System #22 2024

More than ever, fashion’s popularity hinges on its capacity to wed itself to the prevailing kings and queens of mainstream entertainment: the stars of cinema and TV, music and sport, as well as the digital world’s scrappier but no-less-adored luminaries. By doing this, fashion itself is behaving increasingly like – and being widely perceived as – another form of mass entertainment. As such, when it comes to vying for attention, the average fashion mega-show now tussles with all the big guns: Oscars night, the Super Bowl half-time show, royal weddings, Hollywood blockbusters, Netflix’s latest streaming sensation, stadium pop… And it often wins. ‘Today, digital impressions of the big shows are measured in the hundreds of millions,’ veteran fashion-show creative producer Alexandre de Betak points out on page 164. ‘Pharrell’s debut Vuitton show surpassed a billion – that’s an eighth of the planet.’

For many years, the subjects of this issue of System – the entertainment world’s agents, publicists, managers, wranglers, dressers, and indeed, leading talent; our cover star Pharrell being the perfect case in point – operated on the periphery of fashion’s slightly impenetrable top table. These days though, they have become central and essential, courted by fashion’s major players, and in the case of talent behemoth CAA, acquired for $7 billion by François-Henri Pinault. Because right now, that’s fashion. Or rather, that’s entertainment. Or both.