On the Death of Fashion Icons in 2022: A Year in Review
The Year 2022 saw the loss of 3 notable fashion icons, the American Powerhouse that was André Leon Talley, Thierry Mugler, a French designer with elevated taste and Issey Miyake, a Japanese connoisseur for everything folded and futuristic.
2021 was the year I moved to Paris to pursue a creative life and study fashion. It was also the year I had much of life to figure out while I navigated the industry.
Eager to learn, grow and take the fashion world by storm, I ramped up my fashion news intake and devoured magazines and editorials featuring the latest runway collection, gossip and business mergers (I still do a fair share of keeping up but I’ve since expanded my repertoire, let’s just say I’m more into literary magazine these days).
I remember the day, a crispy, most likely dreary fall January day in Paris, I was on my way to fashion school (I’ve since finished my program but it’s still cultural capital to claim this sentence) and I found out about André Leon Talley’s passing via a friend’s Instagram story. The fashion titan, aged 73, was no more as of January 18, 2022. I was devastated at the year’s first loss of a major Black influence in the industry. Talley’s presence crossed many intersections of style, manner and culture whether you knew of him or not, his name was everywhere, interspersed between the corners, headlines and at the dinner table of some of the most popular names in fashion. It hurt mourning Black representation, especially after Virgil Abloh’s death felt both personal and political, one I’m still processing almost a year later in 2022.
The same month we lose Virgil, I visit Paris’ historic (and a personal favourite of mine) MAD museum (a.k.a Musée des Arts Decoratifs) in November 2021 to see the newly multi-story exhibit of art in real-time — Thierry Mugler’s Couturissime’s Exposition — a visual and eye-popping treat, I encourage all my fashion friends in the city to go witness for themselves. Fast-forward, it’s January 23, 2022 and only 5 days after the death of Talley, the news breaks that iconic French designer, Thierry Mugler, age 73 (as well!!!), has died. I try to recount the days between both Talley’s and Mugler’s passings, thinking the dates must have been misreported. How could we lose two influential men in fashion in such a short time frame? Mugler to me was a designer who elevated the feminine through fashion, with sharp, cut-out and Black accented pieces, I both loved and pulled aspects of ‘le femme du desir’ invoked by the brand into my everyday life. After the news, I’m left questioning the industry I’m studying for and what it means to be a designer in a fast, 24-hour news cycle hellscape, paced world. I ponder with no clear answers ahead.
Summer approaches and I meet Men’s S/S22–23 Paris Fashion Week (Loewe’s S/S 2023 collection with growing plants on clothes is THE one to remember) at the end of June 2022. The months slip by and August arrives but yet again the repetition of the cycle makes its way full circle throwing my thoughts abruptly off-kilter. On August 5, 2022, aged 84, Issey Miyake dies and the news makes its way to my media consumption desk 5 days later. The number 5, is a phantom-like presence in the never-ending fallen fashion icons news cycle. Pleats Please is Miyake’s most staple design entity, meticulously branded, recognizable and yet classically diffused across their design ethos. Reinvented over and over and over again like the pulsing of fashion itself. Pleats, Please Stay.
Amidst all this I’m left to ponder, rethinking old ideas in a year with nearly 5 months left, coming to a close. What’s fashion without its trend-setting icons, the ones who pushed boundaries, remained committed to the art and made a name for themselves? Why do we desire to create and wear beautiful things? What does legacy mean? What is modern Beauty and why do we value it? This time I’m left internally reeling about questions that are larger than my own experiences to answer.
Creativity is subjective; fashion, art and designing fall under that umbrella. Yet I’m convinced personal subjectivity is a core tenet of the human experience — the part of ourselves and others that we fashion into, best tailored for whatever moments life throws at us.
