As Harrison faltered over the details of who else Cohen had been working for, photographers converged on the Loews Regency to record his display of insouciance.² When their photos arrived in press rooms, the first thing journalists noted was the cadre of men surrounding Cohen, grasping him by the shoulder, taking calls, whispering into his ear. The second thing was his jacket.

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. Like so many of those surrounding Donald Trump, Cohen is a New Yorker who does not care for the niceties of DC; he maintains an aggressive relationship with adversaries and with facts.

Politicians wear expensive suits, of course. But theirs are tactical garments, intended to draw attention not to individual textures or patterns but the whole silhouette. By presenting the body as a seamless, familiar shape, the suit diverts attention from the campaigner’s actual contours to the campaign they embody. Many assiduously stick to modest, domestic tailors: Obama switched to Chicago tailor Hart Schaffner Marx for his inauguration; Hillary Clinton would have worn Ralph Lauren.³ In clothing budgets as in so much of the current reality television politics, the true precursor for vestimentary excess was Sarah Palin.⁴ 

The style writer Alan Flusser has drawn the distinction between the ‘Michael Douglas-Gordon Gekko imagery’ of Trump allies like Paul Manafort and ‘the Brooks Brothers, inside-the-Beltway, button-down look’ of professional Washingtonians.⁵ But even insatiable lovers of the sumptuous like Manafort and Trump manage to look essentially interchangeable with other consultants and politicians by wearing two-button plain navy suits.⁶ Because the modern business suit has changed remarkably little since the eighteenth century, small differences hold great significance. Within the West Wing, only notorious clothes horse Michael Anton wore a pocket square.⁷ The line between orthodox and radical is a series of tiny details: lapel shape, shoulder expression, sleeve width, accessories.

Cohen dresses to stand out. Even in suits, he wears loafers to show a bit of patterned sock. There is no American Flag in his lapel, but he commonly wears an enamel coral pin. The flag pin gained popularity in the Nixon years as a signifier of conservative patriotism in the face of disasters in Vietnam and it returned with renewed fervour after 9/11. Coral is an old symbol of good luck in Naples, and the pin is branding for Isaia, the Neapolitan luxury tailor. While Northern Italian makers favour the clean, structured suits typical of business wear, Neapolitan makers are noticeably different: softer shoulders; tighter, more aggressive cuts; louder patterns. These are jackets for the southern heat, but also jackets in which you could throw a punch. Jackets for lawyers who suggest to adversaries that they ‘tread very fucking lightly.’⁸ Cohen’s are blue and grey with bright checks and houndstooth patterns, jackets that hug the shoulder and biceps. The piece which caught reporters’ attention outside the Regency was mid-blue wool, with contrasting navy and beige checks. The Guardian compared it to a used car dealer’s outfit, perhaps because they didn’t want the inevitable headache that would come from voicing the other connotation: the wise guys of organised crime.

Isaia makes much of its heritage. Tailoring in southern Italy is different in tone to its British progenitors for environmental reasons: the weather, of course; the poverty of Naples compared to the immense concentration of capital in Mayfair; but there are also differences in the way in which people walk, greet one another and express their feelings. In their marketing, Isaia pushes the image of the charming, dangerous Neapolitan rake as far as possible. A new water-resistant dinner jacket is ideal ‘if a cocktail is thrown in your face.’ A motorcycle helmet with a scratchy drawing of St. Januarius is ‘a playful invitation to respect the law’ while riding your Vespa. On Isaia’s website, a cartoon of CEO Gianluca Isaia named Corallino offers a ‘phrasebook’ of Napulitano gestures: Damme nu vasillo (‘Give me a kiss’); Te faccio nu mazzo tanto! (‘I’m going to whip your ass!’). Helpfully for internet warriors affiliated with the President, Tiene’e ccorna! (‘You are a cuckold!’). Less helpful: Addereto ’e cancielle (‘In jail’). These add up to a parody of Italian masculinity: passionate, aggressive and possibly criminal.

Yet Isaia’s marketing is knowingly ironised by slapstick and exaggeration. A 2015 campaign by photographer Lady Tarin features a man in a double-breasted jacket, cradling between his sweeping lapels a squirming baby who has seized this moment to empty his bladder. Another poster shows a suited model in the confession booth, opposite a despairing priest. The Fall/Winter 2014 lookbook begins as a paean to Italian gastronomy, alternating shots of a restaurant kitchen with flannel jackets, overcoats and three-piece suits. But the cliché cannot hold. The models who are supposed to be appreciating the cooking interfere with it. During the meal, the elder man steals spaghetti from the horrified younger, scooping it up with his bare hands. In a postprandial shot, the pair get through twelve espressos, piling up cups and spilling coffee. This tableau of the Italian spirit veers into visual comedy, and the models and writers are in on the joke.

The irony seems lost on Cohen. Recognising his jackets, I remember thinking that he was taking the fun out of one of the few luxury tailoring brands with a sense of humour. The photos from the Regency depict an unlikely balance between corporate America and real estate mavericks: Jerry Rotonda, a Deutsche Bank executive, sits at the back in monochrome suit and tie; Rotem Rosen, a property developer, sits to Cohen’s left wearing a bright blue jacket (one sleeve button left open, of course), jeans and monkstraps. Wits on Twitter were quick to compare them to images of the key players in The Sopranos, hunched outside Satriale’s Pork Store. The implication was not that Cohen was a gangster, but that he played one on TV. If he never breaks character, it might be because, like many who came slouching towards Washington after the inauguration, he has become part of the show, but doesn’t think he’s acting.

 Alexander Freeling is a writer, teacher and critic.

1. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/business/michael-cohen-lawyer-trump.html ↩

2. See: https://medium.com/@whileseated/michael-cohen-cigar-pictures-51807588b854 ↩

3. See: https://www.esquire.com/style/a12526/hart-schaffner-marx-obama-suits-012612/and https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/fashion/hillary-clinton-ralph-lauren.html ↩

4. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/us/politics/23palin.html ↩

5. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/us/politics/paul-manafort-luxury-shopping.html ↩

6. Trump’s suits are made by Brioni. Manafort’s may have come from House of Bijan in Beverly Hills, and were expensive enough to be considered evidence by the FBI during a raid of his property. See: http://nationalpost.com/news/world/manafort-has-a-thing-for-suits-so-expensive-that-fbi-agents-photographed-them-during-raid ↩

7. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/08/national-security-spokesman-anton-trump-508641 ↩

8. See: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/11/17218010/michael-cohen-raid-fbi-trump-mueller-explained ↩

A PR chaos quickly ensued. On Twitter, regular users and ‘sneakerheads’ alike shared photos and videos as they burned or tossed in the bin their pair of New Balance.⁶ Meanwhile, rival brand Reebok cynically seized the opportunity and offered to send replacement shoes to many outraged customers.⁷ Shortly thereafter, New Balance disassociated itself from far-right ideology with a statement that divorced its concern for local manufacturing from white supremacist agendas. Unfazed, Anglin followed up on his first post by saying that whether or not the company identified as Republican is irrelevant and suggesting that the brand make him an official spokesperson:

If I were in the marketing department of New Balance, I would take it a step further and offer me, Andrew Anglin, publisher of the America’s most-trusted Republican news outlet, a product endorsement deal. I’m in great shape, have ripped abs and would look fantastic on a billboard that reads ‘Official shoes of the Republican Party: New Balance stands with the White race.’⁸ 

The social media outrage caused by Anglin’s endorsement of New Balance, on the other hand, was an inadequate response inasmuch as it was mostly directed at the company rather than at Anglin and the political views he represents. Boycott may be appropriate in the case of companies who do business with certain political figures, as in the case of the Grab Your Wallet campaign,⁹ but it is misguided in the case of brand appropriation, which does not require direct affiliation on the part of the brand. Furthermore, by focusing on the PR scandal not only did most mainstream media outlets give free PR to Anglin and his site – neo-Nazi groups and public figures regularly use grandiose statements, racist hashtags and ‘trolling tactics’ to build their ‘brand’¹⁰ – but they also failed to address the dynamics of neo-Nazi’s appropriation of a mainstream footwear brand with a global distribution.

This instance of appropriation is not an isolated case. In a recently defunct blog, an American neo-Nazi sympathiser proposed that far-right groups appropriate Adidas with the aim of turning ‘something that the everyday person wears’ into ‘a symbol of our movement.’¹¹ And it is not just footwear brands that are being appropriated. Cartoonist Matt Furie’s character Pepe the Frog went from ‘inoffensive Internet meme’ to being ‘hijacked by hatemongers’ from the so-called alt-right.¹² Food is not safe either: fast food chain Wendy’s was celebrated on The Daily Stormer after Pepe the Frog accidentally made an appearance on the company’s social media account¹³ and even milk has been appropriated as a symbol of racial superiority.¹⁴ These instances show that white supremacists seek recognition by associating themselves with mainstream symbols and material goods. They seek visibility by appearing ordinary and, thus, paradoxically invisible.

As the case of New Balance shows, this desire to hack the mainstream manifests itself in sartorial terms too. If traditionally skinheads donned a specific subcultural uniform consisting of ‘tight trousers, T-shirt imprinted with neo-Nazi slogans and massive Doc Martens boots laced to the knees,’¹⁵ Anglin’s posts made it clear that this is no longer the case. While this may be a new phenomenon in the U.S. it is not the case in Europe. As early as 1993 it was observed that ‘German neo-Nazi skinheads are changing their style. They are growing their hair and increasingly swapping jackboots and bomber jackets for “normal clothes,” such as ‘jeans, running shoes and parkas.’¹⁶ A 2014 article in Rolling Stone even documented the rise of Nazi hipsters or ‘nipsters,’ who sport tote bags, Converse shoes, skinny jeans and beards, appropriate reggae and dance the Harlem Shake.¹⁷

In this sense, the appropriation of New Balance certainly overlaps with attempts by the far-right to look less threatening and appear more palatable to broader audiences, as the case of alt-right demagogue Richard Spencer’s suit-and-tie image attests.¹⁸ Like a suit, a uniform of jeans, T-shirt, New Balance trainers and sporty jacket relies on invisibility. The person (usually a white man) who wears it is virtually indistinguishable from a non-far-right guy in a casual everyday garb, just like a nipster may be impossible to distinguish from a regular hipster. Invisibility as a strategy also overlaps with three elements that have been to an extent addressed by the media but not necessarily linked with neo-Nazi ‘style’: whiteness, the discourse around technology and masculinity.

In his famous 1997 study of whiteness in Western cultures Richard Dyer argues that white people have historically represented themselves as ‘the norm.’ In doing so, whiteness and normativity become synonyms. This equation renders whiteness invisible, which means that all the variations of non-whiteness are constructed as visible others.¹⁹ The appropriation of mainstream brands, in this sense, uses sartorial invisibility – the fact that white supremacists could visually ‘pass’ as moderates or liberals – to paradoxically build what Spencer calls ‘white identity politics.’²⁰ To this end German Nazi-hipster Patrick Schroeder ‘conducts seminars showing neo-Nazis how they can dress less threateningly and argues that anybody from hip-hop fans to hipsters in skinny jeans should be able to join the scene without changing the way they look.’²¹ Style is then either thought of exclusively as a tool to assimilate or paradoxically discounted altogether as irrelevant to one’s political beliefs. For white supremacists ditching the skinhead image means leaving behind their status as subculture, which defines itself in opposition to the mainstream, to reaffirm whiteness as the mainstream. In the process whiteness would be rendered invisible and its dominance reiterated because in Western cultures invisibility, as Dyer points out, is indeed the privilege accorded only to those in power.

Invisibility as a mode of operating under the radar and not ‘outing’ oneself also resonates with the so-called Alt-Right’s fixation with technological discourses and imagery. That white supremacists are social media-savvy trolling experts who operate online to expand and reinforce their network is well-documented.²² But technology is also celebrated in Alt-Right aesthetics for its potential ‘to conquer and to reaffirm inegalitarianism,’²³ which goes hand in hand with the reaffirmation of white dominance. As merchandise from The Daily Stormer attests, neo-Nazi aesthetic taste includes eighties comics and sci-fi content [which] offer normative gender roles, hyper-masculine futurist heroes, hypersexualised women and a variety of visions of humans transcending their bodily limits via technological innovation.’²⁴ The transhumanism represented in popular films such as Blade Runner and The Matrix is also celebrated.²⁵ That the latter was directed by two transwomen is strategically ignored, but its hacking ethos finds an expression in practises such as ‘Operation Google,’ which is used to bypass the algorithms set up by search engines to identify and block content that is deemed discriminatory. This strategy entails replacing racist epithets with the names of the very same companies that implement anti-discriminatory policies – Google, Skype, Yahoo and Bing are some examples – on forums like 4chan and /pol/ so as to avoid flagging and deletion.²⁶ Operation Google thus hacks the very system it aims to bypass. It renders racism, homophobia, transphobia and white supremacism undetectable, that is invisible to algorithms, on the most used search engines in the world. In this sense, one could see the appropriation of New Balance trainers and the company logo as its sartorial equivalent: Operation New Balance is a way to hack the wardrobes of as many consumers as possible.

Last but not least, the popularity of eighties comics and sci-fi imagery in Alt-Right aesthetics and the choice of appropriating a brand of trainers have one more thing in common: both unabashedly celebrate masculinity. This is not to say that sneaker culture is inherently misogynist, but rather that it offers men the possibility to reclaim adornment and fashionability while retaining associations with a traditionally male-dominated cultural realm like sport.²⁷ In virtue of that sneaker culture becomes a preferential site for the projection of the idea of a dominant, physically strong and ready-for-action masculinity that perfectly embodies the fascist belief in ‘permanent warfare’ as well as its obsession with ‘sexual politics’ and gender symbolism.²⁸ But whereas ‘sneakerheads’ are likely to make bold statements with vibrant or limited edition trainers, sobriety is key to uphold standards of neo-Nazi masculinity. As one of the commenters on Anglin’s post writes, New Balance ‘are gorgeous, nothing extremely colourful and gay as hell, just plain grey.’²⁹ Once again, value is placed on avoiding visibility and distinction.

Invisibility as strategy thus brings together many of the key elements of neo-Nazi ideology and aesthetics. Social media outrage in the guise of brand boycotts and shoe burning will not prevent further attempts from the far-right to hack, infiltrate and colonise our political imaginary as well as our wardrobes. Rather, what we need to make visible and to examine are the invisible processes by which we can potentially become victims, allies and vehicles of such unacceptable ideologies.

Alex Esculapio is a writer and PhD student at the University of Brighton, UK.

1. http://www.dailystormer.com/your-uniform-new-balance-just-became-the-shoes-of-white-people/ ↩

2. https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-balance-faces-social-media-backlash-after-welcoming-trump-1478823102 ↩

3. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/business/statement-on-trump-puts-new-balance-shoe-company-in-cross-hairs.html ↩

4. http://www.dailystormer.com/your-uniform-new-balance-just-became-the-shoes-of-white-people/ ↩

5. http://www.latimes.com/local/la-gibson1aug01-transripit-story.html ↩

6. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/business/statement-on-trump-puts-new-balance-shoe-company-in-cross-hairs.html ↩

7. http://www.esquire.com/style/news/a50877/reebok-replace-new-balance-trump-comments/ ↩

8. http://www.dailystormer.com/the-daily-stormer-fully-endorses-new-balance-whether-it-is-a-republican-company-or-not/ ↩

9. https://grabyourwallet.org/ ↩

10. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/trolls-for-trump ↩

11. https://jobewatson14.wordpress.com/2016/10/01/altright-brand-appropriation/ ↩

12. https://newrepublic.com/article/137545/perversion-pepe-frog ↩

13. http://forward.com/news/359129/did-wendys-become-the-accidental-neo-nazi-happy-meal/ ↩

14. http://www.avclub.com/article/milk-chugging-alt-right-trolls-shut-down-shia-labe-250242 ↩

15. S John, ‘Carnaby Street: A mixture of trendy shops and neo-nazis,’ Toronto Star, Aug 5, 1989. ↩

16. A Tomforde, ‘Neo-Nazis in Germany ditch ‘skinhead and boots’ image,’ The Guardian, Nov 18, 1993. ↩

17. http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/heil-hipster-the-young-neo-nazis-trying-to-put-a-stylish-face-on-hate-20140623 ↩

18. See for instance http://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/the_hatemonger_next_door/ and http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/11/how-the-alt-right-uses-style-as-a-propaganda-tool.html ↩

19. Richard, Dyer, White: Essays on Race and Culture, New York and London: Routledge, 1997. ↩

20. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/richard-spencer-trump-alt-right-white-nationalist ↩

21. http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/heil-hipster-the-young-neo-nazis-trying-to-put-a-stylish-face-on-hate-20140623 ↩

22. See for instance http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/trolls-for-trump ↩

23. http://baltimore-art.com/2017/02/11/the-aesthetics-of-the-alt-right/ ↩

24. Ibid. ↩

25. Ibid. ↩

26. https://ageofshitlords.com/4chan-pol-launching-operation-google/ ↩

27. Y Kawamura, Sneakers: Fashion, Gender, and Subculture, London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2016. ↩

28. http://baltimore-art.com/2017/02/11/the-aesthetics-of-the-alt-right/ ↩

29. http://www.dailystormer.com/your-uniform-new-balance-just-became-the-shoes-of-white-people/ ↩

ON THE TUESDAY BEFORE New York Fashion Week, two months before the U.S. presidential election, American designers demonstrated their political zeal with swag. The ‘Made For History’ collection, which debuted at a runway fundraiser, included a bandana by Thakoon, a pouch by Brett Heyman and T-shirts by Marc Jacobs, Joseph Altuzarra and Tory Burch. These favoured, predictably, Hillary Clinton. ‘Unlike the Republican candidate’s unspeakably hideous ties, our collection is made in America by union workers,’ announced host Anna Wintour.¹ Two more Clinton fundraisers would be held before the week wrapped. ‘I attended all these events because being a Democrat is always fashionable,’ wrote the socialite journalist Derek Blasberg.² 

Before there was Clinton swag, there was Obama swag. Before there was Obama swag, there was Kerry swag. (Donald Trump has swag, but no designer names are attached.) That the fashion industry leans to the left is no surprise considering that seventy per cent of people currently favour Clinton in New York City, where the U.S. fashion industry is also based.³ All the same, it’s worth asking: if being a Democrat is always fashionable, whom are these items really trying to convince? Do we purchase Diane von Furstenberg’s Hillary Clinton T-shirt to show solidarity, or to build our personal brands? Do designers create them because they will change hearts and minds – or to reassure themselves that their industry has a role to play in their nation’s critical decisions?

For an industry whose existence hinges on newness and excitement, an election year is a threat. Hemlines are not important when millions might lose healthcare coverage. Front row quotes appear meaningless when the future of foreign policy is being debated. Collections like ‘Made For History’ are meant to encourage political engagement among consumers – but they also assert the fashion industry’s relevancy at a time when it is in jeopardy.

Fashion is especially vulnerable to accusations of frivolity during moments of social turmoil. Consider Marc Jacobs’ recent use of dreadlocks on a cast of predominantly white models, the farthest-reaching political message of the most recent New York Fashion Week (and, ironically, per Jacobs, an accidental one). The show ignited outrage over cultural appropriation, but pundits also criticised the backlash as a distraction. ‘Don’t Rage Over Dreadlocks While African Americans Are Dying in the Streets,’ read the headline of an op-ed by Columbia University professor John McWhorter. ‘Republicans are trying to deny black people the vote nationwide… A War on Drugs has destroyed black communities left and right… Amidst all of that – hair????????’⁴

The industry has not historically positioned itself as an authority on serious political matters. Like many for-profit enterprises, fashion labels benefit from neutrality – Oscar de la Renta for example famously dressed First Ladies from Kennedy to Reagan to Clinton. Similarly, retailers discourage controversy. Katharine Hamnett, a British designer known for T-shirts with slogans like ‘SAVE THE WORLD’ and ‘WORLDWIDE NUCLEAR BAN,’ recalls trying to sell her creations in the early 1980s: ‘American buyers were rushing into my showroom, willing to spend their money. They took one look at the T-shirts, got a horrified look in their eyes, spun around on their heel and left.’⁵ Similarly, New York label Pyer Moss’ spring/summer 2016 collection, which featured slogans from the Black Lives Matter movement, reportedly cost the brand $120,000 worth of business, according to the designer,⁶ though the collection was covered by dozens of media outlets and garnered praise from celebrities including Usher and Erykah Badu.

Sartorial Sloganeering has a Catch 22: when a message is radical enough to provoke, its garment is incompatible with commercial distribution. When a garment is a commercial success, its message fades. Hamnett’s T-shirts, while initially controversial, eventually became popular among celebrities and musicians, and were knocked off by everyone from other designers to the pro-life movement, who appropriated her ‘CHOOSE LIFE’ message, initially created to discourage drug abuse and suicide, to oppose abortion.

It’s telling that, in creating a political fashion statement, the right has borrowed from the left. Though conservatives have more recently developed aesthetic languages of their own – consider the gore of anti-abortion billboards – movements like Black Power, Women’s Liberation and anti-Vietnam war protests were some of the first to harness self-presentation to communicate via mass media. In America, the aesthetics of protest are historically linked to progressive causes.

This does not mean that the values Donald Trump represents are absent from contemporary fashion design. Clothing that promotes gender conformity, and which bolsters existing power structures by glamourising wealth and whiteness, is so ubiquitous that you sometimes forget about it until it bumps awkwardly against a new attempt at ‘wokeness.’ This is as true internationally as it is in the U.S. Consider Chanel’s spring/summer 2015 show, for which Karl Lagerfeld chose the theme of a feminist protest. Models brandished quilted-CC loudspeakers and signs inscribed with a mix of second-wave mantras (‘History is Herstory’), cute one-liners (‘Make fashion not war’) and gibberish (‘Tweed is better than Tweet’). A brooch from the collection featured an image of the house’s founder, Coco Chanel, with the slogan ‘Feministe mais Feminine.’ The show omitted Chanel’s other political history as a Nazi sympathiser, as well as Lagerfeld’s 2009 assertion the house’s founder ‘was never ugly enough’ to be a feminist.⁷ 

Chanel’s brand was recently estimated to be worth $7.2 billion,⁸ yet it positions itself not as the product of corporate market research, but of individual conviction and creative genius. With the number of seasons, collections and fashion weeks increasing, political statements benefit brands by attracting media coverage. But they also position fashion as more art than industry, all the better to smooth friction between progressive values and capitalist profit motive.

Might clothing actually ‘SAVE THE WORLD’? ‘T-shirts are great, but they don’t change anything, really,’ Hamnett said last year. ‘Unless you take constructive action in other areas of your life, just wearing a T-shirt actually isn’t going to do anything.’⁹ 

Alice Hines is a writer living in New York City.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2016/sep/07/hillary-clinton-fashion-show-fundraiser-anna-wintour ↩

2. http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2016/09/nyfw-2016-hillary-clinton#19 ↩

3. http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Poll-Clinton-still-buries-Trump-in-New-York-9235547.php ↩

4. http://time.com/4497956/marc-jacobs-dreadlocks-outrage/ ↩

5. http://www.stylemag.net/2008/08/11/cotton-courage-katharine-hamnett-2/http://www.stylemag.net/2008/08/11/cotton-courage-katharine-hamnett-2/ ↩

6. http://www.vice.com/read/how-police-shootings-and-personal-loss-have-inspired-the-fashion-of-pyer-moss-456 ↩

7. http://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/trends/a421/coco-chanel-karl-lagerfeld-0909/ ↩

8. http://www.forbes.com/companies/chanel/ ↩

9. https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/why-fashions-eco-warrior-katharine-hamnett-is-kanyes-main-muse ↩