Back Row with Amy Odell
Back Row with Amy Odell
Amy Odell
Is Fashion in Total Creative Collapse?
41 minutes Posted Aug 10, 2026 at 9:00 am.
Introduction
Fashion's creative collapse: the thesis
Greedflation & the $140,000 Dior dress
The craftsmanship con
Sweatshop scandals: Dior & Loro Piana's vicuña
The death of fashion criticism
Bernard Arnault & how he industrialized fashion
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Show notes
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Is fashion in the throes of a total creative collapse? Critic Eugene Rabkin — founder of StyleZeitgeist and author of the new book Torn: Fashion and Postmodernism — joins Amy to make the case. He argues luxury has "devolved into a consumerist spectacle," its lack of ideas papered over by relentless marketing.
They get into the greedflation behind a $140,000 Dior dress, why "craftsmanship" is the industry's greatest con, the Italian sweatshop scandals that never seem to stick, how Bernard Arnault turned the fashion world into the fashion industry — and the death of criticism, and why nobody seems to care.
CHAPTERS
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📚 Buy the book: Torn: Fashion and Postmodernism
This episode was edited by Chrissi Harris.
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