Quality requires study; it demands constantly striving to improve, honesty, authenticity, commitment, humility, faith in beauty, and abandoning the pursuit of instant gratification.
For a long time, a self-appointed ‘elite’ of academics, curators, institutional managers, and theorists labeled Western artists who dared draw inspiration from their country’s traditions as ‘conservative’, ‘reactionary’, ‘parochial’, ‘phobic’, and – last but not least – ‘Eurocentric’, a slur insinuating admiration for Europe’s colonial past.
The quality movement worked patiently and silently toward its goals, unshaken by bullying and uninfluenced by the awards and honors even highly reputable institutions granted to botcheries.
Pretentiousness, ignorance of art history, and contempt – even hate – for the other-minded have dictated the discourse in the creative community in recent years. The silence of tolerant experts cemented the downfall.
The SMCK Fashionable issue presents four major currents that are shaping new looks in fashion, design, applied arts, and jewelry. These emerging trends show how important it is for society and culture to protect, revive, and cherish what is emotionally rewarding and identity-supporting; to endorse tradition and invest it with a contemporary mission; to dare to be outspoken, integral, witty; to defend one's own beliefs and to pioneer progress.
*The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoyievsky
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