Ladies who Lunch – Vestoj

THE TYGER IN THE CHANGING ROOM

Karen Van Godtsenhoven — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 13:10:18 +0000

Tiger and Snake’ Eugène Delacroix, 1862 © National Gallery of Art | NGA Images

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

William Blake, The Tyger, 1794

The sexual act is in time what the tiger is in space

George Bataille, The Accursed Share, 1949

On New York’s Upper East Side, where Madison Avenue meets the mid-eighties, one can find a trove of athleisure and luxury activewear stores which provide the inhabitants of the area with the necessary uniform the zip code requires: running pants, yoga pants, body warmers and leg warmers, all in the latest gradient colours, graphic designs and high-tech micro-mesh, ultra-breathable fabrics imaginable. These highly sophisticated outfits for walking the dog, running in Central Park, having lunch or lounging at home testify to a shift in status and signification of sportswear: originally intended for exercise, these hi-tech iterations have become an all-round uniform for the wealthy, who like to feel comfortable all day and do not have to dress or change for work, now harnessing the contradictory elements of being active yet ‘at leisure.’ The high-powered social and financial status of these uptowners is hence sartorially mirrored by the sophisticated sportswear they dress themselves in, which ultimately reflect their status. Once known as ladies of leisure (or ladies who lunch) these women, though now often identifying with a profession (yoga teacher, interior designer, artist, model), they still all too commonly rely on a husband for their expenditure. When visiting the stores these women frequent, one is struck by the quiet demeanour of the shopkeepers and the general atmosphere of leisure: in the corner, a woman is trying on the new plum colour leggings, there a girl is perusing the T-shirts whilst chatting to her trainer on the phone, a young mom rocks her stroller back and forth in front of the puffer jackets. Behind the counter, staff is chatting to each other, they are plenty and do not hurry or rush to the customer; they are confident the customer will ask for what she wants, in time, and it seems like they in turn enjoy there being a crowd of people at the ready, but not ostensibly so. The atmosphere is the opposite to what one might find in similar stores downtown, where people (presumably) have things to do and work to go to, and where the shop assistants are few and far between, and where athletic garments are usually worn for some form of exercise. The surplus of time and money of the Upper East Side clientele is mirrored in the quiet and calm behaviour of the store personnel: it is a Veblen-esque type of conspicuous consumption which shows off the privilege of the leisure class: a dressing down of your high economic status, and squandering time just because you can. These leggings and sports bras in muted colours are markers of status and wealth, an opulent lifestyle expressed not through golden logos but mesh fabrics. The group habitus of these women shapes the bodies and local economics of the area, which is densely populated with plastic surgeons and athleisure stores, mirroring each other in the quest for physical perfection.

These dynamics of abundance operate on the principle of what French philosopher Georges Bataille called, ‘The Accursed Share’¹ of the economy: the surplus, the luxurious, non-efficient part, an integral part of every society and especially under late-stage capitalism, when a large percentage of basic products such as food, garments and material good are wasted without being consumed. Technical innovation, he wrote in 1949, leads to more energy savings on the part of humans, but they also create dilapidation, a crisis of excess, and end up making life more complicated since, ‘if the system can no longer grow, or if the excess cannot be completely absorbed in its growth, it must necessarily be lost without profit; it must be spent, willingly or not, gloriously or catastrophically.’² He then describes three ways different societies deal with excess energy: consumption, the non-reproductive sex act, and death, by means of war or human sacrifice. Bataille worked thirty years on his essay, and in a time of global over-production and -consumption, rapid technical innovation and a looming environmental crisis, his words shed new light on the notion of luxury and excess, which he sees as the driving forces of the economy. He even sees excess as a fundamental part of human identity, asserting mankind’s position at the top of the energy chain: ‘The general movement of exudation (of waste) of living matter impels him, and he cannot stop it; moreover, being at the summit, his sovereignty in the living world identifies him with this movement; it destines him, in a privileged way, to that glorious operation, to useless consumption.’³

In the first part of his essay, ‘Consumption,’ Bataille points towards the sun as the origin of the excess of energy that drives the earth’s operations, since most of the sun’s energy is ultimately wasted. For example, plants use solar energy to grow, but a herbivore eating those plants needs to consume more energy than the plant does in order to grow fat (another type of excess). The greatest example of this, in the animal world, is the tiger: that magnificent predator, whose existence ultimately depends on the massive amounts of molecular energy in space, and who needs the highest amount of energy and space ‘wasted’ in order to sustain himself. The tiger is the highest example of excess in the food chain: ‘In the general effervescence of life, the tiger is a point of extreme incandescence. And this incandescence did in fact burn first in the remote depths of the sky, in the sun’s consumption.’⁴ Similarly, he calls the sexual act a form of squandering excess, since more time is wasted in the sexual act than would be strictly needed, leading to his statement that ‘the sexual act is in time what the tiger is in space.’⁵ In terms of luxury, the Upper East Side clientele could be seen as the tigers (tigresses) of the fashion food chain.

On the other side of the spectrum of exuberance, we find a different form of excess, which links Bataille’s notions of sacrifice, sexuality and commodity consumption: the new generation of online, direct-to-consumer retailers such as PrettyLittleThing, Fashion Nova, Missguided and Boohoo who capitalise on the high demand for ever-changing and low-priced #ootds for young girls. These girls are both customers and consumers as well as peer-to-peer marketers of the brands (‘brand affiliates’ typically receive 6% of the profits earned through their traffic directed to the main platform). The outfits, ‘body-positive’ styles which are released at the staggering speed of seven hundred a week, are often pushed into the limelight by reality TV stars, Insta-influencers, bloggers and a mass of Youtubers and Instagrammers who are famous for their daily fashion and lifestyle content. On the brands’ websites, ‘Dresses from $10! ,’ ‘£8 and under!’ are some of the browsing categories, next to other interesting and identity-driven markers such as figure types (Curvalicious, Free the Leg, Sexy&Seductive, Petite), and style profiles (Girls Night Out, Boardin Jets, Vacay!, LittlePinkDress, GirlBoss). Most of the styles advertised by these sites are overtly sexy or unapologetically girly and easily recognisable. Young girls, from fourteen to twenty-five (with spikes up to thirty) from diverse backgrounds make up the largest share of these brands’ customers. Fashion Nova, one of the fastest growing platforms, is famous for its bodycon dresses and tight pants worn by curvalicious celebrities like Cardi B, Kylie Jenner, Blac Chyna, Amber Rose, Jordyn Woods (many of which are related, willingly or not, in some way to the Kardashian Klan). The body hugging and accentuating styles are reminiscent of Kim Kardashian West’s wardrobe staples designed by her husband’s label Yeezy and her show stopping archival outfits from 1980s favourites Thierry Mugler and Gianni Versace.

These platforms are currently accursed by the fashion world establishment and watchdog sites like Diet Prada who call out their supposed copycat behaviour (young as well as established design houses have led lawsuits against some of them). The brands are seen as examples of bad taste, akin to coyotes or vultures feeding off of other brands, and are sneered at by the fashion press, designers and high profile influencers (usually, the ‘Parisian’ type) alike. They are a form of ‘wear- once-and-chuck-in-the-bin’ excess, derided by the segment of the fashion establishment which prides itself on originality and quality, in- vestment wardrobe staples, and carefully planned editorial campaigns with blue chip models, stylists and photographers. Even though high fashion brands often use past creations as inspiration themselves, there seems to be a moral panic about this new type of design and customer. The new system of self-appointed celebrities, brand affiliates and influencers seems to have no gatekeepers, it it excessively democratic, its styles are ‘vulgar,’ derivative. What has the world come to when one can buy both access and influence while clad in $10 dresses?

It would seem like class distinction, rather than authenticity or originality, is the damning factor, since these brands cater to aspirational lower-middle class customers who, just like the upper tier, might like to squander their money and splurge on 80% off the whole website, even if starting prices are $28 rather than $280, or $2800. They are the great equaliser of the consumption drive at the heart of human endeavour, and the great equaliser of taste. The customers of these sites, usually from working class backgrounds, are the insurgents of the fashion economy, threatening the highest form of capital in the bourgeois fashion industry: good taste. According to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s field logic,⁶ it is thus necessary for the fashion establishment to dissociate itself from these brands, as the lawsuits by designers and Kim Kardashian West alike against some of these brands prove. Bronx-based rapper and style icon Cardi B on the other hand, who produces collections in collaboration with Fashion Nova, has no such qualms, nor do Kylie and Kris Jenner, who publicly endorse the brand. Cardi B’s access to high luxury cars, yachts and watches and designer archives does not preclude her from boasting about a dress she got for $30: an interesting paradox which boosts the aspirational identification from young customers even more.

Ironically, Kim Kardashian, oft reviled by mainstream cultural media and serious fashion press because of her commodity fetishism and exhibitionism, puts herself in the position of the fashion establishment in a series of defensive tweets against the fast fashion brands who knock off the archival silhouettes she wears at the speed of light and tag her name in their posts: ‘It’s devastating to see these fashion companies rip off designs that have taken the blood, sweat and tears of true designers who have put their all into their own original ideas. I don’t have any relationships with these sites. I’m not leaking my looks to anyone, and I don’t support what these companies are doing.’⁷ Whether or not Kardashian West secretly collaborates with these fast fashion brands (like watchdog Diet Prada argues) while publicly chastising them, she certainly wants to distance herself from these ‘accursed’ brands, aspiring herself to be respected and seen as part of the establishment, as the holder of cultural and social capital, the tiger of luxury and ‘good taste.’ In a continuous play of tag, ‘You are it!’ ‘You are accursed!’ between these brands, the boundaries between high and fast fashion, between good and bad taste, and between the holders of cultural capital become increasingly blurred.

Apart from class distinction, another possible factor for these brands being ‘accursed’ by the fashion establishment might be their unapologetic sexual nature, their youthful and provocative styles which are perceived as the overt squandering of young human flesh at the altar of both sexual as well as material consumption. The out-there names of the bum-skimming, thigh-grazing and boob-squishing outfits available on these platforms do not lie: I got the drip; Bite the Bait; Taste my horchata; Everybody wanna be this miniskirt; She Bad. The shiny fabrics and pink tones recall the interior of the boudoir, if not softcore adult lingerie catalogues. It is a loud type of sexuality, which high fashion, even in its most provocative and sexual imagery, always seems to mute, by stylising and polishing the reality of human sexual functions through instrumentalising thin, usually white, sleek, Photoshopped bodies. The curvaceous, tan and overtly sexual, fertile female figure on display is vilified, seen as an outdated form of 1950s femininity which, in its new, coloured and working-class appearance, is threatening and castrating all at once. The body-positive celebrities with surgically altered, non- white bodies, are often ciphers for online abuse and criticism because of their use of exaggerated female stereotypes.

Whether the violent power dynamics of the contemporary fashion field are based on classist, racial or sexual anxieties, with different parties accu(r)sing each other of being a form of excess baggage, underneath these socio-economic and cultural motivations might lie a fundamental fear, the human fear of impending auto-destruction: ‘For if we do not have the force to destroy the surplus energy ourselves, it cannot be used, and, like an unbroken animal that cannot be trained, it is this energy that destroys us; it is we who pay the price of the inevitable explosion.’⁸

Karen Van Godtsenhoven is an Associate Curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, and works on the museums exhibition programming and collection development.

This article was originally published in Vestoj On Capital, available for purchase here.

G Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, Vol. 1: Consumption, Zone Books, New York, London, 1988. ↩
Ibid., p.21. ↩
Ibid., p. 23. ↩
Ibid., p. 34. ↩
Ibid., p. 35. ↩
P Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. R. Nice, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1984 ↩
https://twitter.com/KimKardashian, on February 19, 2019 ↩
G Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, Vol. 1: Consumption, Zone Books, New York, London, 1988. ↩

Mainbocher & the Decline of the Socialite

Laura Gardner — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 00:11:16 +0000

A QUICK GOOGLE SEARCH on ‘socialite’ will inevitably come up with any number of recognisable faces from twenty-first century celebrity culture. Touted by gossip magazines and tabloids like The Daily Mail, Hello and Who, the term is rarely used with flattering connotations. Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Tara Reid, Blake Lively and Kim Kardashian, among many other women, are just some of the wayward celebrities that nowadays are deemed as ‘socialites’, suggesting that, despite the attention they receive as objects of public fascination, their activities lack substance and are therefore trivial and excessive. With this in mind, it’s interesting to note the shift in perception that the term ‘socialite’ has undergone since its historical origins and its later heyday in the social circles of New York’s upper class with the ‘ladies who lunch’.

CZ Guest talking with Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, the former Duchess of Marlborough.

Susan Gutfreund, Casey Ribicoff, and Jerry Zipkin leave Le Cirque, photographed by Marina Garnier.

The term ‘socialite’ is a mainstay in popular culture and has its roots in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, when it referred to a woman – either a wife or mistress of nobility – who in their ceremonial title, was required to spend much of their time socialising. Additionally socialising was often necessary to their livelihood and the maintenance of their cultural footing. More recently, in the twentieth-century the notion of a socialite has become intrinsically linked with New York’s high society. Increasing wealth and culture in the city created the phenomenon of the ‘ladies who lunch’. According to John Fairchild, publisher of Women’s Wear Daily, the term was solidified in his magazine in the early 1960s (long before Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway hit), and regularly used in the social pages of WWD alongside images of upper class women. The era, which lasted from the mid-1950s until (arguably) the late-1980s, saw the elegant set of New Yorkers – millionaire wives, former models, editors and designers – frequenting Madison Avenue restaurants like The Colony, Le Pavillon, La Côte Basque and La Caravelle. The women in these establishments outnumbered the men six to one, making them prime spots for the financial and social elite to mingle frothily in designer clothes and jewellery.

Babe and William Paley leaving the famous restaurant La Côte Basque.

The mid to late-1950s was an opulent time, adjacent industries and cultural characters rubbed shoulders over lunch, facilitated by characters like the Duchess of Windsor, Truman Capote, Slim Keith, Babe Paley, Jackie O, Nan Kempner, Adele Astaire, Gloria Vanderbilt, Lila Wallace and Bunny Mellon, among many others. Fashion designers were also important in marking this social elite. One of the most prominent was the haute couturier Main Rousseau Bocher, with his label Mainbocher, who dressed many of these ladies who lunched, resulting in the designer’s business success corresponding closely with that of the socialite era. The designer, originally from New York, opened his couture house in Paris in 1929 under the moniker Mainbocher, after leaving his job as the editor-in-chief of Vogue Paris. In 1936 Wallis Simpson, a key figure of her generation, famously wore Mainbocher to her wedding to King Edward VIII. The dress, and the wedding – including, as it did, the King’s abdication and the elevation of a commoner to nobility – became a point of public fascination and launched Mainbocher’s American career. Following this success, the designer moved back to New York in 1940 and established his fashion house there, making Mainbocher Christian Dior’s American couture counterpart in catering for the upper class set.

Babe Paley with her husband and the Duchess of Windsor, 1955.

In an era noted for its elegance and propriety, Mainbocher was integral to forming this notion. His dresses were strategically placed on the beautiful, wealthy and privileged and their elegant and effortless design came to mark the style of the epoch. The designer had a particularly strong affinity with the socialite CZ Guest, who accurately depicted Mainbocher’s sensibility with what her friend Truman Capote termed her ‘cool vanilla charm’.

CZ Guest in Mainbocher’s ‘La Galerie’ floral dress and jacket, with double-strand pearls, image courtesy of Vogue.

In keeping with the style of their dresses, the sensibilities and public personas of the ladies who lunched were also demure, elegant and restrained. In his 2012 article for Vanity Fair Bob Colacello concedes that many of the ladies who lunched denied that they had participated in the activities; interior designer and millionaire wife Mica Ertegun, for instance, insists ‘I was never part of it’¹, suggesting that socialising was as much about being prudent and restrained as it was about the outward projection of opulence and wealth. This act of omission might also reflect the changing role of women in society and the balancing of the workforce: the era of the ladies who lunch upheld outdated notions that its privileged women were not expected to work. This attitude arguably contributed to the decline of the era, and stands in sharp contrast with today’s society, in which it is no longer respectable for women to merely socialise, and not work.

Paris and Nicky Hilton with Terry Richardson at a Jeremy Scott runway presentation, 2014, New York.

Beyond the 1990s and into the contemporary era, ‘socialite’ has become a largely scandalous term, suggesting the type of attention-seeking party-goer so attractive to gossip magazines. Television programs like Gossip Girl (2007) and the reality shows The Simple Life (2003) and The City (2008), have succeeded in thoroughly exhausting the term as having negative connotations for those to which it is applied. This shift naturally reflects the prevalence of mass media and celebrity culture, but is also reflective of a change in our cultural taste. The bygone gatherings of Mainbocher’s ladies who lunch no longer have a place in such a society, and the sartorial values of elegant, modest glamour, so integral to the clothes which were worn at the time, have gone along with it.

Laura Gardner is Vestoj’s former Online Editor and a writer in Melbourne.

‘Here’s to the Ladies Who Lunched!’, By Bob Colacello. Published in Vanity Fair, February, 2012. http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2012/02/ladies-who-lunched-201202 ↩