Opinion

A disease origin story

Opinion

A disease origin story

And its afterlife

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Disease origin stories, while important, can lead to dangerous narratives. We need to recognise that the hegemony of global supply chains to produce the clothes that are advertised, stocked in retail outlets, bought and worn should not lead to ‘pathologising’ the entrepreneurs and workers who produce them. We need to imagine different futures that push back against demographic nationalism. We need not to criminalise the people who work hard to make clothes as they follow a desire to realise dignified lives. Diseases have not only origin stories and life history narratives but also afterlives.

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Doomsday Marketing

Opinion

Doomsday Marketing

Or How Only the Rich Will Survive

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Today’s most savvy cultural producers know that we’ve begun to feel helpless in the face of climate catastrophe, rising fascism and, more recently, global pandemics, and are capitalising on that vulnerability. The clothes may be a tongue-in-cheek critique of those who wield the most power in society, but when designers like Marine Serre are selling gilet jaunes (made to mimic the vests worn by French protesters in 2019) for over $1000, and Balenciaga dresses are being worn by an avatar (who represents the girlfriend of billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk), dressing for the end of the world becomes an inside-joke, afforded only by the rich.

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La Moda Feminista

Opinion

La Moda Feminista

Feminist Aesthetics in Colombia and Latin America

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The clothes worn by the performers evoked the ways in which women often dress to have fun and to dance, to be young and alive at night, in bars and streets and discos, but they are also reminiscent of the kind of clothing a woman might wear when she is raped or killed. These are the kind of outfits that are still moralised within the sort of male gaze that inherits a cultural tendency to assign guilt to the feminine subject and not the masculine agent. These are the sort of clothes that call to mind the throbbing question that arises all too often when a woman is raped: what was she wearing?

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Reflections

Opinion

Reflections

Slimane and the Self

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If fashion truly is this thing that swirls and surges forth, if it changes and shapes our times, what happens when a designer stands still? Is perpetual self-homage a welcome, steady approach in uncertain times or does this dogma lead to a dead end? Staring into black mirrors we all play Narcissus, fascinated by our own faces, so can we really condemn Hedi Slimane for not evolving? Could it be that Slimane’s staunchness is the uncomfortable reflection of our own self-absorption?

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Decolonising Fashion

Opinion

Decolonising Fashion

Defying the 'White Man's Gaze'

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Evaluating the work of designers outside the established fashion capitals according to (references made to) their cultural identity not only continues to fulfil ‘the centre’s’ need to distil a diffuse and disordered peripheral Other into more rational categories based on collective identities, but also to differentiate and therefore discriminate and exclude, while simultaneously protecting its own boundaries. By setting this fashion apart as ethnic it not only diminishes it and discards it as ‘not real’ fashion, but also confirms French, Italian, American or British fashion as the norm.

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PC Couture

Opinion

PC Couture

On the intersections of ‘political correctness’ and creativity

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If fashion designers can and should shock and provoke, isn’t social media outrage not only to be expected, but also an intrinsic part of increasingly performative fashion conversations as well? And why would fashion designers specifically enjoy unlimited freedom of expression? Who would claim this right next? Artists? TV presenters? Politicians? Do fashion designers really want to be the creative equivalent of Piers Morgan?

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Are fashion designers made or born?

Opinion

Are fashion designers made or born?

Class, Aspiration and Pedagogy in India

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The discourse on class mobility is pervasive in contemporary India, and is in itself seen to be one of liberalised India’s greatest fruits. In particular, the public imagination often portrays creative professionals as fuelled by drive and ambition and thus capable of rupturing historical boundaries of class and caste thanks to this imagined innate power. The National Institute of Fashion Technology Delhi is one of the places where students continue to flock in order to emerge as successful creatives. But considering how many students come from upper caste and class backgrounds, is this idea of class travel a mere myth?

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What’s the pointe?

Opinion

What’s the pointe?

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‘Ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers and man is the gardener,’ the impresario George Balanchine reflected to Life Magazine in 1965. Ballet is an art form enmeshed with its history: steps drawn up in the court of Louis XIV remain today; blockbuster ballets like ‘The Nutcracker,’ ‘Swan Lake,’ and ‘Giselle’ were choreographed a century ago and gendered roles of prince and princess habitually play out with men lifting and women being lifted en pointe. A ballerina dancing en pointe transcends, she floats but she does not meet her partner on equal footing.

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Race To The Middle

Opinion

Race To The Middle

On RuPaul and The Mainstreaming of Drag

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The show simultaneously embraces capitalism and activism at once. Queens are both encouraged to build their own brands, while also engaging with the ostracism and trauma they have faced from their families and wider society. A tragicomedy ensues, in which persecuted queer men are made to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get on with whatever bizarre task to promote their brand is in front of them.

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A Costume Of Herself

Opinion

A Costume Of Herself

On the Frida Kahlo Tchotchke Industrial Complex

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Picasso has not yet been honoured with a retrospective on his personal aesthetic, nor has the one-time Comme des Garçons model, Jean-Michel Basquiat. The Brooklyn Museum did though, have one on Georgia O’Keeffe, ‘Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern.’ Women’s work is still viewed through a different lens than men’s; their lives are more closely associated with their art, and their art is oft-seen as inherently more personal than their male counterparts.

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On Michael Cohen’s Jackets

Opinion

On Michael Cohen’s Jackets

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Cohen favours indiscreet European luxury: Hermès ‘H’ belts, Italian tailoring, open-necked shirts. He wears clothes like sportscars wear their badges. In court he appears in suits, but prefers soft jackets with loud patterns, worn with loafers and jeans. In corporate law and finance, clothes are expected to reassure clients; you should present a successful business, but not flaunt your bonus. In Cohen’s line of work, lawyers talk, and dress, more like prize fighters.

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