In case you missed it, the opener to Paris Fashion Week was, erm, unconventional.
Striding down the runway, opening the show itself, mind you, wasn't an elite model or an inspiring cultural icon. It was none other than Braden Peters, known to the dark, toxic corners of the internet as Clavicular, a notorious looksmaxxing influencer whose digital brand is built entirely on a foundation of unchecked racism, misogyny, and homophobia.
If you’re not new here, you know I have mad beef with Peters. As do most of the sane people on the internet. Hence, the comment sections and fashion forums erupting almost instantly. People are deeply offended.
But as the digital dust settles, we have to look past our immediate outrage and diagnose the depressing corporate mechanics behind it.
I need you to know one thing. Do not get this twisted, as a creative miscalculation or unfortunate oversight by a casting director. It was a textbook example of ragebait marketing. And it’s lazy as f*ck.
It’s also, deeply concerning for the world of luxury fashion. Since when did such a cultural powerhouse have to rely on such tactics?
Well, since the attention economy kind of broke the creative compass of consumer brands. On social media, the algorithms don't care if an interaction is driven by genuine adoration or visceral disgust.
A comment expressing horror counts exactly the same as a comment expressing praise. Making engagement a flat, unfeeling currency.
Because of this, brands like 424 are apparently feeling some kind of desperate compulsion to use systemic anger as an attention-harvesting tool. They have realised that provoking an audience into a state of collective rage is the easiest, cheapest, and fastest way to guarantee their metrics spike into the millions. Again, lazy.
For fashion houses, the runway is the perfect laboratory for this extractive tactic. The clothing itself is no longer the primary vehicle for relevance. Instead, the runway is treated as a piece of performance art designed to generate a viral screenshot.
Casting a controversial and offensive figure may seem like an act of artistic subversion. But really, it’s just a cheap algorithmic hack.
Kind of like a corporate emergency button pressed to guarantee that a brand stays trending on the timeline for forty-eight hours.
The uncomfortable truth that 424 and every other brand utilising this playbook are trying to hide is that ragebait casting is the ultimate confession of creative failure.
You may as well stand up in front of your audience with a megaphone and scream about how your collection is fundamentally incapable of standing on its own feet.
If your tailoring was revolutionary, if your silhouettes were groundbreaking, or if your creative vision had anything genuinely substantial worth talking about, you would not need to employ a toxic internet troll to garner views and manufacture a conversation.
You use shock value exclusively when your actual craft lacks value.
When a label turns its show into a circus of controversy, it is not avant-garde. It’s called being lazy. Hiding behind a wall of public fury and relying on the audience's moral indignation can be a sign that the actual clothes on the rack are… nothing to ring home about.
But they’re also trading long-term brand equity, institutional respect, and basic human decency for a brief, transactional spike in their engagement dashboard.
It’s a dangerous, slippery slope for the creative industries.
When we accept a reality where a brand’s primary skill isn't creation, but the deliberate curation of societal disgust, we stop demanding beauty, innovation, and craftsmanship. And we begin rewarding the loudest, lowest common denominator of internet performance.
Heed my warning here. Attention is undeniably valuable. But attention severed from respect is a toxic asset.
Don’t be that brand trying to trick your audience into an emotional breakdown just to farm impressions for crying out loud. Instead, possess the supreme creative confidence to let your craft speak for itself, no matter what field you’re in.
Leave the internet trolls exactly where they belong, in their parents’ basement, stinking of Cheeto dust and Mountain Dew.
-Sophie Randell, Writer
