Refinery29: Fashion’s obsession with eccentrics, and the ladies of Grey Gardens

Fashion’s obsession with eccentric people – and people read as eccentrics due to their marginalisation – stems from its never-ending quest for the new. A central challenge for fashion people is to create something (a collection, an editorial, a campaign) that is as original as possible (especially in the age of copycat call-out culture à la Diet Prada). And where do the most original, unexpected and non-derivative ideas come from? Often, true eccentrics; people who have been isolated from mainstream culture, and so have radically different frames of reference. It is ‘strangeness’ as survival.

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