What is odd is that this relationship then continues across to the business side of things. Rather than ‘pushing against’ public tastes, the fashion industry resets the clock and allows its agenda to be set.

This is actually quite odd for an industry and a sub-culture that likes to present itself as creative and even artistic. The designers could engage with what people like and what people buy but instead they have this slightly odd structure that squares the circle of people producing highly commercial and mass produced ‘art’.

I see no reason why this structure is necessary. Most industries don’t share it.

If you work in a creative industry and you need a critic to tell you what to care about then you’re either not creative enough or you’re afraid to be properly creative.

There’s an element of personal cowardice involved here but I agree, I may have over-stated its importance. What this is, is commercial risk aversion : People are afraid to make commercial decisions without someone holding their hands.

I don’t think that makes people sheep though, rather the market can only function if there is some arbiter, some reference point. Given that, people can follow, pick and mix, ignore as they see fit, but with no reference point there’s no fashion at all – nothing to push against.

Put another way, I agree with your whole piece but the final paragraph, and I think the Aristotelian comparison is a good one, I’m just not sure it leads to a people as sheep end point and if the film goes there I suspect that speaks more to the film-maker’s prejudices than the reality of the industry. Those with no interest in fashion routinely assume those who do are recipients of the instructions of appointed gurus, passive consumers of another’s style choices. But, in the main, that’s not really true.

Oh, and as I forgot before, I thought The Devil Wears Prada a profoundly cowardly film, one that celebrated excess while condemning it in a comfortable and predictable way at the end, a film that went both ways and so ended up saying nothing at all.

The film suggests that people will like what they’re told but it doesn’t really have much of an interest in the world outside of the business.

It’s more that the designers need some kind of structure to work in and the purchasers need to know what’s “in” and rather than base this on second-guessing the public, they all latch onto the opinions of Vogue (to a greater or lesser degree obviously).

Equally, to many others it is merely escapist reading, wholly unconnected to reality, with no implications at all for their own dress. I’d guess that’s true for most its readers.

In explaining it, it’s too easy to say those into fashion are simply afraid of thinking for themselves, that they seek another to act as arbiter of their own taste. I don’t think it’s that simple, I think that’s just one part of the Vogue audience.

And that part which does look for confirmation of what to wear is I suspect not driven by fear of freedom, but fear of ostracisation, with wearing the right item a marker of social inclusion in certain elements of society (upper class New York for example). When your class position, and hence financial position, is dependant on wearing the right clothes, it’s not fear of freedom that makes Vogue matter – it’s fear of ruin. A woman in those circles who doesn’t know how to dress is a social liability, and will soon find herself cut loose. She has very practical reasons for paying attention to what Wintour says.