Acclaim for the Critic

AMIDST THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF FASHION CRITICISM, VANESSA FRIEDMAN'S PRAGMATIC VOICE HOLDS ITS WEIGHT.

By Christopher Michael

Before becoming a foremost voice in fashion criticism, Vanessa Friedman thought fashion was “dumb.” Her career is the result of a series of serendipitous discoveries and mistakes. As a critic, she has developed a reputation for pragmatism, built from careful considerations of fashion’s institutional histories and their contemporary relevance. The timing of her coming of age as a journalist was kismet, concurring with fashion’s rise as a global industry—LVMH, Kering, and Richemont all exploding in influence at the turn of the century.

In the age of choice overload, curation is a luxury. Today, as the fashion director and chief fashion critic at the New York Times—a position she has held for 10 years—Vanessa distills culture down to precise prose, influencing the industry from high street to haute couture. Her two-decade career has taught her that style is an inherent part of our psyche, a means of communication above all else; her own signature flame-red, slicked-back bun is an apt representation of her direct, analytical voice. Vanessa’s authority is that of a leading critic in the industry: one whose words have the power to make or break a designer.

CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL: You first decided that you wanted to be a writer after reading Joan Didion. Was it the subject matter or her way with words?

VANESSA FRIEDMAN: It’s such a cliché. I was in high school. It was the way she put words together—the rhythm of her sentences. I guess Shakespeare hadn’t done it for me. Homer hadn’t done it for me. But Joan Didion did. She showed me what language could sound like.

CM: At what point did you develop a real interest in fashion as a subject?

VF: I was vaguely interested in the stories I did in fashion, but it was still a small percentage of what I was writing about. I was pretty opportunistic about my career. None of this was planned. It turned out to be one of the luckiest choices I made, through no genius of my own.

What I didn’t understand [at the time]—but have understood in hindsight—was that because the Financial Times [where Vanessa started her career in 2003] was not considered a serious fashion publication, the fashion world really wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing. And because no one at the FT was interested in fashion, they weren’t really paying attention to what I was doing either. So I had about two years to make any mistake I wanted to make, and figure out what doing fashion at a general interest newspaper would mean—what I thought it should mean. That was an enormous luxury.

CM: In the absence of cultural context, fashion can feel quite unanchored or vapid. I’m curious about your thoughts on how that context has changed over time. How have cultural shifts impacted the way you approach writing?

VF: Fashion is the ultimate Trojan Horse for any story. Clothing is one of the few universal things that everybody—whether they like it or not—has to wrestle with every day. Everybody thinks about what they put in their body, which is food, where they put their body, which is shelter, and what they put on their body, which is clothes. I define fashion as an expression of political, cultural, and social identity at a moment in time.

CM: You’ve told me before that you don’t necessarily cast critical reviews from a personal place. What, then, becomes the center point?

VF: With runway shows, I look at: What is the designer trying to say? Is it coherent? Does it make sense in the context of the world today—the world that the clothes will be worn in? Does it make sense for the history of the brand? Do I recognize who it’s for? Does it make sense for that person? If the answer is yes, that’s great. I don’t have to be that person. Most of the time, I’m not that person. I work at the New York Times. I’m not buying luxury fashion; I’m not their core customer.

But I don’t have to like something or want to wear it myself to understand that there is someone who might. If it speaks to that person, then I think it’s successful.

CM: Fashion has undergone a great expansion when it comes to the spaces and industries it touches. Do you think fashion dictates culture or that culture infiltrates fashion?

VF: Fashion, sports, and entertainment are becoming one giant mush. It’s all about branding and communication—which is all that fashion is. Fashion is the way we communicate to the world who we are. People get mad at me, like, How dare you write about a politician’s clothes? Is it appropriate to write about fashion in the context of politics? Don’t you care about economic policy? I think that’s the wrong question. The question is not, should you write about what a politician wears? The question is, should you write about how a politician communicates? And if you ask that question, the answer is obviously, yes, of course you should. Clothes are just a part of that. They’re a tool that everyone uses, and public figures use them more deliberately than most.

CM: Fashion can still feel like a male-dominated industry. The whole thing seems ridiculous given that women make up the majority of the consumer demographic—they move the needle. Why do you think we’re still in this debate?

VF: It’s still a male-dominated world and fashion is a reflection of that. There was a period between the wars, I think, when there were more women—certainly in French fashion—at the top [of luxury houses] than there were men.

CM: In your opinion, have we actually made progress on that front?

VF: Look at the five biggest luxury fashion brands in the world: Hermès, Chanel, Dior, Vuitton, and Gucci. Hermès, Chanel, and Dior are now designed by women. That’s progress. There’s been a lot of talk recently about the fact that many big fashion jobs went to male designers, all of whom sort of look the same. But I think that does the women designers currently working a disservice. There are a number of incredibly important and influential women at the top of fashion houses right now, probably more than there have been at any previous time, except between the wars. As much as we can complain that there aren’t more women getting those jobs, we should celebrate it.

The way that fashion houses operate is not particularly conducive to people who want to have families. The more we talk about that, hopefully, the more women will end up in positions of power. It’s a similar issue with diversity, right? It’s not just about getting people in at the entry level of the industry—it’s about getting people through the whole pipeline.

CM: Someone once told me that the reason they thought there weren’t as many women at the helm of these fashion houses was because women primarily think about wearability. So there is less of a dream being presented.

VF: I mean, that’s obviously incredibly reductive. But there’s some truth to it, right? If you can wear the clothes, you relate to them differently. Certainly, someone like Phoebe Philo would talk about wearing her clothes. Coco Chanel talked about wearing her clothes. But Sarah Burton didn’t wear her clothes—or didn’t wear them all the time. I think there are many women designers who create for other purposes, who have other dreams.

Wearability really has to do with servicing your customer, helping women express themselves in a way that is practical, meaningful, or empowering. And fantasy can do that as much as a great trench coat—I mean, I love a great trench coat, and don’t always want to wear wild things—but to think that women only want to wear great trench coats is also reductive. Both strains are servicing customers.

CM: Do you think that unwearable, overly-ideated fantasy informs the sale of things like bags and accessories?

VF: In the same way practicality does. You’re buying into an idea of you. And maybe you’re buying it as a handbag, a crazy sweater, or a great dress.

CM: How do you view your role and that of your contemporaries in the landscape today?

VF: You mean when people keep asking me, “Is criticism dead? Are you over?”

CM: Is that really something people ask?

VF: All the time. I say, “I hope not!” On one hand, the amount of voices that are now speaking up does make the need for classic criticism greater: criticism that has a basis in history, that looks at the broader context. It’s institutional memory. Having lots of voices is great and I welcome it. I’m really interested in what other people have to say and how they go about it. I like @STYLENOTCOM. It’s interesting to hear other perspectives. It makes the whole conversation richer.

CM: I noticed that you follow some of these new fashion commentators on Instagram. How do you find their reporting, when it doesn’t always have the references you say are important to make?

VF: Well, it’s not always reporting. It’s opinion—which is legitimate. I’m interested in how other people think.

CM: How concerned are you about the arrival of AI?

VF: I’m a reporter—part of what you do as a reporter is you wait and see. I think there are some big questions about how human AI can become. But the story of history is the story of change, technological innovation, and industrial innovation. When you get into trouble is when you cling to how it was. The best way to try and deal with it is to try and adapt to it. To figure out what you bring to the table that’s special. What’s the human thing that matters?

CM: Younger generations are very expressive about their values and the things they expect from the brands they support. Are those conversations that you have with your kids?

VF: Yeah, although I also think that we get way too reductive about generations—it’s not a monolithic generation, all of whom think the same. We talk endlessly in fashion about Gen Z: how great it is that they’re all vintage shoppers, that they don’t buy new stuff. But they are also the biggest consumers of SHEIN, Temu, PrettyLittleThing—ultra fast fashion. Both those things exist in the same generation. I’m very interested in how my kids and their peers think about the world, but I also don’t think that they’re necessarily representative of everybody their age.

CM: The New York Times is a title with a very particular but vast audience. Who is it that you have in mind when you’re deciding what to write about?

VF: It’s different people. There are people who are real hardcore fashion people, and I think about them and write for them at times. I think they’re mostly the consumers of runway reviews and hardcore fashion news. Then there are people who are really interested in Rihanna. That’s a bigger, broader, different palate. There are also people who are really interested in the Trumps, the Bidens, and Kristi Noem. They may not be interested in fashion, but if I can teach them why they should be. That, to me, is success.