Haute Couture Meets Low Culture
· food
Haute Couture, Low Culture: How Fashion’s Obsession with Music is Redefining the Runway
The world of high fashion has long been fascinated by music, but in recent years this fascination has reached a fever pitch. No event embodies this trend more than the Balenciaga show at Paris Fashion Week, where creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli presented his debut collection accompanied by ANOHNI’s recorded performance. The singer’s voice soared above the catwalk as she effortlessly traversed genres and decades, covering Selena and Lou Reed before slipping into her own original material.
This fusion of fashion and music raises questions about the industry’s values. At first glance, it may seem like a natural progression – both art forms celebrate creativity and self-expression. However, upon closer inspection, we find ourselves in a strange territory where high culture and low culture are blurring beyond recognition.
ANOHNI’s performance itself was a mixed bag. Her cover of “Perfect Day” was a beautiful tribute to the Velvet Underground’s iconic song, but her subsequent originals felt incongruous with the rest of the show. Piccioli and his team may have wanted to signal their fashion brand’s eclecticism, but they ended up creating a cacophony instead.
Fashion has long been fascinated by street culture and its sounds – from grunge-infused haute couture in the 1990s to rappers collaborating with luxury brands on high-end merchandise. What’s changed is the speed and intensity at which this fusion is happening. Social media dominates our cultural landscape, making it increasingly difficult for artists and designers to differentiate themselves.
As a result, we’re seeing a homogenization of styles that threatens to erase what makes high fashion unique: its exclusivity, grandeur, and willingness to take risks. The influence of artists like SOPHIE is undeniable – their music has been name-dropped by Kanye West and The Weeknd, among others. However, it’s telling that ANOHNI now covers their songs on fashion runways.
The lines between high art and low culture have become so blurred that even the most avant-garde designers feel compelled to reference them. This raises questions about the future of fashion – will we continue down this path of eclecticism or return to more traditional notions of style and creativity? The industry’s obsession with music shows no signs of slowing down, so it will be a wild ride indeed.
Ultimately, these experiments will either yield something truly groundbreaking or become another iteration of the same old tricks.
Reader Views
- CDChef Dani T. · line cook
Fashion's attempts to co-opt music as a marketing gimmick are becoming increasingly tone-deaf. Instead of genuinely engaging with the art form, designers are relying on superficial nods to hipness. The real question is: what happens when this fusion goes beyond the runway and into production? Will we see mass-market fashion lines cluttered with unnecessary references, or worse – music-induced misfires in terms of actual style? The Balenciaga show was a case study in how this trend can go awry.
- PMPat M. · home cook
While the trend of fusing high fashion with music may seem exciting, I think we're losing sight of what makes haute couture truly special – its ability to be a spectacle in and of itself. By relying on music as a prop, designers like Piccioli are playing into the hands of social media, which is all about instant gratification and trends that come and go with the next season's collection. Where's the artistry in designing something just because it'll make for a good Instagram post?
- TKThe Kitchen Desk · editorial
The Balenciaga show's fusion of fashion and music is less about innovation than a desperate attempt to stay relevant in a saturated market. By blurring high culture with low culture, brands like Balenciaga risk diluting their exclusive appeal. The problem lies not just in the eclectic soundtrack, but also in the homogenization of styles that follows. Social media's influence amplifies this trend, making it harder for designers to create distinctive work rather than simply following trends. As a result, high fashion loses its grandeur and exclusivity, becoming increasingly indistinguishable from fast fashion.