10 Things Everyone Thinks About the Fashion Industry (But No One Will Say)

The fashion industry is a whirlwind business that has transcended the traditional two-season cycle to become a non-stop flood of news, streetstyle, collaborations, and personalities. If you're not sure you know what's happening a year from now, then you already need to catch up.

Like anything that thunders on at such a breakneck pace, there are sure to be issues that are glossed over or ignored. The prevailing wisdom is that things will take care of themselves. But beneath the veneer of beautiful clothing, there is an industry that combines business and creativity - two forces that are constantly at odds with each other.

Rarely are these tensions thoroughly discussed or given much thought even after they (sometimes fantastically) blow up. They're swept under the carpet, and the carnival continues to operate as usual.

There are plenty of things you can say about the fashion world, but rarely do we have the time to take a break and really talk about them. This feature is not to simply hate on aspects of the industry, but to give some thought to the uncomfortable truths that are easier, but not always best, left ignored. These are 10 Things Everyone Thinks About the Fashion Industry (But No One Will Say).

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Whether it's editors getting pressured by their publishers to show some love to certain advertising brands, or bloggers receiving free product in exchange for an Instagram pic, or friends doing each other favors, there will always be outside forces acting upon what gets included in fashion editorials and write-ups. This is the very nature of the business. But fuck, the same thing happens in government with lobbyists and powerful corporations and individuals financially backing political candidates.

This isn't to say that every "gift," favor, and business transaction is rewarded with coverage, but next time you're flipping through a magazine pay attention to the correlation between the advertisers and what's on the models in the fashion pages. Or if you ever meet an influential blogger, ask them if they only cover the products that they truly like.

Actually, quite a few people have said this about the industry, and to little avail. It's a problem that's built into the structure at all levels of the business. And the racism has a shitload of outlets that goes waayyy beyond obvious bigotry like Galliano's rants and Vogue Italia promoting "Slave earrings."

The main goal of the fashion industry is to provide the ideal visual, and the well-documented all-white casts of runway shows is a pretty f'd up notion of doing just that. Think Vogue Italia's choice to put a Chinese model on its cover will change this? It's a step, but literally 99% of Vogue covers are graced by white women.

The language of the industry is another domain of racism. Model bookers know that a client looking for an "ethnic" look means a black girl. On the writing side, waxing romantic on Americana and harking back to the good ol' days is selectively remembering an era when civil rights did not exist for certain people and race-driven violence was an everyday possibility.

Diversity is seriously lacking in the people who control the conversation that reaches the audience. Google the names in the mastheads of influential publications and you'll most likely find nothing but white bread. Also, how many widely praised black designers can you name? Is this a lack of awareness on your part or because of the barriers of entry for minority designers?

Obviously, it's not just the fashion world that racism is confined to. But in an industry that is so high-exposure, it would certainly help the larger conversation if tangible improvements to eradicate the problem were taken instead of small token gestures. There is no one fix-all solution, but full awareness of racism's frequency and commonness in the fashion industry is definitely a progressive step.

Fellas, buy this suit and you'll bone Gisele. Ladies, buy this dress and you'll look like Gisele. Has this ever actually happened?

Impossible standards and the desires to meet these out-of-reach fantasies are what this industry thrives on. If you can never reach that endgoal, then there's just the newest product and apparel that will promise the objectively absurd. More money, please! *makes grabby motion*

And while guys can certainly complain, it's clear that we're the half who has it pretty easy when it comes to our reality being assaulted with outlandish dreams of models and bottles via clothing. The pre-pubescent looking and actually pre-pubescent models that this industry has set as normal create an ideal that is impossible for adult women to achieve. The draw of fashion is the glamorous world that's artificially created, but we've arrived at a point where that fabricated world is too often regarded as the one we should aspire to.

It's incredibly difficult for a brand to exist on its own profits and without outside financial banking. But this of course compromises the artistic vision of any designer, as a financier is going to demand a return on their investment by whatever means necessary.

Want an example? Martin Margiela left MMM a few years after Diesel purchased the House and caused friction between its secretive designer and the marketing-driven strategy of Diesel. Why purchase a boutique and ground-breaking artistic company if it's not going to make you money by selling its vision to the masses?

Two massive conglomerates alone own most of the luxury brands that dictate the upscale market, and to them it is not about aesthetic or beauty or expression. If designers don't bend to the very expensive market and trend research or hit target profit goals, then they're swapped among one another like skeezoids. Hence the recent shuffling of Raf Simons, Hedi Slimane, and Nicolas Ghesquière. Take a look at the earnings and holdings of LVMH and PPR to peep who really has the final say when it comes to creative output.

There's a very thin line between inspiration and plagiarism. When one designer does something that resonates with consumers, others are without a doubt going to follow suit to get in on what's caking. The resulting group of similar clothes may may be talked about as a trend but it's really just brands crowding in on the momentary fad by copying colorways, silhouettes, or entire garments.

Why do you think brands are hesitant to allow photography of just produced collections, or keep designs and practices close to the chest? If you think your favorite designer is only drawing inspiration from 1920's Scottish dockworkers or the retro-futurism of modernist Japan, please stop being naive.

Four Pins' uncovering of Pyrex straight jacking Rugby flannels (they think), Stubbs & Wootton firing shots at Del Toro, and the YSL vs. Louboutin throwdown are just some recent examples of call-outs going public, but this shit happens all the damn time. It may not be the Wild West of the black market, but intellectual property is a tough thing to defend when your products are out there for the world to see. All designers and brands can do is protect they neck as best they can.

Being in a competitive industry that operates at a brutal pace and with a high changeover rate is no excuse to be a pussy and whine about the grind. But it's also not necessarily an excuse for people to be nasty when they don't have to be. It seems like every other day we hear about industry insiders who abuse their power and act like people we hope to never spend time with.

And what's possibly worse is that meanness has been cemented as a trait required to succeed in this industry. Why else would Anna Wintour's bitchiness be celebrated and imitated, even if it may not be true? And why is it her attitude that people focus on instead of the success she's had for the last 25 years at the helm of Vogue?

Trust us, there are plenty of genuinely nice people who succeed by being themselves, and for every person who finds success by being a dick there are about 1,000 who fail. Play your odds.

It seems like every year the fashion industry is called out for openly embracing or turning a blind eye to harmful issues like child labor, oversights on quality control, underage and underweight models, environmental harm, labor abuses, etc. And each time the industry comes out and promises that the time has come to end these practices once and for all. It's now at the point where it seems like lying about combating these crimes can be added to the list of commonly practiced corruptions.

The site Jezebel put together a brief list of the human and environmental disasters caused by the fashion industry this past year, including the insane number of child laborers in the textile and apparel industry who are underpaid or toil as slave laborers. Also documented are fires that killed hundreds of workers manufacturing clothing for Tommy Hilfiger, the Gap, and other widely consumed American brands. And finally, Greenpeace purchased garments from Diesel, Levi's, and other companies to prove that they contained hazardous chemicals.

These and other crimes are committed year in and year out for the sake of looking good and saving dough. The fashion industry has continuously made hollow promises to address these issues, but at what point will it truly realize that it can no longer value profit over being a real life Fashion Killa?

Yes, models are supposed to be very hot. But the truth is a lot of these women have faces akin to blank canvases upon which make-up artists and photographers can create an enormously wide range of looks. This is why the most talented women can go from shoot to shoot and seemingly transform into wholly other people depending on the project. But this also means a lot of them don't exhibit the impossible standard of beauty their editorials project upon the female consumer. In other words, a lot of times they look weird in real life. As guys, we still love models and all, but like Kanye said, sometimes you just like the girls who "got more ass than the models."

Regarding the sexualization of incredibly young-looking and actually young women: no need to bust out the Freud or anything, but it's pretty clear that that's just fucked up.

Also, male models - you should smile more! You all look like mopey teenagers who just woke up, even though that's probably true.

We obviously all love having the opportunity to participate in this industry, but no one should lose sight of the fact that fashion is pretty trivial in light of other issues. There's too much fucked up shit and too many interesting things going on in the world to devote yourself solely to clothing.

Not to be corny or altruistic, and not to make the fashion industry sound special, but like anything it should be kept in perspective with other goings-on in politics, philosophy, and culture. If you're really blocking out everything else in life just so you can figure out how to copy the trending silhouette of Autumn / Winter 2013, then you need to take a step back. No one's obituary should ever read, "He died as he lived: freezing his ass off in line for a Supreme drop."