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Is Anyone's Style Actually Original? · Our Pandora's Box

• 0:00
  Understand that it's not as easy to define what is fashion today as it was for the past,
• 0:06
  where you had, a particular style, okay, you can say it's the 1920s,
• 0:12
  it's the 1930s, and then it's the 1980s, it's the You can say that.
• 0:18
  But can you say it's the 2020s? It's the 2010s? fashion is a cycle.
• 0:24
  It always feeds itself with the past and regurgitate it with today's society.
• 0:30
  And what is today's society? Internet. ​ When I think about fashion,I think about my grandmother,
• 0:36
  and I think about how careful she was about what she wore,
• 0:42
  how it fit, and I also think about how she passed that down to me.
• 0:48
  So for this episode, I wanted to get into fashion today, why we wear what we wear,
• 0:54
  what the history of it is, and how you yourself can decide
• 1:00
  what it is that you want to experiment with. Because for me,
• 1:05
  my clothing is everything from comfort to a pep talk. It is often the one thing I can
• 1:10
  control in the morning, and so when I set out for the world,
• 1:15
  for a job, for a lecture, for even a recording like this,
• 1:20
  I think about what will make me feel the most confident. I mean,
• 1:25
  that's true for going out on dates, too, and having fun with friends.
• 1:30
  You know, it's practical as well as joyful. So that's why I wanted to get into it in
• 1:35
  this episode, where I'm very lucky to bring on a very special guest to _Our Pandora's Box_.
• 1:40
  Her name is Catherine Trotin. She is an old friend of mine from my days in Istanbul,
• 1:45
  and she knows not only about the history of why we dress the way we do,
• 1:50
  but also she has a very international perspective on developing a personal and professional style.
• 1:55
  She is a marketing
• 2:00
  expert, a host of the bilingual fashion podcast, My Fashion Stories Box,
• 2:05
  as well as an instructor of fashion marketing and history at IFA Paris,
• 2:10
  an international fashion and design business luxury school based in Paris and Istanbul.
• 2:16
  So I'm very excited today to welcome on Catherine Trotin to the show,
• 2:21
  so let's welcome her. ​ Catherine Trotin, welcome to the show. We're so happy to have you here.
• 2:27
  Thank you, Maria, for inviting me. So we're talking today about fashion,
• 2:32
  and Catherine, we met actually because of fashion. You reached out to me,
• 2:38
  for some content writing back when we were living in Istanbul. Exactly.
• 2:43
  I was working for a Turkish footwear company, and, the director was looking to translate the website in
• 2:49
  as many languages as possible. And in fact, it's him who found you,
• 2:54
  and then after we were exchanging,
• 3:00
  messages because he put me in contact with you so that I can do,
• 3:05
  the follow-up and basically... it's Istanbul and it's fashion. We can say that like that.
• 3:10
  Why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself? Aside from having been involved with the
• 3:15
  shoe company in Istanbul, how would you describe yourself? I'm Catherine. I don't like to say that I'm
• 3:20
  French because this is not how I want to be defined. I don't consider myself as someone coming
• 3:25
  from one country. I've been living abroad for almost the majority of my life.
• 3:30
  I would say that, I'm a person who is curious, who has been traveling,
• 3:35
  who has been learning, and still is learning, regarding history and more like focusing on the past,
• 3:40
  try to understand the present and try to, not to guess, but maybe to anticipate what could happen,
• 3:45
  in the future. I've been working in marketing for a good part of my time,
• 3:50
  in Moscow first and then after when I moved to Istanbul,I started to work in fashion.
• 3:55
  And what got you
• 4:00
  interested in fashion to begin with? Chance. I didn't have a big interest straight from the beginning.
• 4:05
  When I see my students, they are like, 18 years old, sometimes 17 years old,
• 4:10
  and, "I want to work in the fashion industry. I want to be a designer.
• 4:16
  I want to be this and that." I wasn't like that. I discovered this field,by chance,
• 4:21
  honestly. So I was not interested in all the glitters and glamours that you can findon social media,
• 4:27
  that you can see on fashion shows. I was more into what's happening behind.
• 4:32
  What are the skills, what are the people who are involved into creating these beautiful artifacts,
• 4:38
  these beautiful garments that people will wear, will copy? You have after all the process that we see
• 4:43
  pretty well. And by starting teaching for this fashion school in Istanbul,
• 4:49
  I've, also been asked to teach a fashion history class. I never taught fashion history.
• 4:54
  I never taught
• 5:00
  history. I was more a marketing person, I love history. it's a topic that I like very much.
• 5:06
  Fashion I started to understand and so I said, "Why not? Let's try." And I discovered,
• 5:13
  in fact, a big passion for me. It led me to do more research to work not just
• 5:20
  on the history and how practices evolved from centuries to century I also wanted to learn about the
• 5:26
  influence of the society. How the structure of the society, how the religion,
• 5:33
  how the cultures, how the beliefs, how the position of men, women,
• 5:40
  young people, older people influenced the way people were dressed and what was important for them to communicate
• 5:46
  about. So this non-verbal communication aspect linked with fashion and the sociologyof fashion was what really started to
• 5:53
  interest me and still is nowadays. I'm excited to get into all of
• 6:00
  that, because this is why we're talking. But I always ask the guests this question at the start.
• 6:06
  If you could go back in time to your late 20s, what advice would you give yourself?
• 6:12
  I would say "Don't pay attention to what people think of you." Because "when I was,
• 6:18
  uh, younger, and still a bit nowadays, I was really looking forward to have a validation from the
• 6:24
  others. It was a kind of reassurance that I was on the right tracks,
• 6:30
  that I was doing everything correctly. But, in the end, you understand that you don't need that.
• 6:36
  But I was really looking to have people agreeing with me, to have people not judging me.
• 6:42
  And I would say that, "Yeah, pay attention to them. This is not the most important.
• 6:48
  They are not the one living your life. You are the one living your life." And this would
• 6:54
  be the advice I would give younger self. It can take a moment to get there.
• 7:00
  Speaking of, making your own decisions, you know, as you mentioned earlier,
• 7:05
  you moved to Moscow and then you moved to Istanbul. And fashion varies so much country to country,
• 7:10
  and what we wear has a big signal on who we are to other people,
• 7:16
  and as you've said, the sociology of it. And we've both experienced this.
• 7:21
  How did you manage either maintaining or creating a personal and professional style as you went from Russia
• 7:27
  to Turkey and also back to France? When I was a student,
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  I just didn't pay attention what I was wearing. It was not important,
• 7:38
  and because we didn't have money to spend on cool stuff, so it was,
• 7:43
  hand-me-downs. It was secondhand. It wasvery cheap clothes because we didn't have the money to do in another
• 7:49
  way. So I was not really putting efforts on how I would dress.
• 7:54
  It started to change when I moved to Moscow Oh I was
• 8:00
  working for the French office of a big French group, which had its headquarters in Paris,
• 8:04
  and I was working for the office in Moscow. And the marketing and communication director from Paris started
• 8:09
  to regularly come to Moscow because I was there to implement the marketing and communication.
• 8:13
  And one day, she started to, you know, look me up and down.
• 8:18
  And, just for the context, you have to imagine this, very posh,
• 8:23
  Parisian woman, very small, very thin, with heels, and she looked at you very judgmental,
• 8:27
  And she was, "You know, Catherine, you have to work on your dress code." And I did some
• 8:32
  efforts on how I would look like, and it seems that it was not sufficient.
• 8:36
  because I knew she was coming, and she was Parisian, and I don't come from Paris,
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  so you know, you have this kind of, we don't like Parisians,
• 8:46
  Parisians don't like us. So she left, and then after I went to see my managing partner,
• 8:50
  I said, "Oh, you don't know what she said to me. She said that I need to do
• 8:55
  some efforts
• 9:00
  because I don't dress well." And my managing partner was, "Hmm, you know,
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  you do have to do some efforts. You're not a student anymore.
• 9:10
  You are a young professional. You are a representative, not just from France,
• 9:15
  but you're also a representative from a French company," because I was going out a lot,
• 9:20
  for networking events. So she said, "She's right. She was right to tell you that." And it started
• 9:25
  to change, in fact. But did I work on a personal/professional style?
• 9:30
  Not really. I was just copying. I was just taking inspiration from my colleagues,
• 9:35
  from my managing partner, to try to fit, you know. Uh, that's why I would say that my
• 9:40
  style was more like a kind of chameleon style, and as my personality is,
• 9:45
  in fact. You adapt. At least this is how I function. I adapt,
• 9:50
  I copy, I take inspiration. Well, I think a lot of us do that anyway.
• 9:55
  It's very natural. As human beings, we wanna feel
• 10:00
  like we belong, and then especially if you're someone who thrives in living outside of your country of
• 10:05
  origin, we are people who are absolutely chameleons. That's how we survive.
• 10:10
  That's how we manage it. But I think it's interesting, it sounds like that moment,
• 10:15
  that really harsh truth telling Really harsh. You can't really imagine how I was,
• 10:20
  like, starting I can. I was, grrr. No, I can, for sure But then after I developed a
• 10:25
  kind of passion, I would say. I loved, going shopping with my girlfriends,
• 10:30
  starting to take an interest into appearance, how Russian girls, women were dressed,
• 10:35
  when we are going out, to parties, to clubs, and how I wouldn't dress that way.
• 10:40
  But still, even if it's more unconscious level, you want to blend,
• 10:45
  so you copy. I started to wear short skirts. I started to wear high heels.
• 10:50
  In Istanbul I wouldn't wear that. In France, I could wear high heels,
• 10:55
  it's just that it's not practical. I walk a
• 11:00
  lot. But in Moscow it was fine because it was, you know,
• 11:05
  how girls my age were dressed, so I just copied. Yeah. And we have to make two points,
• 11:10
  I think, about why don't you wear high heels in Istanbul, or rarely.
• 11:15
  A), the hills, which makes it impossible. You will kill yourself. And two,
• 11:20
  maybe some unwanted attention. There are certain venues in which you could wear high heels,
• 11:25
  but usually you see someone, or I remember seeing people with heels,
• 11:30
  and they almost always came in a taxi or with a chauffeur Exactly.
• 11:35
  It's true that moving to Istanbul, and I'm pretty sure you also experienced that,
• 11:40
  completely changed the way I was dressing. All the miniskirts, short skirts,
• 11:45
  heels that I was bringing with me, I would wear them very occasionally if I would be picked
• 11:50
  up by taxi, if I knew I wouldn't have to cross a conservative part of the city.
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  Depending also if it was more an international crowd or more
• 12:00
  Turkish crowd.You adapted because, again, you have this notion of culture that's different.
• 12:05
  In Moscow, usually in Russia, it's fine. Women would dress, at least when I was living there,
• 12:10
  maybe it changed but nobody was looking at you. Men were at some point either too drunk or
• 12:16
  not truly interested because, there, there is a shortage of men, so it's not the men running after
• 12:21
  you women. It's more the women were running after men in Russia.
• 12:27
  The demographic situation is a bit different. I had never had problems.
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  On the contrary, you had even grandmothers telling me, "Oh, you need to wear heels.
• 12:38
  You need to dress up in order to find good husbands," and blah,
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  blah, blah. You would never see a Turkish grandmother telling you need to wear short skirts and high
• 12:49
  heels, because it makes you look more beautiful and more attractive to men.
• 12:54
  The position women have in the society, how they're perceived, and how they
• 13:00
  can also express their femininity, and it really differs from country to country.
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  It's not even the same in France and even in Europe. If you compare,
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  London, Paris, or Milan, it's not gonna be the same thing. No,
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  it's fun sometimes to take inspiration from the different ways that people do it and express it.
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  There are ways in which I'm honestly very grateful that my years in Turkey influenced my style.
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  There's some beautiful ways of drape and color and the little details that Turkish women like to wear,
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  especially back in the 2010s when we were there, um, that I really love and I really grew
• 13:38
  to appreciate certain femininity that they had. So obviously women's style around the world has drastically changed over
• 13:43
  the centuries, and you've been studying this. When would you say a modern style period began,
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  and what has that meant for women dressing for different occasions from work to play?
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  I would say that there was one
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  particular century that needs to be pinpoint in order to understand what has been happening during the 20th
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  century and what's currently happening during the 21st century. It's the 19th century.
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  The 19th century is really a turning point in the way, particularly when it comes to women's fashion,
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  in the way things started to change for different reasons. The first one is that at the end
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  of the previous century, you had a political event that everybody knows about,
• 14:27
  the French Revolution. So we could think that the French Revolution was just for France.
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  But it did have some impacts also abroad in Europe.What happened during the French Revolution apart from beheading,
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  the king and the queen in this order, is that you had the abolition of privileges,
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  and a as part of that, you had the abolition of the sumptuary laws.
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  These were laws which would say what you could wear, what kind of fabrics,
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  what kind of embellishments you could have depending of
• 15:00
  your social belonging, depending on your status and quality as they say usually in the laws.
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  So if you were part of the elite, if you are part of the aristocracy,
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  and again, depending on which level of the aristocracy, you could have access to silk,
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  you could have access to brocade, to gold thread embroideries, and so on and so forth.
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  If you are belonging to the bourgeoisie, if you are belonging to the working class,
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  you didn't have access to this because at some point these laws were here to reinforce the social
• 15:32
  recognition through garments. As I told you a bit very briefly at the beginning,
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  fashion and the way we dress is a non-verbal communication. Consequently, they could already guess who you were
• 15:43
  and how they could also address to you. The French revolutionaries, what they wanted to achieve in fact,
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  is to make sure that equality was for everybody, not just equality when it comes tobelongings,
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  but also when it comes to how you dress. What they did do for women
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  was to get rid of the corset. They got rid of, the pannier,
• 16:04
  this kind of big structure which would give, the characteristic shape of the Rococo dresses,
• 16:09
  the French-style dress. You also had the Polish-style dress. You had alwaysa kind of understructure.
• 16:13
  Yeah The French revolutionaries said, "No, we don't want that anymore because it's preventing freedom of movement." So
• 16:18
  you still have this notion of freedom, which was important, though you are a woman.
• 16:23
  But it's interesting. If you look at the beginning of the 19th century,
• 16:27
  fashion for women is very comfortable. Yes. So instead of these big pannier dresses,
• 16:32
  to help us imagine if you haven't seen these types of dresses --what did it start to look
• 16:36
  like? They're, you know, like you said, they're these cages, right? Well,
• 16:41
  if you look at the beginning of the 18th century pre-French Revolution,
• 16:46
  you need to imagine Marie Antoinette. She's everywhere in France currently. There are at least two exhibitions,
• 16:50
  if I'm not mistaken, even three exhibitions going on the 18th century.
• 16:55
  You have this very beautiful movie from
• 17:00
  Sofia Coppola. Yes. So you will have the understanding of how women would dress before the Revolution.
• 17:05
  Beginning of the 19th century, to give you an idea, you need to look at Bridgerton,
• 17:10
  even it's not, like, 100% historically accurate in terms of costume designs,
• 17:15
  you have the idea. It's high-waisted dress. if you look at the fashion history from the French side,
• 17:20
  we would say it's Empire dress because it correspond to the First Empire and Napoleon Bonaparte.
• 17:25
  If you look at the English side, it's the Regency dress, because corresponds to the Regency period.
• 17:30
  But still, the dress is the same. You have a very high waist dress.
• 17:35
  You don't have any volumes. It's very lean. You had a kind of rigidity at at the breast
• 17:40
  level. It's not really a corset, so don't get, abused by people showing you corsets in Bridgerton for
• 17:45
  the beginning of the 19th century because it's not accurate. Here you don't have understructure.
• 17:50
  Sometimes it was even so transparent that people were complaining, "Oh, look,
• 17:55
  we see.
• 18:00
  Ooh, we need to hide." So that's how you have the first bottom undergarments But then it started
• 18:06
  to I was I was gonna say, we don't stay that way though,
• 18:12
  because you're describing the pannier, yet I'm like, "Oh, but wait, but it comes back in a different
• 18:18
  shape," right? This period lasted 15 years roughly. And then after slowly if you look at portraits,
• 18:24
  if you look at fashion magazines, engravings, you see that slowly fashion started to become more and more
• 18:30
  rigid, more and more voluminous. And here have to thank the Industrial Revolution.
• 18:36
  Really? So what happens? You had entrepreneurs, in the steel industry who wanted to earn a bit more
• 18:42
  money. You produce, you want to make sure that people were going to consume and to come back
• 18:48
  consuming. So they did three things which led to the comeback of items,
• 18:54
  particularly in the women's wardrobe. One of them, is linked with the
• 19:00
  corset. Before, in order to fasten your corset, you didn't have a steel round to make sure that
• 19:06
  the fabric won't tear. So one genius said, "Oh, but let's put eyelets in metal in the corset.
• 19:13
  So this brought back the corset. The heels also tended to disappear between the end of the French
• 19:20
  Revolution and the 1810s. Again, a person said, let's put, some metal heels I see.
• 19:26
  And now the crinoline. So usually when we think about the 18th century,
• 19:33
  we have these big, voluminous dresses coming in mind. You can think about Queen Victoria,
• 19:40
  Empress Eugénie. The Victorian era most of the time is associated with the crinolines.
• 19:46
  And why did we have the comeback of this understructure? Again, still entrepreneurs says,
• 19:53
  "Okay we need to find ways to sell more." So you're telling me capitalism is the reason for
• 20:00
  this fashion style, the lobster tail fashion style that we see in 1890s into 1900s dresses?
• 20:06
  Yeah, in particular, starting from the mid of the 19th century, you can definitely,
• 20:12
  draw a parallel between the boom of capitalism and production and the complexification of females' wardrobe.
• 20:18
  It's not the only thing. This is also during that period that fashion started to be considered superficial
• 20:24
  in a sense. If you compare men and women during that period,
• 20:30
  men it's very boring. It's black. It's very simple. It starts to be very comfortable also for them.
• 20:36
  And for women, it starts to be complex because women were used by men as a way to
• 20:42
  display their wealth, and if the crinoline started to reach crazy volumes,
• 20:48
  it was also, "Look, I have the money to make sure that the women of my family can
• 20:54
  wear all these crazy garments," because it cost a lot of money to have to pay
• 21:00
  for these fabrics and to have these voluminous dresses. And it's not over.
• 21:04
  Oh boy. What else? It's not over because indeed, during the 19th century,
• 21:09
  women had to change several times particularly when it comes to the bourgeoisie.
• 21:13
  I was going to say probably depending on their social class. If they were higher up,
• 21:18
  they probably had to change multiple times. So what were the modes of the day in which they
• 21:23
  had to change what they were wearing, and what would they wear?
• 21:27
  You had to change at least five times a day. Not counting sports activities because also during the
• 21:32
  19th century that sports activity started to rise and to be more and more practiced.
• 21:36
  I was thinking this is a very lucrative trade to have housemaids and ladies' maids and all of
• 21:41
  these different servants to help you get in and out of these garments,
• 21:46
  especially if you have these hooks and all the different pieces to them and things like that.
• 21:50
  But to think about changing five times a day... Was this again,
• 21:55
  was this capitalism at play? Was this
• 22:00
  sociology at play? Who started this notion, and when did this start to fall apart?
• 22:04
  Because how long were people still having five different outfits a day?
• 22:09
  Maybe not five. Okay. This practice of changing, honestly, I also had it in my family.
• 22:13
  When I was going to school, I was dressed a certain way.
• 22:18
  When I get back from school, I had to change in another type of outfit.
• 22:23
  If there were people coming over for lunch or for dinner, you would dress up a bit.
• 22:27
  If you are going to the cinema, if you are going to the theater,
• 22:32
  you would dress up also. So you would adapt, in fact, the way you dress depending on the
• 22:36
  activity, not to the extreme of what was happening for women during the 19th century.
• 22:41
  But I was born during the 1980s. I was raised like that,
• 22:46
  and it's true that when I am at home, I'm dressed more relaxed.
• 22:50
  If I need to go out, I would change. In Greece, it's quite common to wear pajamas at
• 22:55
  home. And I grew
• 23:00
  up with a notion also of home clothes, and we would do the same thing.
• 23:05
  We'd change out of whatever clothes we wore at school into something that was not as nice and
• 23:10
  whatever over the weekend. But I say this as knowing that I don't actually know what the typical,
• 23:15
  and I say this in air quotes right now, American experience is or Western European experience is,
• 23:20
  because I recognize that I'm, my family has its own microcosm and bubble that is a window into
• 23:25
  another part of the world. No, but it's true that I would say that it's European because even
• 23:30
  the home clothes are not pajamas. You would dress after for the night,
• 23:35
  which was completely different way of dress. So I guess we still kept that.
• 23:40
  It's not something that is common nowadays. It depends on the people.
• 23:45
  It depends on also on your own behavior. I know that I like to dress differently depending on
• 23:50
  the occasion, Me too. depending on the type of people, depending on what I will be doing.
• 23:55
  But it's not necessarily the
• 24:00
  case for everybody. And this practice of changing depending on the occasion went on throughout the 20th century.
• 24:05
  At the beginning of the 20th century, it was still pretty common before the First World War,
• 24:10
  But already we start to see, that there is a simplification of dress.
• 24:15
  Here you have take into consideration that during the 19th century you have sports activities which would develop
• 24:20
  both for men and women, in fact. Nowadays we do see the difference between like sportswear and like
• 24:25
  day wear, and we tend to dress during the day with sportswear.
• 24:30
  But back in the time, I wouldn't say that it was necessarily a more comfortably cut or something
• 24:35
  like that. It was just, okay, these are the pants for hunting,
• 24:40
  for playing golf. And this influence of now we call it sportswear,
• 24:45
  but this influence of sports activities became stronger and stronger throughout the 20th century.
• 24:50
  And of course, the end of the 20th century, it was the reign of sportswear,
• 24:55
  and nowadays it's
• 25:00
  streetswear. If you look at the last, Louis Vuitton's fashion show, it's for men,
• 25:05
  it's completely sportswear. So we've gone into, in the 20th century, it's very unstructured,
• 25:10
  and also I'm assuming women's roles in society and what they're doing and the emergence of-- is it
• 25:15
  actually the emergence of more women working outside the house? N- no,
• 25:20
  because women were working this whole time. Women were working, but what happened with the 20th century is
• 25:25
  that more and more women started to work, and it's not just working class women.
• 25:30
  You also had women from higher social groups who would start working.
• 25:35
  Before working for women was a sign of poverty, but during the First World War in Europe,
• 25:40
  men were mobilized. They were fighting on the fronts, and women stayed in the back,
• 25:45
  and they, in fact, run the countries. They run the companies that their husbands or all the men
• 25:50
  left. And after that, they understood that they could be independent, and they didn't need a man to
• 25:55
  support them financially.
• 26:00
  So it was a big discovery. Not discovery, but a big realization,
• 26:05
  "Okay, I can do it myself. It's not because, I'm poor, am I coming from poor background that
• 26:10
  I need to work. It because by working, I can also gain independence from men." And throughout the
• 26:16
  1920s, the 1930s, you have more and more women, in fact, taking on,
• 26:21
  positions, because they had to necessarily, but because they wanted to, because it brought them a certain level
• 26:27
  of independence. And this is interesting also to notice throughout the 20th century in Western Europe,
• 26:32
  I would say in Western Europe because this is what I'm more familiar with,
• 26:38
  but in other countries, in other regions, something that you can also notice.
• 26:43
  But women were working. They were more independent financially, and you can also notice that the dresses became
• 26:49
  simpler Freedom of movement again. Again. Again, the French revolutionaries were on something.
• 26:54
  And then we have, of course, after World War
• 27:00
  II, the New Look and a return to a more structured look for women.
• 27:06
  Yeah, it's interesting to compare. it's Christian Dior who launched the New Look,
• 27:12
  in 1947.And, it's interesting because also to understand why he brought back these crinoline-inspired dresses,
• 27:18
  because they were inspired by the crinoline. You have different elements to take into consideration,
• 27:24
  all linked with also the personal history of Christian Dior. Christian Dior was born at the beginning of
• 27:30
  the 20th century in a wealthy family in Normandy, with flowers, with his mother,
• 27:36
  his sister, and wasinfluenced by this kind of romantic era, the past is beautiful.
• 27:42
  Then after his his family went bankrupt, he started to work for different designers during the war.
• 27:48
  He would work Lucien Lelong, who would after train many designers who would start in the 19 50s.
• 27:54
  And he also had a
• 28:00
  sister, Catherine Dior, who was part of the French Resistance. And, his sister got arrested by the Gestapo
• 28:05
  during the very last days of the war. weeks before the liberalization of Paris.
• 28:10
  And she got arrested, she got tortured, she got sent to a concentration camp.
• 28:16
  It was the last convoy which went there. So he was very afraid of never seeing his sister
• 28:21
  again, so finally, it was, with the Red Cross, they managed to find her.
• 28:27
  She was alive. And when he learned when, she would arrive in Paris,
• 28:32
  so he waited for her, and he was just with a big bucket of flower because he was
• 28:38
  raised like that. And he didn't know how to react because you can imagine she spent months in
• 28:43
  the concentration camp,she had many health issues. When he saw her looking like a skeleton,
• 28:49
  he got scared. And many people, in fact, got scared by seeing what was happening plus the fashion
• 28:54
  during the Second World
• 29:00
  War for women, which was not feminine at all, very much inspired by the military uniforms.
• 29:06
  Sohe was reacting to this by saying, "Okay, let's bring back femininity.
• 29:12
  Let's bring back women as flowers," as it was during the 19th century.
• 29:18
  And that's why you had the bar jacket, the full skirts. It was for him a way to
• 29:24
  bring back this notion of sweetness, of calmness, Of comfort. Exactly. It sounds like...
• 29:30
  nostalgia. Exactly. It was completely nostalgia for him. I think we have to talk about fashion today.
• 29:36
  We had a conversation before this formal interview about how it seems at the moment that fashion doesn't
• 29:42
  have a cohesion to it, or there are many different trends that are happening at once.
• 29:48
  We haven't even talked about fast fashion. You mentioned it with the Industrial Revolution of making it easier
• 29:54
  and quicker for people, but now, it's indisputable. It's at a fever pitch of how quickly
• 30:00
  fast fashion turns out different trends and designs, and then it's gone.
• 30:06
  So what do you see going on right now? Understand that it's not as easy to define what
• 30:12
  is fashion today as it was for the past, where you had,
• 30:18
  from decade to decade, a particular style, in fact. okay, you can say it's the 1920s,
• 30:24
  it's the 1930s, and then it's the 1980s, it's the 1970s. You can say that.
• 30:30
  But can you say it's the 2020s? It's the 2010s? It's another question.
• 30:36
  Fashion is a cycle. It always feeds itself with the past and regurgitate it with today's society.
• 30:42
  And what is today's society? Internet. The rise of social media. A faster communication,
• 30:48
  a faster production also. So you see more and more practices from the 20th century and any kind
• 30:54
  of
• 31:00
  decade, like from the 18th century, even like from the 16th century,
• 31:06
  coming back and being, given another shape. And this is what is fashion.
• 31:12
  So the way we communicate, the speed that we have to produce,
• 31:18
  maybe also at some point the impact of climate change, the geopolitical events which are very strong for
• 31:24
  the past years also impact fashion. The fact that you don't have just one center of fashion,
• 31:30
  which was Western Europe, but you have now different hubs with their own identity,
• 31:36
  with their own culture from former colonies, and they want to also be part of the discussion.
• 31:42
  So when I ask students what is fashion? How do you describe fashion today?
• 31:48
  They say, "Oh yeah, we take it- We blend it and we give it some...
• 31:54
  We give another shape." And it changes almost every day because of social media,
• 32:00
  TikTok, for example. when it comes to, new trends and being adopted,
• 32:05
  by billions of people, it's on TikTok. I've seen this as an accusation online or indictment online that
• 32:10
  no one has original style anymore because everyone is copying each other from social media,
• 32:16
  rushing from, to copy it literally from head to toe. And we said earlier in this conversation,
• 32:21
  our styles are in some ways are still about blending in. Some people dress to stand out,
• 32:27
  but generally as people, as societies, that's what we do to feel like we have some sort of
• 32:32
  in-group or that we belong. So do you think it's true that there's no originality anymore,
• 32:38
  or is this a moot point? We need to define what is originality.
• 32:43
  Originality in 2026 might not be the same as it was at the end of the 20th century.
• 32:49
  If I say to my fashion students that their style is not original,
• 32:54
  while I do see that they put efforts to stand out, I will
• 33:00
  be killed. I mean, I would be beheaded. Honestly, they would put a guillotine in the campus.
• 33:04
  They will come for me. So what is originality? Because maybe originality for them is not the same
• 33:08
  as what it is for me and for you. Maybe for them originality is to bring back,
• 33:12
  I don't like it, but say, "Yeah, it's vintage from the 1990s." And I was,
• 33:17
  "No, it's not vintage. I'm not vintage." You have the fact that the,
• 33:21
  this new generation, the Gen Z, and then you'll have Gen Alpha,
• 33:25
  they don't live on the same time zone, I would say almost,
• 33:30
  than we do. Oh, absolutely. We all grew up through very different historical events,
• 33:34
  and so that has absolutely influenced it. I mean, the '90s, I think about,
• 33:38
  my own antipathy to it is that in the 1990s I was an adolescent,
• 33:42
  so I see those clothes, and for me it evokes the emotional reaction I was the most awkward
• 33:47
  during that time period. So I see them and I'm like, "Oh no,
• 33:51
  we're not doing this again," even though I am not that person anymore.
• 33:55
  Yep. But it's different. I love
• 34:00
  1960s, '70s clothes. I never lived through that time period, but because I didn't,
• 34:05
  I just see the clothes as how cool they are. And that's why it's,
• 34:10
  it's difficult for me to do fashion history for today because, you know,
• 34:15
  I was born in the 1980s, so I saw the last decades of the 20th century.
• 34:20
  I saw the turning to the 21st century, and I'm gonna live for another few decades of the
• 34:25
  21st century.It's easier for me to look at my mother's time, at my grandmother's time,
• 34:30
  because indeed, as you said, I wasn't born. Absolutely. But to come back to today's fashion and how
• 34:35
  to define fashion, fashion is linked with society. And for that, there is a quote from Gabrielle Chanel
• 34:40
  that I like very much, and I wrote it down. She says that,
• 34:45
  "Fashion is not something, that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in,
• 34:50
  the sky, is in the street. Fashion has to do with ideas,
• 34:55
  the way we live, what is
• 35:00
  happening." And she was true. It's what is fashion. So when you want to understand a certain practice,
• 35:06
  you need to see society at large. So if we try to understand what's happening today in fashion
• 35:12
  and why we have all these things going together, we don't know where it goes.
• 35:18
  Are we tending towards something gender-free? Something where everybody will be dressed the same way?
• 35:24
  And as we are internationally connected, that's pretty new in human history to have so fast connections where
• 35:30
  look, you are in the States, I'm in France. So it's the beauty of technology.
• 35:36
  Of course, it makes fashion even more faster. And when it comes to fast fashion,
• 35:42
  this is also, something that we didn't really talk about. I would love to have you back on
• 35:48
  to talk about fast fashion and sustainability and, climate change We could do,
• 35:54
  and we should do, a whole episode on that and how much I find in looking
• 36:00
  at these big questions, it feels like there's a big tension between how much we can do as
• 36:05
  individuals and how much the onus of this is on corporations and governments.
• 36:10
  I would love to have a big discussion about all of those things.
• 36:16
  So yes, not today for fast fashion, but yes, fast fashion is another aspect of talking about this.
• 36:21
  I've got a listener question for you. Oh, sure. Hi, Catherine. My name is Afton.I graduated with a
• 36:27
  degree in art history, and after looking at all of your experience,
• 36:32
  I'm just, in awe. You've done so much research and work with women around the world from all
• 36:38
  different backgrounds, all different cultures, all areas of the world, and I'm just curious to know if you
• 36:43
  see a common theme that ties all of us women together and how we can really,
• 36:49
  use that information to keep evolving as the next generation of women in the world today?
• 36:54
  Fashion
• 37:00
  is something that is so unique to every person, but I'm curious if you found any common themes
• 37:05
  of what truly ties us together as women around the world. Thank you very much for for your
• 37:10
  question. It's a very interesting one. You know, what I've noticed, no matter the period of time,
• 37:16
  no matter the century we're talking about, no matter the culture, no matter the country of origin,
• 37:21
  there is indeed one thing that link women together. It's the wish to be beautiful.
• 37:27
  And beauty can be translated in so many ways. Of course, 16th century beauty is not the same
• 37:32
  as 21st century beauty. But the notion of I want to feel beautiful,
• 37:38
  I want to show off who I am or what kind of person I want to be perceived.
• 37:43
  I think that wishing to be beautiful is the common thread that we all have as women.
• 37:49
  So I've got two more questions to close this out, One, how can people develop their own style?
• 37:54
  And
• 38:00
  two, in order to do that, what do you recommend people read,
• 38:05
  watch, listen to, and go see to learn about fashion history? For the first question,
• 38:10
  which was on how to work on one's personal style. What I would like to answer is really
• 38:16
  to be open to inspiration, to allow ourselves to be inspired. As a starting point,
• 38:21
  to experiment, to see what are the people around you wear, and to try on what fits,
• 38:27
  what feels natural to your personality, to your body type also, and what doesn't,
• 38:32
  so that after you can select, okay, this is what I want to keep,
• 38:38
  this is what I don't want to keep. I'm not gonna tell you need to wear such and
• 38:43
  such brand because it's not relevant for me. because brand is not style.
• 38:49
  But if you want to really work on your personal style, get inspired.
• 38:54
  Then after when it comes to reading recommendations.
• 39:00
  So of course you have Auguste Racinet. It's maybe one of the first...
• 39:06
  19th century historian, so you need to take some distance, but still it's a starting point.
• 39:12
  From the 1960s, where you had a revival of fashion as a sociological topic.
• 39:18
  So you had, James Laver and, François Boucher. These two people wrote fashion history books.
• 39:24
  And after, if you are more into the uh, semiology of fashion,
• 39:30
  you have, again, a sociologist from the beginning of the 20th century who discoursed about what is fashion.
• 39:36
  What's his name? Daniel Roche. He wrote a lot about the cult of appearance starting from the 18th
• 39:42
  century, and of course he will talk about, the 19th century. Then what I would encourage you to
• 39:48
  do is to read biographies and autobiographies of designers from the 20th century,
• 39:54
  because this is where you start having people writing about themselves. You have an insight about their
• 40:00
  lives. You can understand what makes their houses so important even nowadays,
• 40:05
  and you also have an idea about the time in which they were living and how they reacted
• 40:10
  to that time. I would also recommend to watch documentaries. There is one that I like to watch
• 40:15
  with my fashion marketing students, It's a documentary on Diana Vreeland. So Diana Vreeland is the first Anna
• 40:20
  Wintourr. And, she put Vogue on the radar. She put the Met Gala.
• 40:25
  You will watch the documentary. You will have an idea about her personality.
• 40:30
  She was crazy, but sometimes you need this type of crazy people.
• 40:35
  And also she was born at the beginning of the 20th century,
• 40:40
  and she died at the end of the 20th century. It gives also an idea about what kind
• 40:45
  of society influenced her and how she was able after the second half of the n- 20th century
• 40:50
  to influence the society. And you have podcasts. I have my own podcast.
• 40:55
  It can be interesting for you also to listen
• 41:00
  to it. There are also two fashion historians having their own podcast.
• 41:05
  it's called, Dressed: The History of Fashion. Love it. Then you have,
• 41:10
  the Museum at FIT, and they also have a very interesting podcast.
• 41:15
  They have a YouTube channel. Most of the time it touches on,
• 41:20
  more modern fashion history, I remember one day they did,a YouTube online,conference on sneakers,
• 41:25
  for example. I will gather all this information, for you to be able to consult after on the
• 41:30
  Substack. Fantastic. I think this is a treasure trove of resources to go into and fun things to
• 41:35
  see. I think I've seen that documentary on Diana Vreeland and very much enjoyed it many years ago,
• 41:40
  so I think the listeners will as well. And I wanna thank you for coming on _Our Pandora's
• 41:45
  Box_ today. This has been, for me, a really lovely discussion, a lot of fun.
• 41:50
  I love clothes. I love looking not just at what they actually look at and,letting the eye travel
• 41:55
  as Vreeland would say, but also getting
• 42:00
  to touch the garments and touch the accessories and describe them as I did earlier in my career
• 42:04
  when I was doing some of that writing. Thank you very much,
• 42:09
  Maria. It was really a true pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for,
• 42:13
  having thought about me, and I hope that this episode will be useful for your audience.
• 42:18
  And, I'm looking forward to talk to you again. Thank you. Me too.
• 42:23
  ​ Thank you all for listening today to this episode of _Our Pandora's Box_.
• 42:27
  I hope you got as much out of it as I did.
• 42:32
  I had a lot of fun both in reminiscing and delving into our Istanbul days,
• 42:36
  as well as learning aboutthe impacts of business on the things that we wear.
• 42:41
  You can continue learning more about the conversation that we had today on Substack,
• 42:46
  where we have an amazing list of resources that Catherine hinted at.
• 42:50
  So come over there, have a read, leave a voice note, or,
• 42:55
  tell us what you think so we can shape future
• 43:00
  episodes. _Our Pandora's Box_ is a Pantelic Productions podcast that was created,
• 43:01
  hosted, produced, and edited by yours truly, Maria Eliades. Thanks again for joining us,
• 43:02
  and don't forget to stay hopeful and stay curious. I'll see you soon on the next _Our Pandora's
• 43:03
  Box._ ​