Peacocking: ridiculous, beautiful, moving. No coats, even in sub zero temperatures. A lot of belly buttons on display. Crowds moving in unison, phones held aloft to catch a glimpse of a celebrity you’ve never heard of. Stern-looking men in dark suits surrounding beautiful young women with perfectly applied make-up and professional hair. Bumping into people you never see, except at fashion shows. Waving to friends across the catwalk, then losing them in the crowd. A swarm of shiny black cars with tinted windows blocking the street. Bored-looking drivers lining the sidewalk while smoking and drinking coffee from paper cups.
Splendour and Subversion
Fashion is a polysemic category. When it comes to thinking about it critically, there’s one aspect I particularly like: the way in which fashion is also connected to a more philosophical dimension – referring to a form of temporality; to the search for newness, the ‘irrational’ appetite for novelty; the idolatry of commodities; a speedy pursuit of replacement and therefore, an assimilated rationale based on transitoriness and ephemerality. This particular Euro American narrative of fashion has dictated that ‘the centre’ of ‘real’ fashion derives from European modernity; and that such a ‘centre’ would further land in four great cities that ended up making the global circuit of runways. In this narrative, widely accepted and dispersed, the rest, in other words, everything that stands outside of such a location is considered the periphery. This story has, however, begun to break down. The subject deserves a more hybrid narrative.
I Stand Here Ironing
She was a beautiful baby. The first and only one of our five that was beautiful at birth. You do not guess how new and uneasy her tenancy in her now — loveliness. You did not know her all those years she was thought homely, or see her poring over her baby pictures, making me tell her over and over how beautiful she had been — and would be, I would tell her — and was now, to the seeing eye. But the seeing eyes were few or non-existent. Including mine.
Little Doubts Everywhere
In the 21st century ‘little doubts’ have entered the field of fashion at its core: from doubts about the necessity of the fast-paced rhythm of fashion to doubts about the sustainability of its production models. Yet none of these little doubts challenges the actual paradigm of the fashion system, rooted as it is in the temporal dynamic of rejection (advancedness and backwardness) mirrored by the fashion system in all kinds of ways: body types, skin colour, social class. So where might the paradigm-level change in the fashion system come from?
Everyday Use
In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog.
Freedom!
‘Freedom’ is a word that is shamelessly overused in fashion media and fashion marketing. The term is a staple of fashion campaigns – which a brief look at ads of the past couple of years can confirm. Freedom is promised to you, the reader and consumer, as long as you buy a freedom-inducing item.
Straps, Cut-outs, Slits
It makes complete sense that the ties and pulleys of this trend conjure to mind a construction site, while the cuts, tears and slices are reminiscent of the surgeon’s table. Faceless e-commerce imagery, outfit shots, nudes, digital filters and editing have all worked to establish a visual lexicon of bodies presented in vignettes and fragments.