No I merely said you were entitled to your opinion and I was entitled to mine. Based on what I have written do you think that I don't have some knowledge on the subject? We clearly are never going to agree so that is the basis of my comment.
We don't need to agree :wink: Like I said, despite a layman's interest in the law, and having numerous friends and relatives who practice it, I wouldn't pretend to have more than a layman's opinion on matters legal. And should a lawyer point out to me that the details of any specific legal matter were more complicated and more subtle than I had at first understood I would naturally defer to their expert knowledge of the subject.
What I'm saying is, of course you have every right to express whatever opinion you wish to hold on the fashion industry, and naturally have every right to not like the work of any specific designer or season or any ammount of seasons for that matter. But to dismiss the work of a whole atelier as nothing but rags, and to suggest that their work no longer meets the standards of the past does in fact suggest only a casual acquaintance with their work.
In my work as a Goldsmith I have had the completely overwhelming honour to be employed on a couple of occasions by two of Paris atelier to do specific work related to my training in the making of gold thread as a sort of expert consultant. I would be betraying a confidence if I used any names, but the Grand Dame of a very well known atelier who has worked for most of the greatest designers of the latter half of the twentieth century once told me that she thought some of the work she and her contemporaries did as a young woman would be rejected as substandard these days.
She explained, that like any craft her's is improved with each generation which undertakes it. She said that modern techniques in producing the raw materials she uses have made certain aspects of her work which used to insanely difficult much easier, allowing her and her employees time to concentrate on refining and improving their finished product in ways her mother (who also ran the atelier in question) could never have dreamed of. She pointed out that her staff are better paid and have much better working conditions which also contribute to an improvement in their work. She also explained that because they work for far fewer clients the ammount of time able to be spent on the work they do is much greater.
She also explained that because Haute Couture has become the preserve of a clientele with more money than Croesus the standards expected of it are commensurately much higher than they once were. She laughed at the Paris snobs who insist that the quality of the craftsmanship in the Great Grandmother's dress is unsurpassable and told me that this was nostalgia mixed with a natural tendency to believe in a vanished golden age which in fact never existed in terms of quality. She said that for professional reasons she was sometimes required to agree with this view because by doing so she flattered those who held it.
Naturally she mourned the death of certain skill sets and crafts and explained that certain materials were simply no longer produced or available and so there are some examples of "the lost knowledge of the Ancient's" so to speak, but they have in some cases been more than made up for by modern innovations and improvements which have added new dimensions to what her studio produces.
But like I say, and I'm sure the Grand Dame would concur, you are as entitled to dislike the end product as you wish, it's just that both she and I would dispute with you over the actual quality and refinement of the work produced regardless of its aesthetic qualities. There is a difference between a thing looking beautiful and a thing being beautifully made. Tastes change, standards of beauty are variable, but quality of craftsmanship remains testable against that of the past, and in my opinion the Paris atelier of today produce work at least as good as those of the past even if it is put to uses I do not appreciate.
Like I said, I may not like the work of Turner and might never want to own one of his paintings, but I can fully accept the man's genius and skill.