An Open Letter · A Statement
Dear Anna,
I have a dream. I have had it for years. To be like you, and to help young designers find their place in this industry. You have always been my reference point and my inspiration.
You have done extraordinary things for the fashion industry. Your contribution is immense, and without exaggeration you are the most important woman this industry has ever known. Thirty-seven years at the helm of Vogue. Generations of designers whose doors you opened. Institutions you built from the ground up. The world listens to you because you earned its attention.
And that is precisely why I am writing to you.
Because the fashion you defended has been destroyed. And the most painful truth is that it destroyed itself.
The acquisition of designer brands by large holding groups proved devastating to everything this industry once stood for: to European production, to family-run boutiques, to the Italian fabric mills, to the real traditions, to the young designers who believed they had a chance.
Driven by economic motives, the directors of these groups relocated production to countries where labour cost a fraction of what it cost at home. Countries where standards are not respected, and where people are treated not as masters deserving of dignity but as a workforce.
The craftsmanship that for generations had been the pride of this industry was sacrificed on the altar of profit.
The result is that young designers, despite their dreams and their talent, have nowhere to go, unless they accept work in the warehouses of the big brands or shifts as shop assistants in their boutiques. This is not a fashion industry.
It is a volume machine that has pushed real creativity to its margins.
Fashion was not defeated from the outside. It surrendered itself.
And so I make a firm statement.
Declaration
I will build a new vision for global fashion. One in which every person has their own personal fashion consultant, a designer who helps them create a fully functional wardrobe of garments that work together, chosen and made specifically for them.
Most people regularly wear only around a fifth of what hangs in their wardrobe. The rest sits there: clothes in the wrong size, clothes never selected with the wearer’s body or style in mind, clothes of low quality made from synthetic fabrics that suffocate the body and will end up in landfill before the year is out. That is not a wardrobe. It is a warehouse for impulse.
I am setting myself an almost impossible goal, and I will accomplish it.
Fashion has destroyed itself. I want to solve every problem it created. I want to help young designers from around the world establish themselves by founding their own made-to-measure brands, ethically produced from natural Italian fabrics, at fair prices. Each of them bringing their own design signature to the garments. Each of them consulting their clients personally. Each of them building wardrobes that are entirely wearable, in which every piece carries genuine worth and is produced with respect, both for the body that wears it and the hands that made it.
This is not a utopia. It is the model the industry knew before it abandoned it. We are not inventing anything new. We are restoring what was sacrificed in the name of speed.
Anna, you have always been my reference point. You have earned your place, and the industry still needs you. I ask you: watch us. Support us. Because the next chapter of this industry has to be written, and Generation Z is ready to write it.
Now it is our turn.
With gratitude and respect,
Alexandra Cantarelli, for Generation Z in Fashion
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