Zoolander’s take on the world of haute couture was positively prescient

I’m a business journalist, so it probably doesn’t surprise you to learn that there are things I know about fashion, and things I really don’t. First up, what I don’t know is pretty much all of it: you know, the vogue hemlines of the day, the haute couture, the smarmy commentators’ habit of describing every outfit as “triumphant” even when it appears to have been pulled together after a bitter skirmish with Jose Cuervo.

I had, for years, assumed that an inseam was a term you’d drop at the Wanderers as a sage assessment of Kagiso Rabada’s fast-bowling prowess, and I wasn’t even sure you were allowed to use the word “chic” anymore without qualifying it as “problematic”. In short, I’d assumed fashion was a synonym for what itched the least. But, as someone who, as a student, was also often the passive recipient of Fashion TV, largely owing to a routine comedy of errors involving a remote control that spent much of the time free-associating with my neighbours’ set, it is also true that I have witnessed my fair share of ghastly ensembles.

Mercifully, salvation came for me in 2001 thanks to Ben Stiller, who is to fashion what David Attenborough is to nature documentaries. Today, I’m proud to say that much of what I do know of fashion comes from that fantastic documentary Zoolander, which was remarkably prescient in its foreshadowing of tastes to come. Often derided as nothing more than a vehicle for Stiller’s penetrating “Blue Steel” facial expression (the evolution of his earlier trademark “Ferrari” and “La Tigre”), it made an invaluable contribution to the genre, delving deeply into the unheralded contribution that fashion made to the construction of the modern aesthete. This philosophical undertaking becomes clear early on in the documentary, when a contemplative Derek Zoolander muses, “Maybe we should be doing something more meaningful with our lives — like helping people.”

One of his fellow male models is momentarily perplexed. “Uh... what people?”, he asks, to which Derek replies hotly, “I don’t know — people who need help.” Then, in one of the more emotionally resonant scenes, hinting at the subtle interplay between male bonding and narcissistic personality disorder, his fellow models set him right: “But, Derek, models do help people — they make them feel good about themselves,” before adding, “We show them how to dress cool, and wear their hair in interesting ways.” Derek, suitably chastened, shrugs, “I guess so.” Which leads, inseamlessly, to the fateful orange mocha frappuccino petrol fight.

The point is, Zoolander, now 21 years old, was on the money about so much more than just the philosophy of fashion. For a start, impossibly stylish scooters (as driven by Hansel) are now de rigueur in the more fashionable cities, while the onesies so frequently worn by Derek became all the rage in the more shiftless bedrooms of Pietermaritzburg during Covid. It’s something The Guardian also noticed.

In the film, the designer Mugatu (Will Ferrell) has a clothing collection inspired by homeless people called, fantastically, “Derelicte”. Yet, as The Guardian points out, this innovation was actually gazumped by real-life designer John Galliano who, in 2000, had released a fashion collection for Dior inspired by the homeless. “Since Zoolander, this trend has only gathered pace. Vivienne Westwood, the moral voice of the people, held a menswear show in January 2010 in which male models dressed like homeless people and pushed shopping trolleys down the Milan runway. Towards the end of his reign at Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs brought out a range of hugely expensive bags explicitly modelled on the cheap plastic shopping bags used most commonly by African immigrants in Paris,” the paper said.

In April, fashion brand Balenciaga attracted vitriol after it released a $1 850 pair of trainers that had been designed to appear as though they’d been fished out of a rubbish tip, to “draw attention to fashion’s role in environmental degradation”, according to the South China Morning Post. There are other elements of Zoolander that have become commonplace too. Mugato’s hopelessly overbranded and absurdist outfits hinted at what we’re seeing all over the place today (“Logos are so hot right now”) in the vacuous, overtraded world of TikTok, BeReal, and Instagram.

Even our vocabulary has taken a turn for the catwalk. A decade ago, even the ditsier LinkedIn social climbers would have looked askance at anyone with any aspiration of intellectual credibility suggesting a get together to “ideate”, or that a meeting should “circle back” to some brain-curdlingly obvious platitude. It is entirely conceivable to imagine that today, substance-lite marketers would feel no compunction about daring to emulate one of the more majestic advertising payoff lines from Zoolander: “Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.”

Breathlessly audacious in its unselfconscious inanity, this is not an altogether distinct province from 2022’s culture of LinkedIn self-bleating. Still, there are other Zoolander predictions that are clearly ahead of their time, but still worth keeping an eye on. For example, every half-baked celebrity to have prematurely been platformed on eNCA today has their own “foundation”, “social-justice hangout”, or “centre for kids who can’t read good”. But, with real estate at such a premium in the most fashionable cities, it is surely only a matter of time before we embrace the space efficiency implied in Zoolander’s futuristic “School for Ants”. Absurd? Sure — but then that’s fashion. If you want something permanent, go for style instead. And don’t get me started on how little I know about that subject.

• Rob Rose is the editor of Financial Mail