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Umberto Eco

I’M A VIRGIN (BUT THIS IS AN OLD SHIRT)

I’M A VIRGIN (BUT THIS IS AN OLD SHIRT)

Reflecting on the slogans and celebrities of L.A. retail chain Kitson

It’s strange now, in hindsight, to think about all the world’s girls in their Juicy­-brand tracksuits amid the Clenbuterol boom, when ideal bodies were meant to be radically, hungrily skeletal, i.e. un-juicy: wearing garments labeled with zeroes but shaped nothing like them. Ones, instead, were the bodily trend: lines of straight little ones and elevens, as narrow as Adderall rails, were mobbing Kitson in frenzies at weekends. All over L.A.’s sidewalks, there were girls pulling rank in their pastel-pink two-pieces; girls with Swarovski Razrs; girls with loose, pale hair extensions and plastic French tips.

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Perfectly Hideous

Perfectly Hideous

Beauty and Ugliness in Contemporary Fashion

Against an over-saturation of images and information, our aesthetic judgments are complicated by the coexistence of ‘beauty’ and ‘ugliness’ within contemporary fashion. At this intersection emerges ‘good-bad’ taste, identified here as an eclectic montage of formal qualities that evoke past and traditional imagery otherwise rejected as faux pas – fashion ‘don’ts’ – revived in the present and celebrated as beautiful.

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