Open Letter to the Fashion Industry

Fashion has been my lifelong love. As a child, I didn’t spend my time in playgrounds or arcades.

I didn’t run through parks or ride my bike down suburban streets. My playgrounds were the hushed, carpeted floors of luxury department stores, where mannequins stood like statues in a temple of beauty.

 

My amusement parks were the boutiques, where fabric whispered under my fingertips and where I learned—long before I could articulate it—that clothing was more than just something to wear. It was expression, aspiration, and artistry.

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I developed an eye before I had the words to explain what I was seeing. I studied the way garments moved, the way a perfectly constructed shoulder line could change a silhouette, the way a certain shade of silk could feel alive under the right lighting.

 

I watched sales associates who were curators as much as they were retailers—who knew their clients, their wardrobes, their desires before they even spoke them aloud. Fashion was not just an industry; it was a world, a language, a promise.
 

And now, I barely recognize it.

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What was once a realm of dreamers and artisans has been overrun by pimps and profiteers. Cost-cutters and corporations who have traded craft for cheap efficiency.

 

Executives who measure success not in artistry but in margins, in how much more they can produce for how much less.

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We have lost the theatre, the service, the emotion. Where are the grand gestures? The moments of magic? The understanding that a well-made garment is not just a product—it is an experience, a story, a piece of someone’s identity?

 

Instead, we are drowning in an endless churn of disposable clothes, forgettable collections, and brands that no longer seem to understand the very people they claim to serve.

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And the people—the designers, the artisans, the creators—are being crushed under the weight of impossible expectations. More product, more engagement, more spectacle, less time, less care, less humanity.

 

The very soul of fashion—the thing that made it beautiful, made it meaningful—has been sidelined in the pursuit of infinite, empty growth.

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But it is not too late.
 

There are still those who remember what this industry was and what it can be. There are still designers fighting to create with integrity, retailers who still believe in service, clients who still long for something real.

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Fashion can be saved. But only if we remember that it was never meant to be a machine—it was meant to be a dream.

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Let’s dream again.
 

Shane Marius