Presence, the world’s forgotten currency

My place is claimed. My belly tingles. Now it comes. Here it starts. The lights focus on the heart of the runway. Rows aligned, perfectly parallel. Silence sweeps the room. From one fold to the next. My eyes trace every detail. From dress cut to pearl. Consumed by the craft of form. Unhinged from what’s happening outside these walls. Fabric on fabric, pattern on color, the runway fills — and so does my heart.

A fashion show is a spectacle. But what remains when there’s no audience? And I don’t just mean the empty chairs. I mean the audience in its double form — the one physically present, and the one eternally watching through the lens of a screen. Why have they come to hold so much power? And at what cost? Their presence, or rather their performative gaze, has drained fashion shows of their intimacy, their mystery, their magic. What once began as a theatrical celebration of creation has now morphed into something eerily dystopian. Today, even those in the room experience it through their screens, filtered, cropped, reduced

When Fashion Became Content

There used to be a time when fashion shows were an ode to culture, art, film, and politics. Not content. A start of a century movement– wild, unhinged, deeply poetic. They weren’t meant for the masses. They weren’t tailored for a good camera angle or TikTok’s 9:16 format. They were for the chosen few. For those who absorbed fashion as a submersive experience. Today, we scroll through runways like they’re daily memes. Funniest of all is that we think we’re part of it. We act like we’re “watching” fashion. But really, we’re being fed it. And with every pixel, something dies—the smell of a theatre. Instagram led us to become 24/7 voyeurs, stuck in this department store at all hours of the day.

And for what? 

Fashion was never meant to be passive. Not in experience. Not in access. Not in how it makes you feel. Screens (2D Format) flattened it. Live-streams diluted it. In our obsession to be everywhere, we’ve forgotten what it means to be present. Screens democratise fashion because everyone has access to it now, with the cost of it being message-less. So today it has to appeal to everyone on the screen and off. Real fashion shows were spiritual. Violent. Awakening. They had a message. The kind of show that sent you home with your worldview challenged (not your feed updated). It’s supposed to bite. It’s supposed to make you uncomfortable, make you reconsider your body, your politics, your place in the world. And the last time a screen did that for you? Exactly. 

Maison Margiela’s revolutionary SS90 runway show

Take Antwerp in the ‘80s. The Antwerp Six weren’t hashtagging their shows. They weren’t obsessed with visibility — they built mystique. Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Walter Van Beirendonck… they crafted a world. And if you weren’t there? You missed it. And that was the point. Their shows weren’t pixel-perfect. They were unpolished, personal, and almost secretive. You couldn’t repost them. You could only remember them.

In a derelict playground on the outskirts of Paris, Martin Margiela staged a show that broke every rule — and in doing so, reminded us of what fashion shows are truly capable of. The S/S 1990 collection was a true spectacle. Children from the neighbourhood filled the front row. Their hand-drawn invitations replaced gold-foiled calligraphy. This wasn’t a show, it was a ritual. A mirror held up to an industry too obsessed with polish to recognize its own stagnation. Margiela didn’t need drones, filters, or “exclusive live streams.” He needed the truth. He affected the crowd in the same way when he did his S/S09 exhibit at Palais Galliera, Paris. Hiding the faces of his models, he revealed something even deeper — a quiet yet seismic rebellion against fashion’s obsession with visibility over vision. Martin Margiela rejected elitism. It wasn’t about the who, but the what. Not about status, but about substance.

What If Fashion Had No Audience at All?

Well…from a radical point of view; Remove the audience altogether! Re-referring to its double form — the one physically present, and the one eternally watching through the lens of a screen. No streams. No access. No phones. A fashion show that happens — and is never seen again. A collection that lives only in the minds of the few who were there. A show that cannot be Googled, clipped, or stitched into TikTok trends. A designer who dares to be unseen. It sounds insane. Maybe elitist. But maybe that’s the point. Fashion was never just clothes. It was a performance, a provocation, a manifestation. From grand theatrics to sound passing through bone, and we haven’t gotten to the garments yet… And now? It’s a carousel post. Let fashion return behind closed doors. Strip away the noise. Restore sanctity – for the designers, the models, the writers and the few who still dare to feel. Because when you remove exclusivity, you don’t democratize art – you dilute it. Imagine a world where collections didn’t need to go viral. Where their value wasn’t based on reach, but on resonance. Where fashion could be exclusive again — not to gatekeep, but to protect its artistry from being swallowed by the feed. Let us fight against the dystopia that deprives us of art.

A Manifesto For the Unseen

A show doesn’t happen in pixels — it happens in presence. In the shiver of a bassline echoing through your ribs. In the whisper of fabric brushing past you, too fleeting to film. Resonance lives in the after, in the recollection, in the ache of not being able to revisit it, only remember it. That’s the kind of exclusivity fashion needs — not gated behind status or follower counts, but locked in the intimacy of lived experience. Because when everything is captured, clipped, and consumed in 2D, nothing lingers. Nothing haunts. Nothing transforms. Flatness kills mystique. But a memory? A memory breathes. A show seen once, never again, becomes legend. And legend is what fashion used to be. Not a trend. Not a tap. A myth you had to be there for. A dream stitched into minds, not screens.

by Imane, Editor at HCN Insider