Catwalk shows: Do they have a point, or even a chance, in the digital age?

You do wonder why people still bother with the live event

Catwalk style has infiltrated even the less fashion-conscious man's wardrobe (Getty Images)

People often ask me if I think catwalk shows have a point, a future, or even a chance in the digital landscape of today. When you have things like Loewe’s clever presentations, geared up to advertising shots that were already plastering Paris with the label’s forthcoming wares, days ahead of the label’s menswear shows there last week – which are effectively turning the fashion system on its head – you do wonder why people still bother with the live event, for an audience of just a few hundred.

Especially when anything can go wrong at a live event. I remember Gareth Pugh commenting that presenting his collections by film allowed him to avoid the pitfalls of, say, a model mis-stepping and taking a tumble, or a piece of fabric getting caught and tugging a pair of trews at the wrong angle. I’ve seen enough fashion shows where models shed everything from earrings to handbags.

Other stuff can go awry, too. As it did at Rick Owens’ show in Paris last Thursday, when a model saw fit to brandish a banner in the midst of the show which, the house was quick to state, was in no way connected to the clothes on show. “Please Kill Angela Merkel Not” was the odd, vague and vaguely politicised message.

No-one could never have predicted that this was going to happen.

However, I would argue that this is precisely the reason why we do need fashion shows: the unexpected live event, and the use of that live event to express something. It isn’t done enough these days, when clothes with a message are often subjugated to commercial needs.

This is great if you’re showing in the way that JW Anderson’s Loewe is, a format the designer chooses, he says, because he loves the idea of the press seeing his wares as cold, hard product.

Contrast that with someone like Dame Vivienne Westwood, who uses her catwalks to opposes things as varied as American cultural imperialism and the death of culture, to climate change and the impending death of the planet. I interviewed Westwood recently, expecting her to tub-thump those causes over and above her clothes, but she was in reflective mood. Thinking of fashion, she said that the industry gives her a platform to promote those ideas, and the catwalk is the perfect stage.

I’d like more designers to think of their shows that way: as a means of expressing ideas in a public forum and on a human body, as opposed to empty display of product. I can’t help, in my nostalgia, thinking of the spectacles of Lee Alexander McQueen and John Galliano of 10 (or even 20) years ago. No-one ever questioned their validity. If more creatives thought about the catwalk creatively, we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all.