“What was most confounding about Mr. West’s behavior, after years of obsessive study of the industry, was that he demonstrated very little understanding of how he might actually be perceived.” That was just one choice nugget from Eric Wilson’s pithy
“What was most confounding about Mr. West’s behavior, after years of obsessive study of the industry, was that he demonstrated very little understanding of how he might actually be perceived.” That was just one choice nugget from Eric Wilson’s pithy takedown of Kanye West’s infamous S/S12 debut at Paris Fashion Week.
A native of West Virginia, Wilson left for New York on a journalism scholarship which led to an internship at Interview under the editorship of Ingrid Sischy. Joining the New York Times in 2005, Wilson has distinguished himself (no mean feat when you’re working alongside the likes of the redoubtable Cathy Horyn) with his plainspoken, often deadpan reviews and cerebral, witty take on the world of fashion. Whether covering the business aspects of the industry or profiling its stars (his 2010 feature on Courtney Love produced the indelible image of a drunk and naked Love parading herself in full view of the journalist), he applies the same journalistic values and intellectual rigor, providing a welcome antidote to the PR-sanctioned formulae of other fashion writing out there.
Who were some of the fashion writers that had an impact on you?
Amy Spindler at the Times. Holly Brubach – I always loved reading her copy. Bridget Foley for WWD. I loved her enthusiasm for fashion without ever being over the top.
What makes a good fashion writer?
That’s a tricky question because it’s so individual but from my perspective, what matters most is curiosity for the subject. You go through different periods with any kind of job, where you get so involved and so focused on everything that you’re working on that it’s pretty easy to burn out. I see a lot of young people covering fashion and they become very quickly disillusioned with it. Once you pull back the curtain a little bit, you start to understand about clothes and how they’re made and how you get dressed every day and how people perceive you and it has a psychological impact on you. It’s about image and the creation of desire and once you see how that works you can lose your enthusiasm for the subject. Maintaining that appreciation and excitement for fashion is the most important thing you can do. You have to constantly engage with everything. You constantly have to keep asking questions.
Does working for the New York Times afford a degree of freedom from the tyranny of advertisers?
Absolutely – very rarely do I hear about how our advertising is doing or how something I’ve written has impacted the business side of things. The Times is fabulous because we do not feel the pressure to write about or honestly evaluate a company whether or not they’re advertisers. Frankly half the time I don’t know because I’m so engaged with the editorial process. It’s something I don’t think about.
"Maintaining that appreciation and excitement for fashion is the most important thing you can do. You have to constantly engage with everything. You constantly have to keep asking questions"
You wrote an interesting piece about Vogue pairing with Moda Operandi and also about Barneys producing a catalogue that looked like an issue of W – where do you think it will all end up?
I think it’s going to keep going in that direction. I’m astounded at the pace at which it is happening. There was a pop up shop that GQ did with (men’s e-tailer) Park & Bond – the store was basically curated by GQ. It’s interesting to me because the original idea of style.com was to partner with the market and sell clothes. The idea was to create an internet enterprise and to have a retail component but that didn’t work at all. It was so ahead of its time – people were just buying certain things online and certainly not clothing. And now we’ve seen that editorial-retail hybrid has happened so quickly that the magazines that don’t have it are at the risk of getting lost on this journey. There are ultimately only a few sites that people would feel comfortable buying clothes from that I feel that there is no longer a division between editorial and retail. It’s been a little bit of benefit to the reader in that it has forced magazines to be more considerate of what they’re showing that they were actually available. But on the downside it has reduced the ability of magazines to ultimately create the most creative editorials imaginable.
Is there anything about the future of fashion that is unsettling you?
I think about it a lot – just the pace that information is getting out and how much designers are producing and how many new designers there are and I constantly wonder how can it all work? We have so many designers that not all of them can survive. Will there be a fallout at some point? What I worry about is what will happen when sponsorship money dries up. I wonder if we are in a fashion bubble that’s about to burst?
Have you ever written something that you’ve gone back in the heat of the deadlines and regretted it later?
I can’t say I have. I have changed my opinion on things and things have grown on me. I do have that thing in the back of my head where I think what if this thing was written about me? But at the same time you have to trust your instincts. People can pick up if you’re being glib or not really paying attention – so you really have to explain the reasoning behind it.
Which brings us to the Kanye West show…
That show was not my least favourite of all time! I’m sure he’s very serious about making it in fashion but the show was so spectacularly underwhelming, I think it needed more examination or perspective. I don’t think that was the harshest thing I’ve ever written but I think it was fair. But I hope he does show again next season because he’s someone with that much enthusiasm about fashion and has such incredible style, he could create something beautiful and of the times. I don’t have a problem with celebrities in fashion because I think fashion should reflect the culture and the culture is about celebrity right now. There’s a real desire to see what he will create. I would love to see him really put in the effort and be true to himself and create something.
Text by Kin Woo
