Fashion and Feminism

By Megan Blenkarne

We spend huge amounts of time and money recording what women have worn, or not worn, and debating whether what they wore was appropriate. To take a recent example, Jennifer Lawrence, wearing a revealing Versace dress in the cold, provoked an outpouring of opinion online, which came down to something like ‘Oh my God someone save her from the people who forced her to go semi-naked in a snowstorm!' Her response, in summarised form: ‘Get a grip, people. I dress myself, thanks, and if I want to be cold in an amazing dress then I will do so and you can naff right off ’.

Fashion land is spending a lot of time talking about #metoo and the intersection of feminism and fashion (and Jennifer Lawrence). Although fashion is a female dominated industry, this has proven to be no protection against sexual harassment or sexism more generally, most likely because of the relative power of most of the women who work in it. Women make up the vast majority of fashion graduates from top fashion programmes (typically well over 80% per year), and dominate the fashion manufacturing sector at approximately three-quarters of the workforce. However, Business of Fashion reports that only 40% of womenswear designers at major fashion weeks in the Spring/Summer 2017 season were women, and only 14% of the major fashion brands are helmed by women. Perhaps promisingly, the few women who are in positions of power – the highest-profile being Maria Grazia Chiuri at Dior – are now turning towards feminism in fashion. It seems that fashion is ready to be openly feminist. I’ve noticed more than one label creating prints featuring the female form (including this Dancer print, current season at Kowtow), celebrating women aesthetically.

Kowtow creates a dancer print featuring the female form.

Fashion seems to be performing an uncomfortable balancing act: offering an empowering vision of dressing up on the one hand, and failing to recognise the ick factor in judging women on their looks on the other. It’s not an easy conundrum to solve, and it’s further complicated by cries of slacktivism. It’s all very well to make a t-shirt that reads 'Feminist', but if you aren’t acting to address the inequality inherent in your own industry, are you a hypocrite?

It seems to me that Jennifer Lawrence pulled the same move I’ve pulled a thousand times, and wore that outfit entirely because of the way she looked (and felt, I’m sure), with scant regard to whether she’d be cold. It’s great to hear she had a choice when she got dressed for that photo call, but it’s important to remember that not all women have a choice in fashion – and that is true regardless of where you fall in the supply chain. If that pisses you off as much as it does me, then please, stop tweeting Jennifer Lawrence and start asking – what does feminism in fashion really mean?