House of Z

I recently watched the Netflix documentary, house of Z as part of my reading week content. The documentary was an insightful look at the epic rise and fall of young fashion designer Zac Posen.  The documentary highlighted both the excitement and wonderful platform for expression that the industry can be, but also how brutal it can be.

Zac Posen’s creativity and work is beautiful and unique, it was interesting to see how anyone’s upbringing affects their creativity. Posen was raised in an extremely creative household, where creativity in any form was encouraged and nurtured.  A clear source of early inspiration was the work of his artist father, who worked mainly with draping fabrics to create fine art pieces. His close nit family upbringing was clearly something that was important in shaping him as a designer, so much so that his sister and mother where the main people involved in his fashion house from the start.

Posen had a flamboyant style and personality which he felt he had to contain until he started to attend an art school in his teenage years. It was here that he truly started to experiment with fashion and style both in his work, and also in his own everyday looks, which where always a daring experiment.

With such an outgoing and fearless personality it was no surprise that Posen caught the attention, and quickly became friends with models and other notable young people in the industry. He used these model friends as muses for his designs.

I was really amazed when seeing Posen’s early creations at how technically advanced they where, as well as beautiful. The documentary focuses not only on his personality and lifestyle, but also why he became so successful, which was mainly due to his incredible craftsmanship at such a young age.

He interned at for quite a few well known designers, and quickly became not so quietly confident about his amazing skills.  It wasn’t however until he was at school in London at the infamous Central St Martens, that he started to become well known for his garments, and until the Henry Bedell’s store agreed to buy a collection, that he decided to open a fashion house, the house of Z.

There was a lot of Buzz for the new label, from the get go. After just a short period of time, and few shows Posen’s designs sky rocketed to success in the industry. It seemed as though every actress and celebrity was wearing the garments, and even people in the music industry started to see his talent and invest.

With the astronomica and fast success of the house, came all the extra staff and demands of being successful in the industry, however this all seemed to happen overnight. Perhaps it was the jump to success being so quick, or simply Posen’s young age and inexperience, but things started to go wrong.

The number of new opinionated voices involved in the creating process, the many more collections per year, and the personal strain on the family, became too much for Posen. This of course was reflected into the collections in created, which no longer where his own personal vision, and technical ability. His collections became overcompensated, overdone and less well thought out, personal or unique.

It wasn’t till Posen hit rock bottom in both his personal life, and his creative career that he managed to assemble a new team, that managed to reignite his initial love for the craft. He launched a highly successful and unexpected comeback show, that made the art the focus of the brand again. Hi unique and advanced technical ability could be seen again, along with his beautiful and noticeable Posen style. The brand is still recovering and trying to stay relevant, however the original reason that people fell in love with the clothes is back.

 It was really interesting for me to see this story and learn how certain mistakes can be avoided. Although I am not personally interested in fashion designing, it is important that I understand the industry from every angle, and I now feel like I have a better understanding of it.