#5. Culture Conversations - The creative industry, fitting in and mental health with Naomi Accardi
The farewell of many designers to the fashion world, brings questions on the state of the creative industry, as well as how mental health and the desire to live beyond the "system" are now priorities.
For the past few years I have spent an inconsiderate amount of time asking myself what are the boundaries that one has to have in place in order to separate his\her work life from his\her personal life. One would say, easy, when you are at the office you work, and then when you are out you are whoever you are, well in some ways that doesn’t apply when you work in a creative field particularly when you work in fashion.
Through the years I had the opportunity to see how fashion and creative spaces act like parallel universes that operate 24/7 whereby even when you are physically out of them, a part of you still walks around with that realm heavily inked on the skin, almost as if it was a tattoo. In cities like Milan and more recently Paris I have observed how someone’s job becomes a great deal of someone’s identity, to the point where the lines of who you are as a person and who you are professionally tend to become so blurred that after a crazy work day all that you have left is a bunch of unwanted emails, an overbooked agenda, and oftentimes an identity crisis.
But how does this happen? When and how does it get too much?
The rapid exit of Italian designer Walter Chiapponi from Blumarine, following the death of close friend designer Davide Renne, the gracious farewell of belgian Dries Van Noten and now the unexpected goodbye of Pierpaolo Piccioli after 25 years of devotion to Valentino, have brought reason to these questions awakening in me thoughts that dwell on the importance of knowing one’s self, and asserting one’s most intimate needs. At times where the world’s divides continue to impact our lives, it is imperative to be aware of one’s principles, being mindful of the fundamental role that mental health plays in the professional world, particularly when working in the industry of fashion, and last but not least how the needs and the ultimate desire to reconnect to a realer and more human world are vibrant and undeniable. Moved by these musings I decided to have a conversation with someone who in some way could relate to the topic, someone who I feel has gone through a similar trajectory. Constantly reinventing herself in the name of self drive, personal passions, and her own definition of life; this someone is consultant and writer Naomi Accardi.
Naomi Accardi, courtesy of Naomi Accardi
Naomi and I, never met, we follow each other on Instagram, but besides some occasional likes and some story replies we never actually sat face to face and had a conversation, up until now. I would say she is part of a category of women that I like to call “nymphs”; creative women who see the world with their eyes open. Grounded in their bodies, their heart is divinely aligned to their purpose, and no matter the time, the circumstances it can’t be put into boxes at the expense of their values or what they believe in.
Born in Mirandola (MO) from a Palermitan father and a Modenese mom she moved to Alessandria right away, where she grew up and spent most of her life before moving to the City of Angels where she attended university and started moving her first steps in the crazy scene of the LA fashion world.
I learnt very quickly in my internships, that high fashion wasn't the place for me because I have never been “that” type of person if there’s even a way to be, and obviously the competition is so high that you have to be very careful, very thought through all the time which I'm not or better I don’t think my personality is not like that. Says Naomi.
Naomi Accardi living her best life, courtesy of Naomi Accardi
Why do you think power play is so common in the fashion industry?
Well the thing about it, is that” it's a privilege for you to be here” and once you are there you have to be aware of how many people want this job and eventually do whatever it takes to hold on to this position. That’s why it was, and sometimes still is so common. I’d say that things have changed a lot since i have started working, or well moving my first steps in the fashion\creative industry, first of all because it wasn’t as democratic as it is now, and mainly because there was little to no knowledge about how the fashion industry really worked, it was simply aspirational.So I think that back then you had no opportunity to like even be vulnerable and you know, say when things were getting hard, it was more like, I love my job. Personally, I was never that desperate to work in fashion.
Naomi is right, fast forward to now, things have changed, well the world has, there has been a cultural shift that somewhat has decentered dated canons in favor of pop culture, community and well real stories, real people.
As designer Raf Simons said in an interview “Fashion became pop. I can’t make up my mind if that’s a good or a bad thing”. Taking into account the constant intersection of fashion with music, film, sports, it becoming pop is a natural consequence of it, which represents not only a new cultural frontier but also a powerful connotation if causes like accessibility, equity, and collective are to be pushed forward.
How do you think the approach to working in fashion has changed from when you started to this day?
Like there's more awareness. There is more, there's a more of a, I don't give a fuck attitude. Like if you're not giving me this job, somebody else will. Essentially people are aware that companies benefit from their workforce more than latter benefits from them, and it is about time that happened. A lot of people from my generation which is like millennials I guess, often holding on to that trauma of “making it” and sometimes they inadvertently inflict it on the next generation of people because they're like “oh you don't know what I went through to get to where I am now” and I'm like okay but it is exactly for that reason that you should be the first to open doors and pave the path for the next generation of people to come in and not have to experience those things, because it was brutal. says Naomi.
Well it was, most of the people that started working in fashion or in the creative spaces when Naomi did, about 10 years ago were entering in environments where internships were often insanely stressful and unpaid and so you had to find ways. “I mean, luckily I had parents that could support me in my living situation, so I was lucky, but that meant that only a certain class of people could access these jobs, which is counterproductive because most of the best creative people come from working class backgrounds.” This sad truth has been proven by data more accurately in April 2018 when the London’s Barbican published a report, billed as “the first sociological study on social mobility in the cultural industries”, called Panic! Social Class, Taste And Inequalities In The Creative Industries. The report found only 12.6 percent of working-class people in publishing; 12.4 per cent in film, TV and radio; and 18.2 per cent in music, performing and visual arts. The matter has only gotten worse over time.
Fortunately I think that nowadays we are moving towards a space where it's easier for people to kind ask for what they deserve rather than before, because now there's so much information out there right and even if i'm not a big fan of like social media I think that it's done amazing positive things for people to know how to ask for things, how to get into things, how to get in touch with people and how to create a space for themselves that doesn't necessarily require fashion institutions to open the door for them. So yes, I think that there has been like a really amazing change, although there is a lot of people from the old guard that are kind of like, you know, closing the doors for this change. Naomi continues.
Genuinely, as of today people have more power. They may not dictate sales, but they do dictate perception, and for any brand whether it is a fashion brand, an art brand or anything that sells perception is everything.
What happens though when perception is not reality, which is often a fact when it comes to creative spaces?
I feel that I have been very lucky because of my background but I think that people who are not from my background, especially if they are minorities have a much harder time, even nowadays in balancing working in a space that they like or want to be a part of, and also having the right clarity of mind to be able to say, I'm being mistreated, “this may not be for me”, I'm going to speak up for myself, or often times constantly asking themselves “why am the only one”. I feel like you should go to work without having anxiety that this may be your last day and if it's your last day, you're not going to be going back to another position that you like anymore. Meanwhile oftentimes it's not.
Although it is important that there has been a shift and change in terms of people culture in many creative realities the barriers of entry are definitely higher for people who are from underrepresented backgrounds, which means everything from like being a woman, being a black woman, being a POC woman, being a Muslim, being, being disabled, being Muslim, being fat, lacking euro-centric features etc. Yeah, there has been a step forward but I think that we're still very behind.
Although you are very knowledgeable about fashion, I feel like your career has revolved mostly around streetwear and sportswear brands whose reputation pride themselves on values like community, equity, care, is it really like this?
After realizing high fashion wasn’t for me I got a job at Carhartt. They had a very small office back then and I was working in their communications department. I remember thinking, people are actually happy to do the job here, and actually like that job taught me so much because I worked a lot in really tiny town in Southern Germany but I was happy to do it because it felt like we were old friends working together. We were eating together, we were talking after work in front of a beer or whatever, and it was a really healthy environment and so that's when I kind of like geared towards sportswear and streetwear more. I mean probably I should have known better before, because I always knew that I was more attracted by this type of brands but you know again, it was the beginning of social media back then so that's when I was like oh actually it's a possibility it's a possibility for me to go and and work in these companies and and so that's how I chose and so on.
Naomi being Naomi, courtesy of Naomi Accardi.
As I converse with Naomi, I notice how when working in any creative spaces, you need to try and try time and time again, in order to get it right, if there’s even such a thing. Each environment, and place differs from one another and sometimes you do have to see things through, in order to assess what really works for you professionally, as well as what aligns the most to what you like, what makes you feel good, essentially what makes sense all around.
In fact, after her experience at Carhartt Naomi had identified in a way or another the type of niche she wanted to work in; fresh, innovative, community based, and although she parted ways pretty early with the world of high fashion, when a new opportunity that seemed to embrace these newfound values, daintily swindled by her friends she took a job as a Marketing Director for an avant-garde Italian fashion brand.
I think that's when I actually saw that a lot of the fashion industry is still similar to what I first walked into. It just reiterated the fact that I know fashion like traditional fashion is not for me, definitely. Naomi tells me.
I feel like sometimes having a passion and running a company are difficult to coincide. If you don't know exactly what you're doing, like to the T, then you feel more pressured to have to perform a performance a certain way but that trickles down to your employees as well and like it's never a good thing. She adds.
Pressure and emotions do translate, and the naivety as well as unwillingness to acknowledge this information are often the reasons behind the goodbyes of many designer’s short or far too long lived tenures at major brands in favor of opportunities to shift their focus to all the things they never had the time for.
Particularly, I believe the emotional departure of both Walter Chiapponi and Pierpaolo Piccioli revealed an overwhelming humanness which tends to be overshadowed when you’ve made beautiful clothes for 25 years, or when you have been given the chance to revamp a cult brand after a few dissonant seasons.
The truth is that is not enough. Loving a job, and being grateful for an opportunity is not enough to silence your feelings, and denying to follow your soul simply out of fear, of uncertainty.
In the case of Walter Chiapponi, who has left Blumarine after just one season as creative director, it is inevitable to take into account his grief throughout 2023, which he called a “horrible year” in an Instagram post in January due to the sudden deaths of his nephew, his friend Davide Renne (shortly after his appointment as Moschino creative director), and his dog.
Italian designer Walter Chiapponi
After the passing of her father writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie opened up on the intricacies of loss and grief in a personal essay published on The New Yorker, one her musing goes: “Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language.”
It is true, grief is about language, it is about the loss of it and the extenuating reach of it when it’s nowhere to be found. In the case of Chiapponi, I believe that design can be thought of as one of his primary languages. Something he knew so well, so deeply, was suddenly overcome by grief, invested by an unkind paralysis that urged you to stop, that forces you to reflect, and eventually moves you towards thing that are less connected to what you can physically touch and more in tune with what you can feel, spiritually and mentally.
Sara Jean Odam
Good Grief | Ally and Ruthanne, 2023
Nourishing the soul, feeding the mind, living one’s dream they represent words which I’d like to thinks as practices rather than aspirational mantras, furthermore they embody in an almost perfect way the tenure and farewell of PierPaolo Piccioli to Valentino, announced by himself todays through a heartfelt message on his Instagram account.
“Not all stories have a beginning and an end, some live a kind of eternal present that shines with an intense light, so strong that it leaves no shadows” he writes poetically. Evocative accents reflect the incredible run he has had for twenty five years, making couture dreams tangible, through his acceptance of Mr Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti’s dreams.
Pierpaolo Piccioli on Instagram
A tenure so stellar, one may think, why end it? Well as pointed out by IG favorite and also personal favorite Amanda Murray, we must recognize “that both leather goods and shoes failed to resonate with its customers; leather goods can carry a brand when RTW isn’t performing” she says. Furthermore, "conspicuous consumption will always be a part of luxury revenue; both leather goods and shoes are key components of conspicuous consumption. It is the reason why the “it” bag and the “it” shoes will always be in demand, it's a signifier.” I see no lies.
Brands like Hermès have built their entire reputation on their Birkins and most recently loafer sandal, just like Louis Vuitton would not be where it is today without the mainstream popularization of its “speed bandoulière”. You can make beautiful clothes, but you must make marketable and profitable accessories too. Or at least try. It’s kind of how it works in fashion.
Well, I do think Pierpaolo makes beautiful, incredible, stunning gowns, and for what it counts I believe that will be his legacy. People will remember the dream, the poetry, the stories he was able to convey in the most scenic location, definitely not his leather goods creations; AND that’s fine.
Forever: Valentino Exhibition in Qatar
“Our work should be an expression of who we are and not who we are, essentially like an extension of us to use it to create the things that you want to create” said Naomi as we conclude our conversation.
And yes, what we do, what we create, if we are lucky should be an extension of who we are, but it shouldn’t define us, especially when our mental health can be affected by it.
Then if by any chance the job we do is simply what we do to make ends meet and not necessarily our “dream job” or this whimsical extension of our being, again it doesn’t define you. It doesn’t make you any less than who you choose to be, then who you are, and want to be.
We need to dismantle the idea that your job is your identity, cause although it contributes to parts of it, you are, we are so much more than that.
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Until we unravel again!