Cameron Silver on Fashion Through the Decades

Cameron Silver

Entrepreneur, Owner of Decades, Author of Decades: A Century of Fashion

What song changed your life?

There was a song called Eine Kleine Sehnsucht by Friedrich Hollaender that haunted me. It's used in the film The Night Porter, which I saw as a child. I think Charlotte Rampling sings it in the film. And I saw the film at much too young an age; it was not for a seven or eight year old to see. Ultimately, I ended up singing the song in its first English translation. And I recorded it on an album I did for Hollywood Records in 1996.

What is your G.O.A.T?

I think one of the thrills of my life was having the code to Catherine Deneuve's apartment. She would just call me when I would be in Paris and give me the code to the apartment. And then, I would meet her and we'd go through her closet. There was a lot of stuff. And everything had a story.

What do you refuse to give an f about?

I refuse to be a proponent of the cancel culture. I would like to be a proponent of the forgiveness culture and the growth culture. I just don't want a transgression to be the be-all and end-all of someone's career. I believe that people can grow and learn and you forgive.

What was the best thing to happen to you in the 80s?

Well, I guess my bar mitzvah at the Beverly Hills Hotel was pretty lit in 1982. I think that was a nice, nice experience.

Sartorial signs of the times

When I was young, there were lots of things I wanted to be when I grew up, none of which I became. I wanted to be an actor. I wanted to be a fashion designer and have my own brand. All of these are sort of just fantasy things of mine. Things have happened that are similar, but much more in a non-linear trajectory.

I would say that my parents and Elsa Klensch are responsible for getting me into fashion. CNN Style by Elsa Klensch was the best show that covered fashion and I would watch it Saturday mornings with my parents. She was really the first person, along with Jeanne Beker, to do fashion television. She would cover fashion and lifestyle and luxury. And it was a window into that world when you couldn't see that world. Now, you can see everything.

I've always liked fashion as a means to express oneself. I love the theater of the retail world and interacting with people in a store, which thankfully, has returned in such a big way, post-pandemic, Delta variant or not. And I love that fashion has always been the perfect barometer to show how we live and how we love, as a society, as individuals. It tells you what's going on politically, it tells you what's going on with social injustices. Fashion is a great way to learn about history. Because the way we dress is really a reaction to the way we live. So we spent 16 months in sweats. Now, everybody wants to put on a ball gown.

When I think of the major inflection points in the history of fashion, I think one of the great reactions to time and history is The New Look, post-World War II. And I always said the new look was really the old look because it was a very antiquated way to dress, but it was a very exuberant way to express oneself after a World War and the Holocaust. I'd say the topless swimsuit in the 1960s, ushered in by Rudi Gernreich and Peggy Moffitt, is sort of the birth of modern fashion because it just was a super liberated moment. And I think what we're going through right now is another one of those moments. We will have parallels certainly to the roaring twenties, which was a reaction to the Spanish flu, among other things. And I think that as we get deeper into the second decade of the 21st century, we have gone through a pandemic and ended up hanging on to leisure longer than we thought, but I think the reaction is going to be structure. I just think it's always a 180 how it works. 

I'm noticing serious fashion people, they do not want to look at a pair of sweatpants. They do not want to buy anything online. They want to go into a store. They want to have a fitting, they want to buy something super detailed, but they want transparency. And that is the biggest change from the sixties or the twenties: that sustainability really matters along with transparency—understanding where one’s clothing came from and having respect for the artistry. This is at a higher level of fashion, but obviously it's going to trickle down into more mass fashion.

We’ve been saying for some time that “it is chic to repeat,” and Decades has always been a proponent of sustainability, but the fact that The New York Times had to write a story about Jill Biden repeating her outfits is really exciting. Because that's how people should dress. Social media really f’ed us all up thinking that you can only wear something once. All of the iconic figures of the past, anyone who's had a retrospective at the Met Gala, be it a Nan Kempner or an Iris Apfel, has always been a proponent of repeating. Style is how you take something and repurpose it within your wardrobe. 

Through our Decades Sustainable Pop-Ups, we have added to our vintage and pre-loved wares with a number of other sustainable brands that we have vetted so people can do one-stop shopping. And it's actually made me think that, wow, maybe this is where my business goes, that we become the place that reflects the way we want to shop, because there isn't anyone doing it. I've always thought of myself as a boutique and as a storyteller. So I've been able to do the storytelling through these pop-ups. I bring the goods to the people where they are at, and it's working. 

Another thing that’s been interesting to me is all of the renewed interest in Halston with the recently released documentary and mini-series—he’s a designer I know quite well. Halston did for fashion in the second half of the 20th century what Chanel did in the first half. They gave women a modern way to dress and created timeless codes that are as relevant today as they were 50 years ago. I think that Halston has a mythology probably much greater than Chanel's in reality. Because he was a part of the world that he dressed; he actually helped create that society. So when we think about Halston, it's not just the clothes and the codes of the brand, it's the lifestyle, it's his house, it's the smell, it's the posse. With Halston, it's just like, you see everything. You mention the name Halston and someone who knows sees the colors, the shapes, they smell it, taste it. It's really very visceral. And then of course he represents this time period that we have always been nostalgic for. Everyone has always tried to replicate the magic of Studio 54. It will never happen. But I think coming out of a pandemic, it all seems extra sexy and exciting.

Follow Cameron on Instagram for news about upcoming sustainable pop-ups and trunk shows here.