Peter Saville, the graphic design authority behind the visual identity of Mancunian label Factory Records’ most celebrated talents, including the album artwork for bands, like Joy Division and New Order, which has made cameos on Raf Simons’ runways over the years, and more recently, the redesign of Burberry’s and Calvin Klein’s branding, talked to Vogue Business about how fashion has changed over the past two decades, promoted in large part by the advent of social media …
“Certain developments have brought about an entirely new culture in fashion. There’s a raging populism enabled by social media. If we go back just 20 years, there was still a hierarchy that said what fashion was. Now it’s part of the everyday and there are entirely populist icons. The economics of it may not be that sustainable, but it’s part of socio-cultural evolution, and we’re not going to lose it. Fashion’s going to a broader demographic and they’re having what they want. They’re not subservient to an imposed idea of what fashion is.
It never goes back. One can run out of money, but you can’t discard the awareness. But the fact that it is so ubiquitous now makes it less interesting to me. Thirty years ago, graphic interventions in fashion culture were interesting, they were unexpected. It’s not radical now, it’s expected.”
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