If we don’t evolve, we die. But what gets left behind? What do we take with us into this new innovative world that’ll make a lot less use of our senses and brain power? That removes humans at the core of its mission?
Miranda and Runway are in trouble; because they have profiled a rather dodgy retailer and it is blowing up all over social media; a medium they still have yet to crack because the language is different, the lens is less focused, and the audience is ruthless. She has to fix it, make the owners happy, make the advertisers not jump ship and make the readers not leave all together. Enter Andi, our girl, thankfully not in cerulean blue, rather with a more “grown up” sense of style, not Runaway type of style but she’ll do. She is also surer of herself, of her place in the industry having been a more “serious” journalist who was incidentally just let go from her “serious” job because they find themselves in the same problem as Runway; eyes are diverted in this very vast media landscape that publishers are struggling to crack because in addition to the aforementioned problems, no one is sitting to read think pieces if they cannot be distilled into sixty second TikTok videos. Talk about of the moment.
This was an excellent sequel to a classic. I loved the first movie but this one hit pitch perfect. We find ourselves in the quagmire of AI and tech bros without a sense of self for all their innovation. These are the boys who always wanted to be cool in school but never really were so they were always picked last in every social activity, or not at all. In this new world fashioned by their cohorts, they have found their moment in the spotlight and are unwilling to let it go, they expect us to lay down and play dead whilst our world is gut of feeling and humanity thanks to their innovation. Sound familiar? Robots driving cars, humanoid acting in movies, AI writing articles, no budgets for photoshoots and all the mercy of the moneybags.
Fashion is as important to humanity as the craft of the creatives behind it and with the imminent death of the magazine that champions it, worlds in the immediate environs and outside of its orbit will not survive such a death. Too dramatic? Journalism is fundamental to us as humans; it informs and challenges. Or it ought to and one would be forgiven to constantly question that, what with the excuse that passes for journalism today. We are stuck in the abyss of gossip and scandal and tabloid cannon fodder that is all tomorrow’s fish and chips wrapper. Billionaires drive the agenda; hate is their stock in trade because chaos makes money and humans bear the real cost. A division so deeply spread it has fractured the world. And we find ourselves bang in the middle of both fights in this movie; the battlefield for the survival of the fashion and journalism or their renaissance, in a highly digitised world.
Runway is more than a magazine, it is an institution and its unlikely saviour is the one who needs it the least or thinks she does, but wants it to survive the most because a fashion magazine of its calibre is vital to the industry’s ecosystem. If Runway falls, Publishing dies… in the fictional and metaphorical sense because it carries the weight of the industry. It is not simply fashion for the sake of buying clothes or art for art’s sake, or long form articles for wordcount sake, it is so much more than that. Runway and magazines of its ilk, whilst on the face of it, is simply about clothes and make up, at its core is the celebration of the personal amidst the noise it helps create, whilst maintaining that strand the connects all of society be it through fashion or beauty, how we wear what we wear, what we choose to read, or what we scuff at to create that false sense of elevated self. It’s a lost art and it matters. It all matters and on the pages of Runway, no matter how different we think we are, we can find ourselves or versions of who we want to be in there. To lose this institution will be to the detriment of all, high and low brow consumers and readers alike. It all matters because we are all in this shared ecosystem of creativity. It gives credence and meaning to a world slowly fading away and another evolving at warp speed to replace it, one we hope doesn’t lose its heart. Doesn’t lose us in the mix. It is a beauty most peculiar to life, and we all suffer if it dies.
At a fundamental level this is about many deaths and the importance of things we took for granted when they were so readily given to us. It is about the death of news which can be juxtaposed with the death of the publishing industry in its currently iteration, which can also run concurrently alongside the death of the high street and high fashion because there aren’t enough billionaires up there to keep that end of the industry alive therefore it must sink to the lower strata to prop up its profits. They need our dime and time. Recently, Victoria Beckham and Gap, Stella McCartney and H&M come to mind, but they have been at this a while now, Mathew Williamnson and H&M remember that? Lanvin did it too. We all have a stake in this. That craft, that elemental talent of a fashion designer to create clothes and aesthetics that filters down the chain in retail, relies heavily on our buy in from top to bottom in the different versions. Couture does not survive if the high street is not selling a version of its creation, there is no reference point, the story, the tension, the juxtaposition… it all dies. The industry is dying, it may not want to admit it to itself, but it knows… and yet it trades on its it-girl status in hopes it’ll still keep her in the club. It’s sad really and pathetic and such a wonderful sequel because it conveys these messages so clearly; being an it-girl can only take you so far; what lies beneath the surface. I remember these moments; the highs the lows, the expense accounts and that rarefied limited edition air. Perrier at room temperature with crushed ice and three slices of lemons come to mind. I don’t know how, but it fits in here.
Caught in the middle is the consumer, the client, the customer, the audience… whatever the term, because there is always a new buzzword to describe the person, we have the power, we have always had the power, to sustain empires or make them fall with our hard-earned cash and fragmented attention span. We have the power to disabuse billionaires of the notion that they can tell us what to do and what to read and what to believe and whom we should be mad at. Far be it for a movie about fashion to be a wake-up rallying call to us, to open our eyes and to question, to engage and be curious. To use cognitive skills and discernment when called upon to be mad about something or buy into some other thing. It’s about how we hold the fourth estate accountable and make them work for our time and attention not in TikTok snapshots but in real in-depth analysis of a thing, a moment, a policy, a news story. It’s about how we get to tell our stories and more important, to whom we afford that privilege.
And yes, it’s about clothes and fashion and the dying art of the industry because of fast fashion. It’s all that.
At the centre of it is the subtle yet powerful subplot of women. It tells us about the struggles women have had to make to work and make a name for themselves at work. The sacrifices and the missed moments no one ever tells you about. The pride one takes in one’s work and the home constants that enables that work. I loved the glimpses of Miranda and her husband’s marriage, and I’m so glad he didn’t become a cliché where he’d left her for the next model young enough to be his daughter or something. In the sub-subplot are the women who have also grown up and look age appropriate with lines on their faces and still so fashionable; THANK GOD!
Miranda comes undone and Andi is still Andi; she needs a pat on the back and valuation every now and then because in a room like that you are always going to need to prove yourself and to proof something to yourself. So, she’s still trying to be seen whilst also holding space for the woman she is; a “serious” journalist who likes clothes, a well-crafted handbag and likes a long form article. Sans childish boyfriend. She fits in and Runway fits into her world. Emily has evolved as we expect her to, her arc is just so perfect and Nigel gets his moment FINALLY!! Forever my guy. In it for the passion, in it for the art; characters like these are why fashion needs to survive but to do so it simply must evolve; the industry is struggling to find its feet in that evolution and the sad thing is; we don’t have much time.
That’s all.