Fashion is an art form that constantly looks back and aestheticises historical references freely. Porter has a knack for boiling down popular culture to its elemental components and the link he makes between the disparity of innovation between New York and London's contemporary cadre today as rooted in the hangover of the 80s AIDS crisis is a curious connection that calls for some critical reflection. Yes, the fallen heroes of the AIDS crisis are remembered but the clout of their creativity seems to be underestimated given the state of contemporary fashion today and more specifically in menswear as bluntly diagnosed by Porter. AIDS touched the lives of nearly everyone in the fashion industry but its effects are rarely discussed, admitted or acknowledged.
It wasn't just designers but showroom assistants, stylists, photographers, creative directors, window dressers - an entire generation of creativity, completely decimated. In 1980s New York, fashion was the city’s second-biggest industry and these people were its pulse. In an informative review of the inaugural New York Men's Fashion Week, Financial Times' Charlie Porter mused on whether New York as a fashion industrial complex had yet fully recovered from the 1980s, when AIDS claimed the lives of name designers (including Perry Ellis and Willie Smith) and many other creative men and women in the fashion industry.
