The Gaze Behind the Image: Filep Motwary, a tireless advocate for fashion and aesthetics, writes & directs #craftingcyprus, a poetic series of short films presented at BCK in Rhodes

The landscape of fashion has changed, and continues to change, at a dramatic pace. What is driving these changes? How much have its objectives evolved, and how does human creativity manage to remain a positive force despite them? To what extent can it remain untouched and uninfluenced?

I feel that fashion today exists in a constant state of flux, shaped by technology, globalization, social and economic conditions, as well as the climate crisis and changing patterns of consumption. The speed at which images circulate through social media has significantly shortened the lifespan of a creative impulse, while artificial intelligence and digital tools are already transforming the way a garment is designed, produced and communicated. If we view the history of fashion as a chain of interactions, then Instagram—and the image on social media more broadly—is changing the way this chain is formed and transmitted.

In the past, an idea could pass through many “hands”: from society to the artist, from the artist to the designer, and from one historical period to another, through books, archives, museums, ateliers and personal experience. There was time for observation, understanding, assimilation and, ultimately, transformation.

A truly radical collection could remain a subject of discussion for months; it could be examined, questioned and revisited again and again, until it acquired a force capable of carrying it beyond its particular moment in time and, perhaps, into eternity. Montana, Gaultier, Mugler, Galliano and McQueen all stand as examples of this phenomenon…

Today, this process seems increasingly difficult to sustain. In the digital age, much of it is compressed into an image whose lifespan may be no more than a few seconds. Through scrolling and the logic of algorithms, we receive one image instantly, followed almost immediately by another, and then another. I see a garment, a silhouette or an aesthetic reference. I then recognize it as a “trend” and reproduce it—often simply through a repost—without necessarily having read the caption, or even when there is no explanation at all.

The danger, then, is that only the visual result remains, while the cultural, social or historical context that gave rise to it gradually disappears. The image survives, but the journey that led to it vanishes.

And perhaps this is where the most interesting point lies: the links in the chain are not necessarily lost; they become invisible. While the image appearing on our screen carries behind it a history of social conditions, techniques, people and previous images, the algorithm primarily presents us with the result. It shows us the “what” without necessarily revealing the “why”.

We may be living through an era of “superficial historicity”: we know that something existed because we have seen it, without necessarily knowing where it came from, why it was created or what it meant in its own time. History is thus transformed into an image, while the context that once gave it meaning gradually recedes from view.

On the other hand, I would not say that Instagram necessarily leads to a loss of knowledge. It can work in the opposite direction, too. An image can become the starting point for research, creating a desire to trace its origins and understand the context in which it was created. The problem begins when the image becomes the destination rather than the starting point.

Perhaps, then, the creative process today has shifted from “I see → I understand → I process → I create” to “I see → I recognize → I reproduce → I consume”. And this raises an essential question for the designer: when images circulate so rapidly, does the creator still have enough time to truly understand what is influencing them?

If not, then human creativity is at risk not because it is more heavily influenced, but because there is no longer enough time to transform influence into personal knowledge. For influence to become creative, it requires time. It requires distance, reflection, questioning and personal engagement. Without these, there is a danger that influence remains mere reproduction.

Perhaps, therefore, this is where much of the value of fashion as a creative act lies today: in its ability to rediscover the “missing links” behind the image. Not merely to identify an aesthetic, but to seek out the history, ideas and circumstances that gave rise to it.

At the same time, the objectives of fashion have also changed. They are no longer concerned solely with aesthetics, originality or commercial appeal. Sustainability, ethical production, inclusivity, functionality and the need for personal expression have acquired particular importance. The designer is therefore called upon to strike a balance between artistic creation, the demands of the market, and the social and environmental responsibilities that accompany the production of a garment.

I remember an interview I had with Dries Van Noten around ten years ago. At the time, he told me that the first garment to appear in a fashion show now had to be “Instagrammable”. The observation is particularly telling, because it reveals how the logic of the image began to influence not only the way fashion was presented, but also the way it was designed. A garment no longer exists solely within the space and time of a fashion show; it must simultaneously be capable of being translated instantly into an image, isolated from the rest of the collection and circulated within the digital environment as the banner of a singular idea.

It becomes clear, I believe, that the creator is inevitably shaped by their era, the market, technology, society and the environment in which they live. Perhaps, then, the objective is not to remain uninfluenced, but to be able to process those influences without losing one’s personal identity.

True creativity does not lie in isolation from change, but in the ability to transform change into something new, personal and meaningful. The challenge for the contemporary designer is not to protect themselves from the incessant flow of images, but to learn to look beyond them: to distinguish the invisible links, to seek the knowledge that precedes the image and, ultimately, to transform influence into a personal point of view.

Creativity today is not measured by how many images we have seen, but by how many of them we have genuinely managed to understand.

You are fortunate that circumstances allow you to encounter, at the source, exceptional talents, gifted creators and inspiring individuals who have so much to contribute. How easy is it for you to recognize them, and how exciting is it for you to discover and bring such gems to the fore?

Many of the designers who today command the media’s attention were young creators whom, around twenty years ago, I featured as emerging talents on my website. I am by no means suggesting that I “discovered” them. What I can say with certainty is that I recognized something in them very early on—something that others began to understand only much later.

Demna Gvasalia, Glenn Martens, Vaccarello… Even Rick Owens gave my blog one of his first European interviews, almost twenty years ago when he was at Revillon. For me, the blog was never simply a means of documenting fashion; it was a way of observing, discovering and, above all, engaging in dialogue with a new generation of creators before they had acquired the visibility they enjoy today, as well as with established designers such as Lacroix and the late Lagerfeld, among others. I am still friends with several of them today.

The title of the blog, Une Nouvelle iDEAL—a new ideal—expressed precisely this desire: to offer its audience not merely images, but new references, new faces and new ideas, before they had achieved wider recognition.

Perhaps this is also where my experience differed from the way social media operates today. Back then, the image was the starting point of an investigation. There was a curiosity to discover who was behind it, where it came from, what the person thought and what they were trying to create. Today, very often, the image itself becomes the end goal.

Une Nouvelle iDEAL was created precisely to bring to light those “missing links” I mentioned earlier—to connect the image with its creator, the creator with their story, and that story with whatever might come next.

In that sense, blogging during that period was more an act of curation and foresight than one of simple publication. It was not enough for me to present something because it was already important. The real interest lay in recognizing something before it became important to everyone else. Back then, an image could generate knowledge; today, there is a risk that knowledge becomes confined to the image.

My mentor in blogging was Diane Pernet. She was the first fashion blogger in the history of and one who encouraged me to start, and eventually I did, alongside my work as a fashion designer. Perhaps, in retrospect, this dual identity—as a creator, but simultaneously as an observer and chronicler—gave me a particular advantage. It allowed me not only to participate in the fashion world, but also to observe it from a slight distance to document what was happening, and to search for the stories and ideas behind the image.