young people, who are trying to live up to an unrealistic ideal. It prompted me to make body image and diversity key issues on 'The Business of Fashion.'
Fashion can be a really powerful tool, but it's also a place where you can be totally humiliated and have your power taken from you.
I think the responsibility lies with the fashion world as a collective. We have to demand more variety.
The fashion world tells me how much they love my work, but they don't hire me very often. Tom Ford did, and he hated it. Naturally, he wanted to Photoshop away the imperfections, which is perfectly understandable. They want their vision.
For someone who comes from my business background, getting fashion people aligned around certain things can be a challenge. In a way, the industry is so forward-looking. And yet, sometimes people in fashion are not open to change.
This amateurism however, can sometimes be helpful in forging a style; you have to work around your weaknesses.
The industry is quite chauvinistic generally. Expectations of women, girls, what they should look like, how they should be, what they should say, what they should wear, how their hair should be, what colour their skin should be.
Running a fashion business takes the heart of a good gambler. You're always dealing with new things. And there's no guarantee that anything new is going to be successful.
It isn't till now, in the American Century, as we have recklessly dubbed it, that tribal pressures toward conformity have been brought to bear so ruthlessly upon men and women seeking to work creatively.