IN THE LAST FEW years, the word ‘feminism’ has gained a new currency in the fashion industry. Several designers have claimed and embraced it as a sort of manifesto term for women’s empowerment and employed it in the launch of their collections, on runways or in their media campaigns. At Chanel in 2015, Karl Lagerfeld designed clutches printed with the phrase ‘Feministe mais Feminine.’ In her 2017 Spring-Summer collection, Maria Grazia Chiuri, creative director of Dior, used the slogan ‘We should all be feminists’ as the title of her collection.¹ Emblematically written on a white T-shirt, the phrase sounds like a manifesto, yet it arguably fails to dialogue with the long history of feminism, the women’s liberation movement, and their intersections with the history of fashion.

Rosa Genoni (1867–1954) was a seamstress and fashion creator, a feminist and peace activist. She lived in that period of enormous change that coincides with what is identified as historical feminism, the beginning of the twentieth century, a time when women did not have the right to vote and yet were still protagonists of history, social movements and fashion.²

Feminism was not a slogan for Genoni, but an integral part of the design process, built into the very fabric and draping of her garments. At a time when Paris dominated the fashion world, she imagined and advocated for the creation of an ‘Italian fashion.’ Her work and writings trace a path of significant narratives of fashion that are intimately connected to the process of nation- building. Genoni called for an ‘Italian fashion,’ not only as an abstract concept but as a tangible and organized industry, a project that was in the context of the first decade of the twentieth century ‘utopic.’ It would not be until the end of the Second World War and later in the 1970s and 1980s that we see the full implementation of Genoni’s dream: the global success and recognition of ‘Made in Italy.’

The story of Genoni’s life is one of multiple but parallel and intersecting tracks: her initial work in dressmaking led her to become a designer in her own right and a leading figure in the call for the development of a home-based and distinct Italian fashion industry. That led her to teaching in Milan’s Società Umanitaria (a philanthropic institute founded in 1893), which in turn exposed her to the plight of workers and women’s labour force and brought her into contact with the city’s women’s and socialist circles (where she also met her life partner and father of her daughter, the well known lawyer and socialist Alfredo Podreider). Contact with those circles, in turn, led to her forceful opposition to Italy’s entry into World War I and to the fascist regime that came to power a few years after the war ended. For Rosa, her work in fashion; her ideological commitment to the workers’ and women’s struggle; and her all out opposition to war and fascism were all overlapping and intersecting activities.

She achieved international recognition as a result of her opposition to World War I. Together with Aletta Jacobs from the Netherlands, and the US’s Jane Addams and Emily Balch, who would later be recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, Genoni took part in the First International Women’s Conference in The Hague of 1915 as the sole Italian delegate. She was also part of an informal diplomacy mission as one of the envoys of the Women’s Congress in 1915, visiting heads of governments of warring and neutral states, including the US President Woodrow Wilson, and proposing a range of measures to stop the bloodshed and build a durable international legal order.³)

The dynamism of her mind and life, her travel and work abroad, especially in Paris, and her ability to capitalise on these experiences, gave her the awareness and strength to elaborate her multidimensional feminist revolution. She advocated for women to be authors of their own image and style, and not to limit themselves to being passive followers of fashion. Fundamental to her project was the fact that she lived and worked in multiple places and inhabited multiple domains. These included the fashion atelier, and the places of her socialist political activism, her humanitarian and pacifist initiatives, where she encountered other women working in the international feminist movements, and with writers, journalists, and workers. However, her enthusiastic embrace of modernity and her dream of a more egalitarian and democratic society were politically annihilated by the outbreak of the First World War, which she forcefully opposed, and the triumph of fascism, which she also, equally forcefully, opposed.⁴

The Tanagra Dress that she designed in 1908 materialises Genoni’s ideas on beauty, women’s activism, and the force of intellectual commitment. She wore the dress when she attended and spoke at the first Italian National Congress of Women held in Rome at the end of April, 1908. She made the same dress to be worn by one of the most important Italian theatre actresses of the time, Lyda Borelli, a leading figure in the genre that would become known as the ‘diva film’ in the 1910s. The Tanagra dress is notable because it is one of the first examples of dynamic dress on account of its use of different fabrics, accessories and details, as can be seen in several photographs. In Genoni’s mind, the Tanagra dress was a statement of a strong female identity and personality.

If we compare the photograph of Genoni wearing the Tanagra dress at the National Congress of Women with those of the other women participants, as we can do by looking at the cover of the magazine Domenica del Corriere where the women are portrayed, we immediately see the deep contrast between Genoni’s notion of fashion and the dictates of the fashion of the time. The other women wear tight sartorial jackets on top of a corseted body; whereas the Tanagra highlights fluidity, movement and draping. It is easy to see why the Tanagra was Genoni’s manifesto for revolutionising women’s dress and its visual impact on public space. The dynamism of the dress bears intimate links with the history behind the Greek figurines that give the dress its name. Recent studies have examined the historical significance of the Tanagra sculptures with particular reference to the use and representation of clothing. The Tanagra figurines came from Tanagra in Greece, and were found towards the end of the nineteenth century.⁵ The Tanagra statues represented distinguished mortal women, not goddesses, portrayed in public spaces during social occasions and religious rituals. The women appear elegantly dressed and self-confident in their gestures and composure. As has been noted, these women knew how to wear clothes and how to control the images they projected as indicators of their social standing. The beauty of the draping, their performance of femininity in social space and their display of women’s agency as actors on the scene must have fascinated Rosa Genoni and inspired her design.

Genoni’s use of draping was quite different from other designers of the time; It is clear that Genoni was thinking of draping the female figure in order to free her movements in line with, but going much further than, similar fashion experiments of the time. The dress attempts to create a balance between the stitched and the draped. But it was in its transformative function and its versatility that the Tanagra dress is the fusion of modernist avant-garde and classical inspiration, but also of Eastern and Western draping. With her completely new dimension of draping and reconfiguration of posture, Genoni was also thinking of different versions of the same dress, using different fabrics and small decorative details, silk and lace sleeves, different colours and headpiece accessories. The Tanagra Dress is the embodiment of a style of an assertive personality who demands to be taken seriously in the world of fashion – Genoni, as the sarta artista and in the world of film, Borelli, the actor as an artist. A diva such as Borelli was to contribute decisively to legitimise cinema as art, while Genoni was to conduct a battle to legitimise fashion as an art, and Italian fashion in particular.

The Tanagra Dress represented Genoni’s signature look and the fusion of beauty and intellect, Eastern and Western sensibility, a harmonic combination of the tailored and the draped, of tradition and modernity. This style of dress must have been very dear to her not only as a designer but also as a woman who was a political activist. In a letter written by her companion Alfredo Podreider, dated May 3, 1915 (seven years after the first appearance of the dress), one finds the following line: ‘Would you like me to send you the Greco-Roman dress?’ (NYPL, Schwimmer- Lloyd Collection, Ms. Col 6398, Box 58). This letter was sent to Genoni while she was engaged with the other feminists in the International Congress for Peace at The Hague in 1915 and as an Italian delegate. Although the Tanagra dress in its intents and design, in Genoni’s mind, aimed at revolutionising the art of dressing in the beginning of the twentieth century, it has still today a strength that undermines the diktats of fashion. The revolutionary draping of the dress allows the wearer greater freedom of movement than did conventional women’s dress. And the fact that the dress can be worn and draped in multiple modes gives the wearer a great degree of autonomy and the creativity to design her own style. Rosa Genoni designed the Tanagra dress she wore when she delivered her speech at the International Women’s Congress in Rome in 1908. One passage from the speech reads thus:

In these days when women’s congresses and feminist demands are so fashionable, it might first appear to our female readers as frivolous and light that we concern ourselves with the demands of fashion. Already in some of these heads we hear a refrain trotted out: Finally! Women will have something else to occupy themselves with other than their usual dresses and little hats! A Huge mistake, also for the feminist ladies. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact in order to conquer those fields that are still contested, a woman must not disregard the field in which she, by unanimous consent, has a complete and uncontested sovereignty. It is necessary, now more than ever, not to allow ourselves to be criticized and censored for the way in which we have until today exercised this sovereignity.⁶

Is it not an overly simplistic feminism that limits itself to writing slogans on white T-shirts or bags; is this not a PR form of activism that creates a veneer of militancy by way of fashionable words and discourses? And does such high fashion sloganeering do anything more than make clothing more attractive to those already ’empowered women’ who enjoy access to power and money? Does the word ‘feminism’ make female consumers feel better about themselves? And most importantly, how do the work and struggles of women today lineup against the struggles of feminists of yesteryear such as Rosa Genoni? She designed her Tanagra dress to translate her ideas of women’s empowerment and legitimation in society and as a step toward a utopian dream of a world without war and violence. In Rosa Genoni’s thought and action, in her fashion design and political activism, aesthetics and politics march together. This is the exact opposite of an aestheticizing politics of feminism. A historical glance backwards might help us to gain greater perspective on the way the fashion industry today makes such an easy use of words such as feminism that have a past that is often ignored or dismissed.

Eugenia Paulicelli is a Professor of Italian, Comparative Literature and Women’s Studies at Queens College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is the author of Rosa Genoni: Fashion is Serious Business.

1. Chiuri, in fact, here borrows the title (and the principles she declared she embraces) of a well-known 2014 essay and Ted talk by the feminist writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. ↩

2. This essay is based on my book, Rosa Genoni. Fashion is a serious business (bilingual edition), Milan: Deleyva editore, 2015 and new edition in 2017. See also my entry on ‘Rosa Genoni,’ http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/rosa-genoni_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/ ↩

3. Rosa Genoni was also in London, on May 14th, 1915, together with Jane Addams and Aletta Jacobs, to discuss with Sir Edward Grey, UK Minister of Foreign Affairs, the terms of a possible neutral mediation for ending of the war. To enter the floor of international relations, peace and security politics (almost one century later accepted as UN SC resolution 1325) can be seen as a break-through affirmation of women’s global identity. See: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/wps/1925? (last accessed September 4th, 2014 ↩

4. In the exhibit I curated, ‘The Fabric of Cultures: Systems in the Making’ I have curated (Art Center, Queens College, NY October 5 through December 15) we have presented a recreation by Christina Trupiano of Genoni’s Tanagra dress. See also the catalog, The Fabric of Cultures. Systems in the Making, Art Center, City University of New York: 2017. ↩

5. S L James and S Dillon, eds., A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, especially the chapter by S Dillon, ‘Hellenistic Tanagra Figurine,’ pp. 231–236, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010; P A Cunningham, Reforming Women’s Fashion 1850–1920: Politics, Health, and Art, Kent State University Press, 2003; A Cooper Albright, Engaging Bodies: the Politics and Poetics of Corporeality, Wesleyan University Press, 2013 ↩

6. Rosa Genoni, ‘Arte e Storia del costume. Rivendicazioni femminili nella moda,’ in Vita d’Arte: Rivista mensile illustrate d’arte antica e moderna, Vol. 2, 1908, fasc. 11, pp. 202-207. ↩

The seventh issue of Vestoj, ‘On Masculinities,’ is in stores this month. In conjunction, Vestoj Online is publishing a series of articles on the same theme.

THE FIGURE OF ‘JAMES Bond,’ created in 1953 by novelist Ian Fleming and translated to the screen ten years later, has lost none of its potency. The spy with expensive, sophisticated tastes – and the income needed to satisfy them – still appeals strongly to the popular imagination. The ‘Bond’ films are noted for their overall stylishness – the award-winning sets, the credit titles with their New Bauhaus input in the early years and, of course, the suits. In 2012 the Barbican Centre in London commissioned a substantial and successful exhibition ‘Designing 007: Fifty Years of Bond Style;’ it has been touring the world ever since. In 1987, however, media sociologists Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott had speculated about the possible future of the franchise.¹ But as the same decade brought about both a revolution in menswear and the creation of a market for male ‘grooming products,’ the well-dressed spy survived. The following two decades prolonged his life much further, through the growth of ‘brand recognition’ and the worldwide marketing of European luxury goods; both now accompany, and in part finance, these films.  

There is nothing on ‘Bond style’ within fashion scholarship, despite the innumerable academic interventions over the last thirty or more years. But Bond has been saluted as icon of taste within the pages of men’s magazines since his inception; in the run-up to the release of the latest film, Sam Mendes’ Spectre, GQ published a series of special issues. However, this essay will suggest that in recent years there has been an undermining of Bonds’ style – and even the actual cinematic narratives themselves – as product placement and commercial partnerships threaten the autonomy of both costume designer and director.   

Bond was very much a creation of the 1950s – a decade marked at first by austerity but which saw economic expansion, full employment, and new patterns of spending. Fleming directly appealed to his male readers’ fantasies and gave them guidance as to how they might use their new disposable income by describing in careful detail Bond’s every change of dress: the shirts, the ties, the shoes, the casual outfits, the expensive fabrics and muted colours. He also offered them the hero’s endless womanising and his successful bedding of desirable, equally well-dressed women – which continued on screen, though there the women were by contrast scantily-clad, and which has interestingly been rather restrained during Daniel Craig’s current stewardship. All this helped to foster the relationship between Fleming, Bond and Playboy magazine, first published in the very year of Bond’s debut. As film scholars Pam Cook and Claire Hines argue, its admiration for both Fleming and his hero was not only a part of ‘the consumerist, sexualised and liberated lifestyle that it promoted;’ it was also because the magazine took men’s fashion very seriously.² 

The meticulous but understated style which Fleming portrayed so successfully was carefully recreated when the first film was made in 1962. Cultural historian Christopher Breward addresses Bond’s cinematic incarnation and sees Sean Connery’s Savile Row suit as a ‘vessel for aspirational promise.’ Connery, he argues, had an ‘everyman’ appeal, while his ‘reticent machismo offered the ideal mannequin around which Fleming’s discreet indications of flawless style could be dressed.’ He notes, significantly, that his suits were notable for ‘resisting the flamboyance of fashion.’ Connery’s suits, as Breward tells us, ‘adhered to the pared-down rules of the guardsman and changed little over the course of the six Bond films he made before 1971.’³ 

In the 1960s, decade of social change, actors, musicians, writers and cultural entrepreneurs from traditional working-class backgrounds enjoyed unprecedented success; this led to media claims that the country’s rigid class barriers were coming down. Connery himself was a Glaswegian bodybuilder, a former milkman, model, lifeguard, and lorry driver. Fleming in fact wanted the more patrician David Niven, while the producers favoured the ever-elegant Cary Grant; initially worried about Connery, he gradually came to accept him. The film’s director, Terence Young, took Connery to his own tailor for Bond’s screen wardrobe. This was part of a Pygmalion-like process: ‘he took him to dinner, showed him how to walk, how to talk, even how to eat.’⁴  There is an apocryphal suggestion that when the suits were finished, he told Connery to wear them all the time and even suggested that he should sleep in them, so that he might cease to be aware of their presence.

The ultra-conventional dress of this hero is very much at variance with the popular image of the 1960s, favoured in the mythologising of the era, which tends to emphasise youth, stylish subcultures, new music and changing fashions, in a way that as revisionist historian Dominic Sandbrook has shown, is not entirely accurate.⁵ Nevertheless, there were undeniably new and radically different models of masculinity which emerged during this contested decade. Marcello Mastroianni’s memorable portrayal of a cynical journalist in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita arguably inspired the ‘mods,’ with their sharp Italian tailoring, to wear black shirts under white suits. The Beatles favoured suits that were very different from those of Bond, and boys copied their long, floppy fringes, and the dancer Rudolf Nureyev and the Rolling Stones created newly androgynous modes of masculine dress. Mick Jagger famously wore a Grenadier Guards jacket to perform on television in 1966, thus sending large numbers of young men off to the shop I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet in Carnaby Street where he had purchased his own.

Bond, a staunch defender of Armed Forces and Empire, and Connery himself were both antithetical to and horrified by these developments. In Guy Hamilton’s Goldfinger from 1965, Bond tells the villain’s secretary, Jill Masterson, ‘My dear girl, there are some things that just aren’t done…’  such as ‘listening to the Beatles without earmuffs.’ Connery stated in an interview for Playboy that he himself did not like the Beatles and so approved of the line. He had in fact kept very quiet about the fact that he had modelled for the mail-order catalogues produced by the gay men’s boutique Vince while looking for acting jobs in London; author Fleming would have been appalled. Both writer and actor were probably horrified by the ruffled lace cravat worn by Connery’s successor, George Lazenby, in a nod to contemporary fashion. It was this, perhaps, that tempted Connery back for another appearance.

Roger Moore, who then took over for twelve years, imbued the role with overdeveloped humour and playboy behaviour. He eschewed Savile Row classicism and followed fashions: wide ties, flared trousers, conspicuous lapels. His interpretation of the part – and the films themselves – have an element of pastiche; he began his Bond career in 1973 by jumping lightly from crocodile to crocodile in Live and Let Die. His films showed no awareness of the shifts in gendered behaviour that characterised the next two decades. His replacement, Timothy Dalton, did seem to acknowledge change; he was far more serious – and soberly dressed. He was the first to embrace Italian tailoring as did Pierce Brosnan, who took over from him in 1995 and whose interpretation of Bond involved a good deal of deliberate, studied charm. Judi Dench, who took over as M, was unimpressed, telling him in one scene, ‘You’re a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, 007.’

Daniel Craig, Bond since 2006, perhaps listened and certainly provides a Bond who in many ways is quite different. He gives the first convincing, complex portrayal of the conflicted masculinity of a hired killer who must do his job, but who is not lacking in sensibility; he is even capable of falling in love, of feeling loss and betrayal. It seems the Vatican itself has noted these changes; their newspaper L’Ossera Romano praised 2012’s Skyfall for its new, introspective Bond, ‘less attracted to the pleasures of life, darker and more human… even able to cry – in a word, more real.’⁶ This new reality is combined with a physical strength and muscularity which make him seem – like Connery – worrying capable of carrying out the killings which his rank in the service demands.

The posters for Craig’s very first Bond film showed his dinner jacket hanging open, his black tie undone and flapping, while the black-and-white pre-credit sequence was a mix of cinema verité and film noir, partly shot in a shabby public lavatory. The credits of Spectre are a lavish and dramatic contrast; against a backdrop of molten gold, a line of dancers part to reveal the gilded, perfectly-proportioned and splendidly-muscled torso of Craig, posed as classical hero. A girl stands on either side; when his shoulders are stroked, small flames erupt. Craig’s body-as-spectacle, waxed and buffed, is an integral part of the reinvention of Bond and provides an interesting contrast with the extravagantly hairy body of Sean Connery. In Casino Royale, Craig’s first outing as Bond, it is the splendid body of the hero – and not that of a Bond girl – which rises Venus-like from the waves, a deliberate reference to Ursula Andress’ famous emergence from the sea in Dr. No. Now, it is the body of Bond at which we should ‘look’⁷ – while on a more mundane note, the La Perla swimming trunks he wears here were located instantly by fans and London stockists swiftly sold out.

If the figure of Bond is now openly the object of a homospectorial gaze, Craig and the scriptwriters also acknowledge the homoerotic potential of the series. Skyfall introduces Bond – and audiences – to a new, young Q, with rumpled hair and fashionable parka. He is played by openly gay actor Ben Whishaw, and wears sweaters by Missoni, Dries van Noten and Prada. In the same film, Craig himself responds almost flirtatiously to villain Javier Bardem’s stroking of his chest and thighs; when he says, ’What makes you so sure this is my first time?’ he seems almost to shock the bleached-blonde uber-terrorist, who moves back to the safety of his laptop.

By some terrible irony, it is this complicated and sometimes sombre hero whose style is compromised by commercial imperatives and the vagaries of fashion. In Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, protagonist Cary Grant had shown how classic Savile Row tailoring could survive even a chase through the dusty fields of the Midwest while under aerial attack. Connery always managed similar feats, in the suits created for him by Antony Sinclair, whose name did not actually appear in the cinematic credits. And so too did Craig on his very first excursion, when he was immaculately attired by Italian tailor Brioni. However, in the last two films he has been dressed in the ultra-fashionable suits of Tom Ford, now one of the four major sponsors of the franchise; Jany Termime, the costume designer, works alongside him. At the time of Skyfall, Ford’s jackets were a generous hip-length, and Craig tended to unbutton them so that he might maintain his dignity while in pursuit of his adversaries. But by the making of Spectre, fashions had changed and his suits with them; the jackets were now shorter and much narrower in cut. So sadly, in the action sequences the agile Craig looks as if he might burst out of the same skimpy suits at any moment; audiences fear for him, but it is a sartorial mishap, a split side seam, that they worry about, rather than a properly-aimed bullet from one of his adversaries. Nevertheless, Ford’s later designs have featured heavily on the many blogs and websites that now exist solely to describe and display the latest clothes and accessories seen in the films.

Despite their appeal to audiences, these particular, high-fashion suits arguably disrupt the proper operation of the narrative. In 1998, film scholar Stella Bruzzi famously argued that with costume on screen, there is always one vital question – do we look at or through the clothes?⁸ If we look at the clothes, the cinematic flow is disrupted – not desirable in an action film. But here, we cannot help but be distracted and are forced to look at the too-tight suits and the obtrusive details: the noticeable sunglasses, the shoes with their fashionable ‘monkstraps,’ the tight white dinner jacket Craig wears in Spectre which is far less flattering to him than the discreet black Brioni one he wears in Casino Royale.

In a new millennium, Bond is faced with many difficult tasks; these have included parachuting into the London Olympics beside the Queen as well as taking on multinational crime syndicates headed by shadowy constantly-morphing villains. Now it seems he may have to fight battles and companies much nearer to home, if he is to preserve his own stylish image. There are other threats to the franchise. Spectre was filmed in Mexico, and a government anxious to improve its own public image offered generous tax cuts; this lent a whole new dimension to the notion of ‘product placement.’ Most disturbingly, there is the threat of a new, bland Bond. Craig, the first actor who has imbued the part with the complexities of fraught modern masculinity, has announced that he may retire from the role. The candidate suggested as his most likely successor definitely lacks the depth of the current incumbent; Bond could become a mere clotheshorse, the films a parade of suits and sunglasses.

Pamela Church Gibson is Reader in Cultural and Historical Studies at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London.

1. T Bennett and J Woollacott, Bond and Beyond: the Political Career of a Popular Hero, Macmillan Education, London, 1987, p.295 ↩

2. P Cook and C Hines, ‘Sean Connery is James Bond: Re-fashioning British Masculinity in the 1960s,‘ in R. Moseley (ed.) Fashioning Film Stars: Dress, Culture, Identity, BFI Publishing, London, 2005, pp.147-160 ↩

3. C Breward, The Suit: Form, Function and Style, Reaktion Books, London, 2016, p.197 ↩

4. B Macintyre, For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond, London, Bloomsbury, 2008, p.205 ↩

5. D Sandbrook, White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties, London, Little, Brown, 2006 ↩

6. L’Osservatore Romano, Wednesday October 31st, 2012 ↩

7. See L Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,’ in Visual and Other Pleasures, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 ↩

8. S Bruzzi, Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies, London, Routledge, 1997 ↩

I was born in a little town in Mexico. I was the fifth of twelve: six boys and six girls. My parents had a hacienda. My dad was a salesman and so commercially smart he could’ve sold condoms to the Pope. He’d sell anything you can think of. He did a lot of travelling, a lot of dealing. I remember one time he told me he had a little business going that was doing very good. I saw him picking some junk up off the floor and I said, ‘Dad, what are you doing?’ He said, ‘This is money.’ I told him I’d make him a hobo outfit. (Laughs.) He was selling junk: broken televisions, broken shovels. Everything was broken. But there was always a hundred and fifty people buying, and a line of people waiting to pay. I saw it was successful but I don’t know how he did it. People love junk I guess.

My oldest brother showed me how to sew; he was playing with tailoring. I was seven and he was five years older. I was a different child. I got my doctorate degree in psychology when I was nineteen, so I was five, six years ahead of everybody else in school. Guys at school hated me, but I never competed with them. I was number one in class, all the time. I don’t know what to tell you. I came to this country and I was asked to become a citizen.

I sat down there at the sewing machine, and helped my brother to sew. I learned how to cut pants in two hours. When I was twelve I made seventy-seven prom dresses for the girls in my town. I thought they needed something different instead of going to the mercantile store to buy a dress. Actually, a lot of people get married in the same little poo-poo dresses – I’d never make one of those in my life. No one ever told me what to do. There’s people out there, you tell them what to do and they’ll do it. Their whip is their bank account. Money never meant anything to me: I had money.

Back then I looked weird: I’d have one cream sleeve and one royal blue sleeve – each side of my shirt was a different colour. The back was sometimes one solid colour, sometimes two. My trousers were also different. Everybody in my era had black trousers, tan trousers and white trousers. I had none of that! I love a lot of black, but colours is my number one. I looked like a dragon walking into a chicken coup. My girls were always very elegant dressed. I was in my own world. When I was in college people would come over to do homework and talk and learn how to cook. And they said, ‘Why, the way you are Manuel, why?’ I’m the architect of my own destiny.

I was making a lot of money – at the age of eight and a half I was making more than the banker. After making the seventy-seven dresses I went into the shoeshine business. I made shoeshine boxes and orange uniforms for my friends so they would stand apart from the other shoeshine boys. I made so much money. My story about clothing is just that I love to make clothing. I like to make every piece different to the next. My clients tell me, ‘I really love this jacket, make me one like it.’ I say, ‘In my place you never get what you see – it’s always different.’ And that’s what they love.

I moved to California in the early Fifties. It was a struggle at first. In the early Fifties, mass production was just starting and I did everything. I made sleeves, I made zippers – I knew every stitch. I learned how to do embroidery in California. A friend of mine was a model and she said let’s go to the Pasadena Rose Parade on the first of January – it was more famous than the Macy’s parade in New York in those days. At the time I was doing a lot of fittings for Mr Sy Devore who was the tailor to the stars in Hollywood. He gave me fifty-five dollars for a fitting. You know how long a fitting would take? Five minutes! Mr Devore guaranteed me three fittings a day; that’s why I went to work for him. I did fittings for Frank Sinatra, Johnny Weissmuller, Gregory Peck, Sammy Davis Jr, Bob Hope…

So I just fell in love with embroidery; I thought, ‘Gee, this is an English trade. Kings and Queens rest with embroidery.’ I found out the woman making the embroidery for the parade was Viola Grae, so I went to work with her. I learned; I listened to the master. But she did resent that I learned so quick. That was my problem all the time.

I always looked like a million dollars. I always looked good, and I was in a way very handsome. Who scores the ball? Manuel. Who’s the best soccer player? Manuel. The girls would say, ‘We know your teammates don’t want to admit it but you’re the alpha man.’ I was definitely overpowering. I learned English when I was six years old.

I met this chick one day, she was coming into a cleaner’s and I opened the door for her. I liked her – she looked very much like Elizabeth Taylor. It was Nudie Cohn’s daughter. She was working in the back of her father’s shop. Anyway I married that chick, my first wife ever. I had waited long enough. I worked with Nudie for many years: I was the head tailor, then the head designer and later his partner at Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors in North Hollywood. After my wife and I got divorced, I opened my own shop down the road from Nudie’s, and a lot of his clients became my clients. I’ve been married four times so far. To be an artist is… we’re hermits in a way, we’re like queen bees. I don’t have the time to be with a family. It’s just hard.

Eventually, they started calling me ‘Rhinestone Rembrandt’ and all this bull. Vogue magazine called me that. I’m so grateful for California: I really got into the movie industry. I worked with Edith Head. I made the jeans James Dean wore in Giant. I made a shirt for Salvador Dalí, and I got to meet Pablo Picasso. But after a while L.A. became… They were stealing transistor radios from cars; we were afraid to shake hands with friends lest they take your rings off. It got a little too tight for me. In 1988 I came to Nashville. By then I had in my arms a two and a half year-old girl – my third and last child. I bought my home and my joint in Nashville on the same day. I’ve stayed here, though my wife is no longer my wife, she’s gone. Then I had another wife – she’s gone too. Now I have another beautiful wife, Maria.

I’ve dressed kings, queens, beggars, prostitutes, lawyers, bankers. I dressed Gram Parsons, Dolly Parton, John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone, The Rolling Stones, The Jackson Five and all four Hank Williams. I made Elvis’ gold lamé suit, and people say that I put Johnny Cash in black, but I’ve never in my life felt the need to be important or rich. I hate money, because of what it does to people. When Barbara Walters asked Johnny Cash about the black suits I made him he said, ‘I wore black before, but nobody put me in a better black than Manuel.’ He called me one day and said, ‘This is Johnny Cash.’ I said, ‘I know who it is, you just have to breathe in the goddamned receiver!’ So he told me, ‘Brother, I want you to make me clothes for fifty-two shows. For the first time in my life I can afford to buy them.’ I made maybe five hundred different pieces for him, all black. When he got the clothes he asked me, ‘How come they’re all black?’ And I said, ‘Well there was a big sale on black fabric!’ (Laughs.)

I like to wear black too, and gold. The colours of oil and money. Money is the most pursued thing in life, but you don’t need to chase it. If you just keep producing, a lot of good is going to come your way. I was born under the sign of diamonds, I’m a Taurus, which also means I’m full of folly. I don’t care that much for the zodiac though: I am my own zodiac. Now what is your reading of me?

Interview conducted together with David Myron.

David Myron is a Paris-based craftsman and carpenter, as well as a regular Vestoj Salon collaborator.

Anja Aronowsky Cronberg is Vestoj’s Editor-in-Chief and Founder.

Aaron Rose: This interview is going to be a bit different from the usual ones because we are going to speak about fashion and in particular costume…

Kenneth Anger: Yes. It’s great! You know I’ve just come from Paris where I was invited to the opening of the Valentino show.

Aaron: Yes, I would love to talk about that, but if it’s ok let’s go back for a second. My assignment here is to write about fashion and the occult, but since you are not a fashion designer this would really be more about costumes. When did you first start thinking about costumes?

Kenneth: Well, the story behind that is that my grandmother, her name was Bertha Coler, she was also known as Big Bertha, she was a costume mistress and a designer, who looked after the costumes during the silent film period in Hollywood. The most notable film that she worked on was The Eagle in 1925. It was one of the films starring Rudolf Valentino. It was the only swashbuckling action film that he made. It was done a little bit in the spirit of Douglas Fairbanks films.

Aaron: So you grew up around costumes?

Kenneth: Yes, and then when my grandmother died she left me her collection of robes from the films that she had worked on. This included some costumes from Clara Bow films, and of course these costumes are very fragile! Silk is an organic substance and it has to be looked after very carefully or the fibres will tear. I gave all those costumes to the British Film Institute in London some years ago. I don’t think they have put any of them on display, but they do have them.

Aaron: When I was first given this assignment I immediately thought of the opening scene from your film Puce Moment where you have all the vintage dresses sliding towards and tearing away from the camera.

Kenneth: Yes! Those belonged to my grandmother as well. They are different dresses from the 1920s – from the Jazz age. Those are flapper dresses.

Aaron: Why did you decide to tear them away like you did?

Kenneth: Because in the slightly satirical idea behind that particular short film, the girl in the film is supposed to be sorting through her closet to find the dress she wants to wear. So she’s pulling one after another off the rack, then looking at it and tossing it aside.

Aaron: It seems as though costume and fashion have played a major role in most of the films you have made. Why is that?

Kenneth: You have to consider the fact that I’ve never had budgets; my films have always been very modestly produced by myself. I mean, my entire budgets are what a major film would spend on hairpins! But costumes are important. I’ve used a lot of uniforms and I do consider those costumes…because they are. They’re not ordinary street wear. I’ve made several films with military uniforms, and finally I made a film recently called Uniform Attraction, which is about the fetishistic interest in military uniforms. In fact, I don’t care whether it’s a policeman or an orderly in a hospital or a fighter in an army; the purpose of uniforms ever since Roman times is to transform a person from a civilian into a unit. So the fact that everyone wears the same type of uniform makes you into a cohesive unit.

Aaron: Weren’t the costumes in your first film uniform related?

Kenneth: Yes. Fireworks has the white summer uniforms, they’re called Summer Whites of the United States Navy. Those were genuine uniforms too! In other words, I used real sailors in my films. I didn’t have to hire the uniforms from a costume house, so they are authentic because the uniforms are real and so are the bodies inside.

Aaron: Symbolism is very important to you. You seem to continually reference the fact that things in life happen by chance and I’m wondering if that plays into the symbolism you use in the costumes for your films?

Kenneth: It definitely does. I know what I’m doing. I’m not what you’d call some kind of drug-crazed maniac like some other film directors. I’m talking about somebody like Jack Smith who was kind of crazy. I knew him quite well and I even helped him on a couple of his projects, but I’ve had a longer life span than Jack.

Aaron: Well, it seems like everything you do has a very specific meaning, as well as very strong historical and personal ties.

Kenneth: I hope so. You know, I’m making personal films. I’ve never tried to break into the commercial film world because I like making short films. I don’t like making three-hour films or even two-hour films. I also like working with found footage. The film I made on the Hitler Youth is using found footage that I got from the Imperial War Museum in London. They were the boy scouts of Hitler’s Germany.

Aaron: Which is again very costume oriented…

Kenneth: Oh absolutely! Of course if you take off the armbands with the swastikas, what the boys are wearing with the short pants and beige colour are practically identical to the traditional Boy Scouts! The Nazis copied the Boy Scouts. The Nazis took it over for their future brainwashed warriors. I don’t know how much you now about the Boy Scouts, but the idea at the beginning was always to prepare the boys to go into military service.

Aaron: I didn’t know that…but it makes a lot of sense. I’m starting to grasp the historical references, but what is your personal connection to uniforms?

Kenneth: Well, I served in the United States Navy when I was a teenager in the closing days of World War II. I didn’t do the whole term because I came down with scarlet fever. I do have a photo someplace of me in a sailor uniform.

Aaron: Let’s switch gears for a minute. In preparation for this, I was looking back at your film, Invocation of My Demon Brother and I noticed that the way you shot that film is very reminiscent of the trends in fashion photography from that time. Were you looking at those fashion images for inspiration?

Kenneth: I have always been very aware of fashion, and I certainly looked at a lot of it. I mean, not just Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue… and after I moved to Europe, in Paris in the 1950s, I became a friend of Yves Saint Laurent. This is just when Yves took over from Christian Dior and I was invited to some of those early shows.

Aaron: So you were aware of what was happening in fashion imagery at that time?

Kenneth: Oh yes! Absolutely. However I’ve never gone into commercial work. Luckily that’s something that I’ve never felt like I’ve had to do because I had enough money to get by in my bohemian lifestyle. However, if I ever had to go commercial, I probably would have chosen something in fashion.

Aaron: I’ve noticed in your films from the 1960s and 1970s, there seems to be repetitive symbolism in your costumes. In particular, images of triangles or motifs of eyes and such. Is there a reason for this?

Kenneth: Well, yes. Like in Lucifer Rising, the triangle is a symbol of the pyramids in Egypt. The triangle shape is an occult symbol for fire. That’s an upward pointed triangle. A downward pointed triangle is a symbol for water. These are ancient symbols and they are very simple. When you combine the two you make a Star of David. Many people don’t know that.

Aaron: What was the personal significance to you in using the triangular patterns?

Kenneth: I am a member of the OTO, which is like an honorary organization that means Ordo Templi Orientis. I’ve been a member for years. It was founded by Aleister Crowley back around 1910. It’s a little bit like the Freemasons or something like that. But I don’t go to meetings. In other words, I’m an honorary member, but I don’t have to really do anything. I know a few of the other people involved and I’ll speak to them when I run into them, but I’m not a club type of person. I’m a loner. I am definitely on the occult wavelength, but I prefer to work alone.

Aaron: But you’ve most certainly pulled references from the occult into your films…

Kenneth: I hope so! I do that for my own pleasure and whether they are understood by the general audience I don’t care! They are there, and I think they have a power and an invocation. Whether you see or you understand the power of an eye in a triangle, that still has a whole occult background. Like the Seeing Eye, that symbol goes back hundreds, maybe thousands of years! So maybe I’ll just flash it at you for a few frames, you know, very quickly.

Aaron: I’m curious why, if you describe yourself as a loner, you belong to this club and reference uniforms and organizations so much in your work?

Kenneth: Well, with regard to the OTO, as I said, I don’t go to their meetings, but I’ve never been expelled. In other words, I haven’t given away any of their secrets. They sometimes will say to someone, “Well you know you haven’t paid your dues, or you’ve told someone something you weren’t supposed to.” But I haven’t done that. On the other hand, I’ve studied Aleister Crowley my whole life, and it’s no secret that he involved actual lovemaking as part of his magic. So that could be interpreted as being some kind of sex scandal, if you want to look at it that way. You know, his idea that making love can be part of magic or ceremony? That doesn’t mean it happened all the time, though. It was occasional…like when the moon was right or something.

Aaron: Were those ideas something that you have tried to communicate aesthetically?

Kenneth: Well, yes, in my own personal way. But I’ve never filmed a ritual. I’ve always filmed a kind of a vision…like as if you were looking into a crystal ball. Not using dialogue or speech. I always use music. That’s my own personal style of interpreting these things.

Aaron: That’s one reason why I love your style. You’ve never had to show actual sex to make it sexy.

Kenneth: That’s right. I think it’s better. Suggest rather than show. Pornography is boring! I mean, so what? It’s in, then it’s out, then it’s in again. When you’re actually performing in a sexual way with someone that you’re attracted to, you forget that it’s sort of just “in and out and in and out.” That doesn’t matter! It becomes like a symphony…and it should be! Hopefully! There’s supposed to be an art to lovemaking.

Aaron: Are there ways that you can specifically speak of where you’ve referenced that symbolically in your costumes?

Kenneth: Well, I think costumes and clothing in general are more interesting than the naked skin. That’s just my own interpretation. The motifs that I have recurring over and over again in my films are not about striptease. It’s the opposite. It’s about dress up. I always show people dressing. They are putting clothes on rather than taking them off. So it’s the opposite of striptease. It’s playing dress-up. To me that is how people really express themselves. Through clothes or costumes. I particularly like the motorcycle fellows in Scorpio Rising. Those are not actors. They are genuine working class fellows that love their motorcycles.

Aaron: Yes…and nobody is getting undressed in that film. They are all putting on their gear…

Kenneth: That’s right. That’s the Kenneth Anger touch.

Aaron: Is that symbolism related to a way you live life spiritually? I’d like to go back to this idea of chance, or rather the lack of chance in life. The idea of pre-determination. It seems like everything in your life and work fits together like pieces of a puzzle…

Kenneth: Well, it’s nice to believe that you have a favourable guardian angel or something, but it’s all a fairytale. In other words, I don’t really believe that. But I have had fortunate happenstances in my life where things seem to fall into place. Either I have a situation where the people I work with are ideal, like the poetess Anaïs Nin, who I knew when I made Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, and she agreed to appear in it. Also, Marjorie Cameron, who in real life has bright red hair, became my scarlet woman in the film. So those things just kind of fell into place.

Aaron: Are there any other aesthetic choices that you’ve made that were driven by coincidence?

Kenneth: Well, I just go with the flow. For instance, when I was living in England in the 1960s, it just so happened that I was friends with Marianne Faithfull. She was recovering from drug addiction at the time, and I cast her as a devil in my film Lucifer Rising. She played Lilith. Lilith is a powerful female demon from the Babylonian times. But working in my film, when she was recovering from her heroin addiction, was kind of a therapy for her. I told her at the time that she was playing Lilith, but the real idea of the character was to get the demon out of her system.

Aaron: Looking back on all these films you’ve made, and specifically in relation to the costumes, is there anything that you wish you had done differently?

Kenneth: Well, it isn’t that I wished anything was different, it’s just that there were ideas that I had that were beyond my means. So with the films that I’ve realised, I’ve just managed to do them and get through them, but there are other ideas that I’ve had that I wished could have been different. For instance, my film Rabbit’s Moon. I made all those costumes myself. That was Pierrot, you know the sad clown, he is basically just in a large white T-shirt. It’s silk, and it’s very loose…like white pyjamas. But he’s always shown in a kind of sloppy white suit with buttons on the front and then a white skull-cap and white paint on his face. He’s dedicated to the moon. That’s why he’s in all white. His rival is Harlequin, and Harlequin has quadrangles on his costume…

Aaron: And you made all of those costumes?

Kenneth: I made them, but I also had some help. I had somebody to work on the sewing machine for me. Then as for Columbine, she’s the girl who teases and torments Pierrot, and then he falls hopelessly in love with her. Yet she is the actual demoness of Harlequin. Harlequin is actually Lucifer. In other words, he is the devil. In the film he is shown as a playful devil, in other words, playing pranks. I show, in Rabbit’s Moon, that Columbine is just a projection out of the magic lantern of Harlequin.

Aaron: What about in your later films? Did you continue to have a big say in the costumes or were there other people making those decisions for you?

Kenneth: Well, when I was living in England I had Jann Haworth. At the time she was married to the artist Peter Blake. I met her at the Robert Fraser Gallery in London, and I asked her if she would like to work on some costumes for me. However, for the most part, I designed them. For instance, the coloured satin Lucifer jacket with the rainbow spectrum on the back, and then the letters in gold leather that spell out Lucifer, those were personally made for me by Jann. It was a good collaboration. That jacket that she made, I donated to the British Film Institute. They never displayed it, but they have it.

Aaron: What about the motorcycle jacket from Scorpio Rising? Who has that now?

Kenneth: Well, I actually made that one. In other words, I did the lettering on it. I used those chrome studs. So I did all that, which is basically pretty easy. You just draw it on the leather and then stick these chrome disks on it. I actually gave that jacket away. One of the motorcycle guys that worked on my film and used to ride me around on the back of his Harley asked for it, and I said, “Ok, take it,” and he just rode off in it on his motorcycle. That was the last I saw of it.

Aaron: You know fashion is something that is so flighty. It’s a transient medium. Yet films for the most part aren’t created that way…

Kenneth: The diabolical thing about fashion is that they are supposed to come up with new ideas for every season, but the seasons, especially as you get older, seem to come faster and faster. Suddenly you have to come up with new ideas, all of a sudden it’s a new season, and what they have discovered is that they can pick up ideas that have gone before and simply retread them. So I think it’s amusing to see some of these ideas come back. You know, in the 1940s when I was growing up it was wartime. It was also the time of Joan Crawford, who was very beautiful then. They began to dress in a mannish fashion, with padded shoulders. Because there was a war going on, they had a more military look, even though they were not in the military…and they’ve brought that back a couple of times. Then there were clogged shoes…

Aaron: This seems like a good segue to speak about the Valentino show that you did recently in Paris…

Kenneth: There are two young designers, who I believe are both Italians, who did this latest Valentino show. Valentino himself is the producer, but he’s not directly involved in the design anymore. Anyway, they approached me to do the light show behind this year’s runway presentation in Paris. It was done outside of the city in what’s normally an industrial space. It’s a big warehouse. It’s longer than a football field. Everything was white. There were white benches for the people to sit on, and white walls, white seats and white cushions. So three walls are white and on these they projected images from my films that I personally chose. They were mostly images from Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. They are quite Baroque images with a lot of oranges and hot colours.

Aaron: Were you cited as an influence for the collection itself?

Kenneth: The colours from my images were only occasionally echoed in the clothes on the runway. It wasn’t like they copied images off of the screen or anything. But anyway, so these images from Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome were projected on the walls during that half hour before the show while people are being seated. Then, when the runway was happening, they used only images from my Tivoli Fountain film, which were in blue. So there were all these water images that made a wonderful background for the runway show.

Aaron: Did you love it?

Kenneth: Yeah! As a matter of fact, I may try to do something like this again in America. They used nine projectors pointed from the ceiling. Everywhere were these abstract water effects of these splashing fountains. It worked really well. Because of all the water, there was this kind of exuberance going on.

Aaron: How did it feel to sit there and watch that?

Kenneth: It was delightful because I’ve never seen my films shown on nine projectors at once! It was great. I was very happy with it. The Valentino people were very nice to me.

Aaron: At times you’ve mentioned that you saw the cinema as an evil force. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Kenneth: Well, I happen to be a prankster in a sense. A trickster or a prankster. Lucifer tends to be a sort of prankster figure in my imagination. So when I say it’s evil, I mean evil on my terms. I don’t mean evil like, let’s say, the Nazis or something. My conception of evil is something that becomes an obsession. Cinema has become my obsession. In a way I’d like to move away from it and just be free for the last period of my life. I’d love for this period to be one of meditation or contemplation, but it’s not going to happen because I still have ideas for films I want to do. It never lets me go.

This article was originally published in Vestoj On Magic.

Aaron Rose is a director, artist and curator based in Los Angeles.

DESIRE. INTENTION. AMBITION. IF fashion has long been the crowning companion of the wealthy, it can also be a powerful accomplice to the disadvantaged through its sense of play and artifice. Assuming a persona can be empowering, and manipulating it adds to the irony. So what happens when the disaffected communities of New York take their dreams to the ballroom? In the cult documentary ‘Paris is Burning’, director Jennie Livingston offers an authentic and riveting exploration of queer subculture filmed in the mid to late 1980s in New York. As a precious chronicle of an underground flourishing with drag subcultures of New York’s gay and transgender African American and Latino minorities, ‘Paris is Burning’ reveals a motley crew of subjects in the scene, whose fiery personalities and imagination transcend the hardship and adversity (racism, homophobia, AIDS and poverty, to mention but a few) they face in everyday life. Personalities include voguing masters Willi Ninja, Venus Xtravaganza, Dorian Corey and Pepper LaBeija. Action takes place at the ballroom – where contestants deliver outlandish voguing performances. Vying for trophies, respect and recognition, the ball-goers often belong to ‘Houses’ or intentional communities, of which the House of Ninja and Xtravaganza are amongst the most famous, without forgetting the ironically named House of Chanel and Saint Laurent. Judged on the criteria of ‘realness,’ the characters evoked range from queer fantasies such as butch queens and transgender divas, to ironic representations mirroring the ‘rich white world’ – such as ‘Schoolboy/Schoolgirl Realness’, ‘Town and Country’, and ‘Executive Realness’. It’s a hefty mix of humour, melancholy and fantasy, as the balls offer a platform where clothes momentarily transport into another world, free from social norms and taboos. Outcasts from society, the story of these queens is about the quest for survival, defying reality with sass and a great deal of fur.

Sophie Pinchetti is an editor, writer and founder of the independant magazine The Third Eye.

Sophie Pinchetti is an editor, writer and founder of the magazine The Third Eye.

Sophie Pinchetti is an editor, writer and founder of the magazine The Third Eye.