Fat Anna Wintour’s Fashion Squeeze: 2025 Was The Year of Selling Out

Words: Anastasia Vartanian 

Make it stand out

There’s something in the air. Everyone is selling out.

Selling out has been on my mind a lot recently, not least because I graduated last year and so it’s time to stop living in the art school world - where being political and provocative is encouraged - and time to enter the real world, where sociopathy is encouraged. While navigating art vs business has always been a torturous ordeal for creative people, it seems to me like more people are selling out than ever.

Is it really a surprise? Look at where we are. Widening wealth gaps. Housing crisis. Late stage capitalism which thrives on the mantra: eat or be eaten. Everyone has parents they want to help retire, loved ones they care about and want to keep safe, or a goal to be secure and maybe just… enjoy life? And, terrifyingly, the threshold for that is looking higher and higher.

Back in August, I was invited to the H&M show. Well, it wasn’t so much an invite as an email asking me for my rate to “amplify this exciting brand moment”. It marked the first time a major brand had reached out to me for a deal. And, I’m not gonna lie, I did think about it for a second as my minus 2000 in the bank stared me in the face. (Don’t judge me, it was accrued from 5 years at uni.)

I swiftly remembered that it was not worth losing the trust of my audience that I’ve worked to build over said 5 years. My parents, both immigrants with a pragmatic attitude and strong work ethic, thought I was insane for turning it down but I told them it was worth it.

Imagine my surprise, then, when the show happened and I realised that the whole of London had been invited, and presumably paid to go. And, look, I don’t blame anyone for taking that money. Making it in a creative field is incredibly difficult - no, next to impossible - without some element of “selling out”, or at least family support.

I, for one, was in the privileged position to turn this offer down because I’ve been living with my parents while finishing my studies and building my career. (Yeah. Not very glamorous, I know. But people need to start talking about the unglamorous parts of this industry!) The fact that I’m even from London is an immense privilege, as it allows me to gain my footing in a fashion industry which so often centres around capital cities, which are themselves a hustle to survive in.

I would possibly be singing a very different tune if I had rent to pay. Perhaps taking money from a fast fashion brand is not that deep, and it’s just one of those things you have to do when you’re trying to make a living in this industry.

“It’s not for nothing that creative people talk about their “cool” work and not their “pay the rent” work. Usually, the “pay the rent” work never makes it to the feed, because that would be embarrassing - you do it because you need to live.”

If you look, selling out is happening everywhere. Back in March, Perfect Magazine published a shoot with Kim Kardashian (capitalism’s final boss) posing on a Cybertruck and spooning a Tesla robot. To be quite honest, the images were kind of cool. But when you remember that this was mere months after Donald Trump was elected with the support of Elon Musk, it feels… gross. I don’t know if that shoot was sponsored or not, but I assume that it was. Why else would you associate with Elon at a time like that? Unless rage bait was the goal, which, to be honest, it might have been. It’s an increasingly popular marketing strategy used to grab our attention from the sludge of the endless scroll. (Oxford University Press even named it the word of the year!)

Again, I don’t necessarily blame the individuals at Perfect. Anyone who is at least a bit tapped into fashion and publishing knows that most magazines are between a rock and a hard place right now. Still, it’s depressing to watch as a budding creative, knowing that there’s not really a path to financial stability without selling out to some extent. It’s not for nothing that creative people talk about their “cool” work and not their “pay the rent” work. Usually, the “pay the rent” work never makes it to the feed, because that would be embarrassing - you do it because you need to live.

It’s next to impossible to survive in fashion, arts and media spaces long-term without taking some kind of corporate money. In late 2023, i-D, a magazine founded in the 80s in London and a bastion of alternative youth culture, was acquired by Bedford Media after Vice Media (its previous owner since 2012) went bankrupt. While this all sounds a little boring, something to note is that Bedford Media was founded by model Karlie Kloss and her husband, venture capitalist Joshua Kushner. Yes, the brother of Jared Kushner, son in law of Trump. According to Business Insider, Joshua and Karlie publicly stated they didn’t vote for Trump in 2016. (Not sure about 2024.) But when billionaires own culture, where does that leave us?

Now, don’t get me wrong, billionaires owning cultural institutions is hardly a new development: the history of two of fashion’s largest publishing powers, Condé Nast and Hearst, is a tale of wealth, acquisitions and empire building. But this is the era of the tech billionaire buying out culture. For instance, it was just announced that Jeff and Lauren Bezos will be funding next year’s Met Gala. This news re-ignited the rumours that Mr Amazon is looking to buy Condé Nast, the publisher that owns titles like Vogue, GQ, Glamour and is associated with the Gala through Anna Wintour. It was the subject of my column a few months ago, but the TLDR is: the power couple have been courting fashion for a while now. Or, maybe, fashion has been courting them.

A sad – but not really surprising – realisation for me as I learn more about the fashion industry and the world in general: the worse the company, the more they pay. It’s often why they have so much money in the first place: exploitation. So, if you want to be rich, be prepared to make some hard decisions. Or maybe they won’t be hard for you. Perhaps you don’t care. In which case, congratulations. You’ll go far. And, honestly, I’m a little bit jealous.