The quest for meaning is becoming a guiding principle that can give fashion a renewed momentum for a more humane creative process. Whether we prefer the term spirituality or purpose – literally proclaimed as a source of inspiration by the artistic directors of major fashion houses – or ethics – claimed by many fashion designers -, or even responsible innovation, and now regenerative creation– praised by the business world calling for new entrepreneurial practices – these four paths somehow refer to the essential issues of meaning, namely the striving to have humanity resist, beating all the odds.

Inspiring sustainability driven stories are emerging across the fashion value chain and creation at large. Here and there, positive actions are epitomized with awareness, inventiveness and business acumen. The purposes of creation, innovation, entrepreneurship and manufacturing are being questioned and redefined, because the meaning of consumption does not give meaning to life.

Is simultaneously manifested a quest for meaning and life skills, at the initiative of mavericks, local or globalized entrepreneurial entities irrevocably brought to evolve toward more sustainability in multifaceted manners. Increasing paradoxical tensions coexist in our era of hyperconsumerist capitalism, so well dissected by Gilles Lipovetsky advancing the concept of an artistic capitalism. In its wake, the forces at work that trace inspiring interstices striving to bring us back to the essential, to more humaneness and ethics, are those that the daily couture wishes to highlight and share here.

The Daily Couture is inspired: by the ethics inherent to the practices of craftsmanship, by the not enough acclaimed guardians of the heritage, by fashion innovators and re-creators, by authors, teachers and activists from all walks of life who are responsible for transmitting knowledge to market leaders and trend setters of today and tomorrow, by science & the arts – in reality, by what unveils the first signs of the possibility of more humane (fashion) world.  All in all, actions that feel spot-on to inspire and cultivate a humanistic depth that is as vital as acclaimed in today’s quest for equilibrium in our daily life.

 

by Stéphanie Bui, founder of The Daily Couture