And he definitely wouldn't approve of you working on your laptop in PJs at home, either
Marc Jacobs would like you to stop wasting time on Twitter, please. In a Vogue interview with Suzy Menkes about his AW15 collection, Jacobs came out as a proud non-believer in technology and social media, and he doesn't care if you think he's a Luddite about it.
"I am so appalled by the whole social media thing," he said. "I don't get it, it doesn't appeal to me, neither does a computer, or working on a laptop. I don't want to read a book on a device. I like a book with a hard cover, and text on a piece of paper. I like magazines. I don't care if I carry around 100lbs of magazines, I'd rather do that than look at them on the internet. I am just not of that generation. I get the allure of it, but it just doesn't appeal to me."
And he's got some harsh words for younger designers who think they're on the cutting edge of fashion, too. "You know, I am an older person now, I'm going to be 52 in a couple of months," he acknowledged. "But I look at young fashion and it seems like it's all the same - the idea of what is edgy or cool. It's style with no substance; it doesn't really seem born of anything. I don't see the rebellion or edge in it. It just looks like a cliche: salad oil in the hair, Frankenstein shoes and the trappings of punk and all these other things."
Older designers passing judgement on the internet generation is nothing new. Back in 2012, Yohji Yamamoto told WWD that designers were losing true creativity via their wi-fi and 3G connections. "We are losing those young people because we have too much information by media," he said, "especially (through computers). We can see everything at the same time, so already they are spoiled too much. So when we have talk sessions with young designers or students, I tell them: 'Be bright. Your eyes have become dirty.'"
But it's a sentiment increasingly echoed by fashion students and young designers themselves. When Dazed interviewed Central Saint Martins graduates in a feature on the late Louise Wilson, many of them acknowledged that the internet's accessbility can be a double-edged sword.
"Research has become relatively easy," said L’Oréal Professionel Creative Award winner Michael Power. "You can just type in what you’re looking for and find it in an instant. The hardest thing now is the edit. Internet fashion has become this all-consuming beast which regurgitates fashion images with little regard for merit or relevance. Everything becomes elevated. I’ve come to really appreciate the make of a garment, the technology within it, the story behind it. The things you can’t see on Tumblr." One graduate designer, Michael Fan, told us that the undulating textures in his collection were inspired by an IRL walk past the Thomas Heatherwick-designed facade of Guy's Hospital in London.
In short, get off Tumblr and visit the real world sometime, internet addicts. You never know what you might find.
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