Bling is Dead?

In August 2008, I suggested that the trend towards materialism and display of wealth manifesting as ‘bling’ was exhausted.  (We see from the research of the Foundation of the Study of Cycles that there are 9 year and 30 year cycles in church membership reflecting an underlying social oscillation between materialism and idealism/spirituality.  A study written up in the 1991 Jan/Feb edition of Cycles Magazine explores this in more detail.

This was picked up in the mass media a few months later in Jan 2009 as Karl Lagerfeld prophesied an era of the ‘new modest’ ahead.

Lagerfeld said: "This whole crisis is like a big spring house-cleaning - both moral and physical.

"There is no creative evolution if you don't have dramatic moments like this. Bling is over. Red carpetry covered with rhine-stones is out. I call it 'the new modesty'."

Bling is a type of ostentatious fashion. The word was coined by hip hop stars to mean flashy, in a good way, but has come to be used in wider culture as a general term for the overt demonstration of wealth.

His comments follow those he made earlier this month to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, when he said he believed the recession was more like "a cleaning out".

"It was too rotten anyway," he said.

He thought the recession could affect fashion and design "in a good way".

"I do not think we were on the best way," he said. "I think it's a difficult moment for a lot of people and a lot of things, but in the end it was really needed, because it was really gone too far."

He concluded: "I see it like a healthy thing, a horrible but healthy thing. It's a medical treatment of the world, I see it like this."

Fashion in architecture is rather slower moving than in clothing, and so it is not surprising to see the architect of the hideous Gherkin building only now catching up with developments.

"The age of bling is over," said Shuttleworth, who led the team at Norman Foster's firm that designed the 7-year-old tower in the City of London financial district. He said it would never get off the ground today. "Money now drives everything, so if you can build something for half the price, you will," he said.

By the time a trend reaches mainstream media, it is rarely early in its development.  It will be interesting to see how this develops.