Fashion is an easy target for cultural criticism but those with the itchiest trigger fingers often miss the point. There are many reasons to complain about an industry that exploits cheap (even child) labour in poorer countries such as Bangladesh and Burma and, according to one analysis, pollutes more than any other business except oil – but what seems often forgotten is that such immoralities are shared by most globalised industries that make more money than freelance dog walkers and au pairs.
Fighting corporate misbehaviour is time-consuming, however (“The problem with socialism is that it takes too many evenings,” as Oscar Wilde supposedly said), so much of the criticism of fashion falls into that eminently social-media-friendly zone called identity politics. Sometimes that’s fair, as fashion is squarely about identity. But then you also get all the reductive fury about cultural appropriation that, Donald Trump-style, insists on erecting walls between races and ethnicities. It’s pretty dispiriting.
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