Camillo Lastrucci, Raw material researcher press Staff International-Maison Margiela Fucecchio, Tuscany, Italy, muses on LinkedIn: I love my job but, I confess that I am worried about the future of the sector and this reflection comes to mind:

We have transformed the skin — a living, unique, imperfect material — into a problem to be corrected. Cutting surrender has become our religion, and discarding the enemy to be defeated. Thus, in the name of efficiency and standardization, we have educated designers to ignore the beauty of authenticity, artisans to hide instead of enhancing, managers to control instead of understanding, and customers to accept only what is flat, smooth, sterile. We have traded the soul of the material for a “perfect” appearance that no longer has anything noble about it.

We have taken refuge behind physical tests as a shield, imposing “safe” but soulless products, which mask the real skin for fear of a wrinkle or a non-standard nuance. What now? We no longer have cutters, but plotter operators. We no longer have leather workers, but assemblers.

Merchandising is soulless marketing, the customer is blind, and the product… it is just merchandise.

Reverse course? Maybe it’s already too late. But if at least someone woke up from their torpor, perhaps they would discover that in those “imperfections” there is still the beauty that we have forgotten.