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FASHION
STUDIES
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CONTENTS LETTER FROM THE EDITOR 5 CONTRIBUTOR BIOS 6
SYSTEMS: CRITIQUE INSTITUTIONALIZED MEMORY CEREBRAL CORTEX: A NOSTALGIC JOURNEY OF MEMORY WITH MY MOTHER 12 Asato Kitamura LA MODA LATINOAMERICA: FROM CASTA PAINTINGS TO COLONIAL STEREOTYPES 24 Mailye Matos Lopez THE POWER OF THE ARCHIVE: (RE)TELLING HISTORICAL NARRATIVES 32 Elena Johansen UTOPIA THROUGH DYSTOPIA: THE FASHIONABLE USURPATION OF POLITICS BY DIOR AND CHANEL 36 Noyonika Sircar FASHION IS A PRIVILEGE 46 Usury Sacramento SDK 50 Sasha de Koninck
SYSTEMS: RESISTANCE RACED BODIES + AN ‘OTHERED’ EXPERIENCE FASHION OUTLIERS: AFROPUNK AND THE EMBODIMENT OF RESISTANCE 58 Dominique Norman SHARP & SHARP II SERIES “LOCAL BLACK TAILORS AND STYLISTS” 66 Isaiah Winters CHALLENGING THE ‘FASHIONABLE’ SILHOUETTE: ARGENTINIAN LINGERIE DESIGNERS 74 Lorena Pèrez MARCH 8 78 Maureen Muse
GENDER + PERFORMATIVITY BOYS WEAR BLUE, GIRLS WEAR PINK: MOLOTOV-FASHION & CULTURAL RESISTANCE IN BRAZILIAN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY 90 Henrique Grimaldi Figueredo THE HOUSEWIFE 98 Itala Aguilera MIRRORMASQUE 110 Lilia Yip
CREDITS AND REFERENCES 118
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STUDIES
EDITORIAL Monica Biles Iesha Coppin Elena Johansen Casey Huang Mary Stringham Violet Thompson DESIGN Monica Biles Casey Huang Alex Peifer
COMMUNICATIONS Meredith MacNicholas Violet Thompson
SPECIAL THANKS BIAS, the Journal of Fashion Studies, wishes to thank Dr. Hazel Clark, Dr. Heike Jenss & the entire MA Fashion Studies community for their guidance, kindness and encouragement. This journal would not be possible without the support of the School of Art & Design History and Theory. BIAS extends gratitude to all of our contributors, and student organizations.
Contact
biasjournal@newschool.edu Instagram: @bias_journal
BIAS, Issue 8, © 2021 the authors and photographers; All images used are strictly for educational purposes. They are not to be reproduced without permission of the original copyright holders. We regret any omissions and, if noted, will amend in future editions. On the Cover: Afropunk Brooklyn, 2018 photographed by Diahann Williams
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Fashion has been shaped by overarching social, political, and economic systems since its inception. From production and consumption to institutional oppression, these seemingly invisible structures rule how we access, understand, and create fashion. In this issue, we will explore how these various systems impact fashion, while also investigating how fashion itself disrupts or subverts these systematic ideologies. By reflecting on the past year of immense challenge and change, including the devastation of COVID-19 and the widespread racial reckoning across the world, we take a look at how fashion and systems play a role. This issue explores various aspects of fashion including class, race, and gender while also considering the systems that shape them such as capitalism and power structures. The contributions in the following pages are organized around two themes: the critique and the active resistance of our fashion system. The subtopics covered in this issue include the othered experience, institutionalized memory, and gender and performativity. As MA Fashion Studies students and staff members of BIAS: The Journal of Fashion Studies, we stand in solidarity and support the issues raised by our contributors. We have a responsibility as fashion scholars to protect one another and combat racism and injustice within the fashion system and within the growing field of fashion studies. It is important that all of us continue to educate ourselves and take meaningful action. We believe that social justice and fashion foster a compelling symbiotic relationship, and we hope this issue acts as a catalyst in dismantling and rethinking the numerous problems within the current fashion system.
CONTRI BUTORS Itala Aguilera is a textile artist from Mexico City. She is interested in reflecting the exploration of the unconscious and sexuality through clothing and textiles. She experiments with a mix of textiles and unconventional materials in her work and is currently playing with crochet, knitting, and ceramics in her practice. @italaaguilera Henrique Grimaldi Figueredo is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Campinas (IFCH-UNICAMP), São Paulo, Brazil. He is also a PhD candidate in Sociology at l’École des Hautes Éudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France. Executive editor of “All the Arts Luso-Brazilian Journal of Art and Culture,” University of Porto, Portugal. He is a scholarship recipient at FAPESP- Research Support Foundation of the State of São Paulo. Elena Johansen is a 2021 graduate of the MA Fashion Studies program at Parsons School of Design. Before moving to New York from Oregon, she worked in financial technology and is focusing her academic and career efforts in Fashion Archiving. She is currently a Research Assistant for two Parsons faculty and also a Teaching Assistant for an undergraduate History of Fashion course. She recently completed her MA thesis titled “Monstrous Women: Costuming Horror Film in the 21st Century.” It investigates the costuming of women in a selection of horror films from the 21st century and how these costumes express and intensify the current social and cultural narrative. Asato Kitamura was born in 1996 in Japan. His creation comes from two basic desires. The first is to help people who are misunderstood make sense of this existence, and the second is to have an outlet for the feelings he has built up from his creative world. This world is a peculiar, somber, and vaguely spiritual space, where multiple detached versions of himself exist. For him, fashion design is the only way out of loneliness and the only way to save others from loneliness. The fashion that goes from creator to others and is perfected by wearing is the only bond between him and others and it is the strongest communication for him. @asato_kitamura Sasha de Koninck is an artist and researcher from Santa Monica, CA. She graduated in 2013 with a BFA in fibers, a minor in creative writing, and a concentration in sound art from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). The next leg of her journey led her to the Windy City, where she graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) with an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies. She is currently a PhD student in Intermedia Art, Writing, and Performance at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she works with Laura Devendorf and the Unstable Design Lab. Currently, her work is centered around labor and the undoing of labor; the relationship between the body and the garment; and dissolving. studiosdk.net Mailye Matos currently works as a stylist and lecturer on fashion history and theory at Universidad del Sagrado Corazon where she also obtained a BA in Communications. She ís passionate about fashion sociology and fashion’s role in shaping identity, politics, and societal structures. She was born in New Jersey and raised in Puerto Rico. Traveling between New York and Puerto Rico initially inspired her interest in fashion. Her experience as an international exchange student in Universidad Argentina de la Empresa exposed her to fashion history and sociology. Maureen Muse uses photography, video, installation, and performance to communicate stories, particularly narratives that visualize an embodied discomfort and rebelliousness towards one’s own existence. She received a BFA in 2017 from Parsons Paris studying in the program of Art, Media, and Technology. She also spent time in Paris studying photography and video at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD). maureenmuse.com
Dominique Norman has served as a part-time faculty member at Parsons School of Design in the School of Art and Design History and Theory and currently teaches a course at Marymount Manhattan College titled Fashion, Media, and Culture. Her work as an educator, writer, and activist examines the intersections of race, gender, the body, sexuality, culture, media, beauty, and fashion. She received a BA in Apparel Merchandising, Design, and Textiles from Washington State University where she created the first plus-size collection as well as one of the only collections to feature all models of color. Following her undergraduate career she obtained a Master of Arts in Fashion Studies with a certificate in Gender & Sexuality Studies from The New School Parsons School of Design. dominiquenorman.com Lorena Pèrez is a journalist specialized in Digital Journalism from Universidad de San Andrès (UDESA) and Universidad Nacional de San Martìn (UNSAM). Based in Buenos Aires, Lorena runs Blocdemoda.com (2006). She is also a professor of Fashion Marketing and Digital Communication at the University of Palermo. She has published in newspapers such as La Naciôn, and El Cronista and in magazines including L’Officiel, GQ, and Cosmopolitan. She is writing a book on the history of fashion and design in Argentina. Usury Sacramento is currently a junior studying in the BFA Fashion Design Program at Parsons School of Design. Their work is focused on systems and society, how humans interact with social issues through fashion. They are concerned with creating meaning by advocating and addressing issues through their designs. Noyonika Sircar is in her first year of the MA Fashion Studies program at Parsons Paris. She believes in tapping the nuances within cultures, politics, fashion and people who shape the digital landscape. Her article, “Utopia Through Dystopia: The Fashionable Usurpation of Politics by Dior and Chanel,” questions the overarching role of fashion within politics and examines how fashion can be used as a tool for resistance and protest. Dee Williams is creating imagery that makes the status quo uncomfortable. She is a Los Angeles/NYC-based portrait photographer finding inspiration from those around her. Dee’s work is devoted to highlighting the beauty within marginalized communities. Commercial, editorial, and fashion commissions with an overall theme that aligns with this devotion are always welcomed. deexdee.com Isaiah Winters is a documentary photographer and conceptual artist based between Brooklyn, NY ande Baltimore, MD. He focuses on architecture, social landscapes, and analog photography to assist in giving his work a nostalgic and romantic feel. He enjoys emphasizing certain aspects or colors within his work; to highlight the effects everyday light and composition have on all of us. He has gravitated towards documentary photography and portraiture that tells a narrative. Currently working with archival and appropriated content from the twentieth century. He has spent the last few years coming to terms with his own identity, and attempting to work through questions of what it means to be a Black male in today’s society. He believes that through more representation in the visual arts and beyond, we can work to empower our next generation of Black leaders. @isaiahrw isaiahrw.com Lilia Yip is a fashion designer, visual artist and musician, threading the different strands into a creative practice where conceptual pattern cutting, imagery, text, sound and material are combined to build a subtle form of communication. Adopting a humanistic approach to design, she creates work that exists on the boundaries between our cultures, identities, and bodies; where the wearable and surreal meet. The principles of ethical and sustainable practice underpin her design process. Longevity, provenance, emotional connectivity and zero waste are key concepts that she continues to explore and develop from design through to representation. Lilia is a Lecturer in Fashion Design and Development at London College of Fashion (LCF), University of the Arts, London and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is based between UK and Singapore. liliayip.com
CRIT
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INSTITUTIONALIZED MEMORY
CEREBRAL CORTEX: A NOSTALGIC JOURNEY OF MEMORY WITH MY MOTHER BY ASATO KITAMURA
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LA MODA LATINOAMERICANA: FROM CASTA PAINTINGS TO COLONIAL STEREOTYPES BY MAILYE MATOS LÔPEZ
When we think of Latin American fashion, what comes to mind may be the product of the following: the inheritance of the Latin American castiza imaginary, the Hollywood stereotype of Carmen Miranda, and the image of the hypersexualized Latina woman. The production of Latin American fashion is inseparable from colonial expansion since all the constructs mentioned above are the product of the assimilation processes brought by colonization and, consequently, cultural imperialism. It is essential to go back to the past and understand the dynamics of colonialism that dominated the Latin American and Caribbean regions, initially from artistic representations and eventually through the mass media. According to Chris Kortright, colonization destroys the cultural values and ways of life of the colonized; “their languages, dress, and techniques are defined and constructed through the ideology and values of the colonialist.” When writing about the images and myths of the colonized, Kortright adds: “To justify the colonization of a people, images need to be created so that the subjugation makes sense. These images become the identity of the colonized.” [1] So is the case with Casta paintings.
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During the 18th century, the references used in Casta painting - an artistic phenomenon developed in Spain’s colonies were based on European imaginaries, scenes, or customs to represent Indigenous characters or other races. These representations are the product of the Spanish colonizers’
concerns for order and race in a social reality in which the Black-White and European-Indigenous dichotomies no longer fit. [2] The paintings represent the product of the mixture between couples of different races, accompanied by labels that helped reinforce colorism in Latin American societies and forge the Latin American castiza. Most of the castes never arose. Many of the paintings responded to classifications that exotically projected the indigenous people and were far from social reality, which only contributed to reinforcing the colonized myths as defined by Kortright. The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy defines castiza as of good origin and caste. [3] This concept was ingrained in much of Latin American society and is present in phrases of widespread use such as “mejorar la raza” (improving the race) as well as within the production of fashion by Latin American fashion designers, international brands, and the mainstream global media depiction of the region’s fashion and styles. As Mariselle Meléndez notes in her essay “Visualizing Difference: The Rhetoric of Clothing in Colonial Spanish America,” during colonial rule, clothing was an indicator of social status, race, and power. [4] It still is. The late Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera appear as the Caribbean’s most successful designers. The international recognition of these designers relies on the concept of the castiza as defined by the Royal Spanish Academy dictionary, based on their design practice. A concept, which can be closely associated with the classism produced by colonial structures.
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Herrera herself depicts the idea of the castiza, coming from a privileged background and having access to the world of fashion at an early age, something her modest contemporaries could not access. Her designs, as well as de la Renta’s, often seem to be a by-product of the fashion produced originally in Europe and adopted historically by the upper classes in Latin America and the Caribbean. Other designers of the region also follow this path. Colombian designer Johanna Ortiz and Puerto Rican designer Harry Robles relied on the romanticization of neocolonial aesthetics by designing dresses aimed at the upper classes portraying an idyllic Caribbean lifestyle. But they are not alone in this practice. The world of fashion picks and tosses elements of Spanish, Italian, and Latin American culture now and then from standardized perspectives since our cultures share common characteristics such as cultural practices and aesthetics inherited from colonialism and its dynamics. When these forms of fashion disseminate through the glossy pages of an editorial spread, the mainstream media stereotypes rise. One of Vogue Italia’s widely circulated editorials on the internet shows supermodel Linda Evangelista, photographed by Steven Meisel, portraying the “Cuban lifestyle.” The photos, published in February 1989, show the Canadian supermodel in hypersexualized poses and highly glamorous outfits that resemble a 90s era Carmen Miranda; large hoop earrings, short pants and skirts, blouses, and looking sweaty under the tropical sun.
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One of the pictures presents Linda Evangelista’s male counterpart squeezing her face while pressing her body against a wall that reads Cuba. This depiction appears as a
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glamourization of machismo and violence against women, a problem many Latin American and Caribbean countries are continually fighting. Conscious or not, the fashion industry’s interpretation of the Caribbean and Latin American experience perpetuates colonial constructs, preventing new narratives around these communities’ real experience and the cultural richness they offer.
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THE POWER OF THE ARCHIVE: (RE) TELLING HISTORICAL NARRATIVES BY ELENA JOHANSEN In 2017, prominent fashion critic, Alexander Fury, explored the significance of the corporate fashion archive in an article titled, “In Fashion, the Beauty (and Challenge) of Looking Back.” For Fury, a fashion archive’s contents are not merely “relics, but rather [a] foundation for future creations… [a] petri dish for designs of the future.” [1] This article is part of a recent growing interest in fashion archives that have led many brands, like Vans, to start investing in archives for the first time and others, like Gucci, to start utilizing their archives in new ways, morphing museum with the retail environment into a sort of full “Gucci experience.” But this new interest raises important questions: what is the corporate fashion archive’s role in recording and retelling history? And beyond that, how accessible and visible should a corporate collection (that is inevitably shaped by systemic biases such as racism, classism, sexism, and sizeism be?) I argue, do brands have a moral responsibility to share their full history and make archives accessible to the public? To researchers? Both? At a basic level, the corporate fashion archive is a space for a brand to preserve its story, identify a narrative, and also act as a tool for inspiration. Yet the relevancy of an archive’s holdings reaches beyond any one brand itself. As renowned sociologist Joanne Entwistle explains, “human bodies are dressed bodies.” [2] Fashion and clothing are intimately entangled with people, the body, and as an extension of that, politics, economics, culture, social issues, and issues of the environment and sustainability. A fashion archive, then, is a place to collect, study, and understand those relationships as a space of social, embodied history. Yet, despite recent brand interest in fashion archives, many 32
corporate archives in the United States remain virtually invisible to the average layperson and are also hard to find for scholars of history or fashion. It is even difficult to determine if a company holds an archive at all. Most are only accessible to the brand’s designers that share their walls. A 2017 Society of American Archivists article quotes Pendleton Woolen Mills’s former president, Mort Bishop III, who recognizes their archive’s importance to the brand itself, saying, “Insight to our past gives us foresight to the future.” He describes the archive as “the keeper of our treasured history... It embodies our corporate culture, enabling us to remain who we are yet step forward with exciting innovations.” [3] Indeed, this relationship between the archive and product development is exactly what Fury was referring to when he described the archive as a “petri dish.” Yet, the same article also notes that at the Pendelton archive “access by non-employees is available only by permission of the company President.” [4]
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Without broader access to the archive, the historical narrative of these companies remain fully controlled by the brands themselves, and the way a brand tells its history will undoubtedly be biased and incomplete. A brand must serve the interest of its stakeholders and therefore so will base its collection policy and archive practices on what best supports the bottom line. If a brand’s history is necessarily problematic (consider Pendelton’s history of cultural appropriation, Chanel’s associations with Nazis during World War II and Brooks Brothers history of clothing both slaveholders and enslaved individuals), many aspects of a history might be omitted from the collection and its written history altogether. Historian Jonathan Square in his recent research on Brooks Brothers history of making clothing for enslaved people notes that while some institutions like “universities have started atoning for their connection to slavery and the slave trade, Brooks Brothers, and other for-profit entities, have not.” [5] In an era where there is still much work to be done in combating
racism and addressing the American legacy of slavery, recognizing and investigating American institutions’ roles in this history is vital. Today, the community or media engagement for most American corporate fashion archives is nonexistent. By contrast, many European brands like Yves Saint Laurent, Azzedine Alaia, Gucci, and Ferragamo have more visible archives, which host gallery spaces that function like museums. In the United States, an exception is the Levi Strauss & Co. archive, which has been around for over 30 years (although this is a fraction of the company’s over150-year history). Levi’s company historian, Tracey Panek, regularly engages with different forms of media and attends or hosts various events and conferences to celebrate and educate about the brand’s history. Levi’s headquarters also has a public space at their archives called the Vault Museum that highlights aspects of the company’s long history. There exists a huge missed opportunity in the lack of transparency and lack of education that results from the nonpublic functioning of most archive spaces. Despite these exceptions, the majority of brand archives do not have public-facing archival spaces and as such lack any type of historical transparency. As brands increasingly pool company resources to create, essentially, museums of themselves in the form of company archives, fashion names are buying their spots in history and using the corporate archive as a tool of legitimization. An archivist is not a “passive and impartial guardian,”, because unintentional (and sometimes intentional) biases shape the collecting, preserving, analyzing, display, and use of an archive. [6] A brand’s collection policy alone (the rules they abide by in terms of what objects to seek out and accept or deny in building and maintaining the archive) will be wrought with donor biases and other larger systemic biases. For example, corporate fashion archives tend to encapsulate the clothing of mostly thin, white, famous 34
women. Michel-Rolph Trouillot explains, “Human beings participate in history both as actors and as narrators… At best, history is a story about power, about those who won.” These winners control what and how history is remembered. [7] With recent conversations around addressing white supremacy in the United States, including in the museum, [9] the corporate archive is a critical place to start to unravel the stories of these winners and rethink the narrative that champions thin, white and well-off women.
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As curator Maura Reilly explains, “sexism and racism have become so insidiously woven into the institutional fabric, language, and logic of the mainstream art world that they go almost entirely undetected.” [9] This is true of mainstream fashion and corporations too. Reilly argues that to renegotiate these influences, historians, curators (and I would add archivists) must “be consistently counterhegemonic.” [10] Not only should corporate fashion archives be made accessible to a broader audience, but they should be created, managed, and preserved in a manner strictly “counter hegemonic.” Archives are used by academics and researchers to retell history—that history should be complete in order to be fully understood. There also needs to be more research on the history of the fashion archive itself. Historian Alexandra Walsham writes, “Archives are the factories and laboratories of the historian... the warehouses from which we acquire the materials to build the history we write.” [11] Only when we fully understand history, and the places where history is produced, can we truly learn from it and move forward.
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UTOPIA THROUGH DYSTOPIA: THE FASHIONABLE USURPATION OF POLITICS BY DIOR AND CHANEL BY NOYONIKA SIRCAR “Here’s what I think, fashion isn’t really about clothes. It is about life, go to the street and see it. Everyone can afford fashion on some level and everyone can talk about it. So what else do we say? We can’t talk about flowers and lace and aquamarines.” --Franca Sozzani, former Editor-in-Chief of Vogue Italia [1]
INTRODUCTION Fashion is a social phenomenon. Politics entered the realm of fashion through the front door and has settled ever since. The presence of politics makes fashion a ground for the exchange of information, a conjecture of rhetorics, an influential denominator of rules and also a lucrative transformer of commodities. Through the politicized roles of fashion, fashion has become a channel for exhibiting important semiotics of personal characteristics or ties, for any politician, activist, reformist or for a revolutionary cause. Fashionable political messages gather greater attention and show how much the wearer is absorbed in political propaganda. A similar significance works in the fashion industry, especially on the runways. The themes of fashion shows are layered with manifold meanings and cause a whirlpool of sentiments, beyond the pecuniary value of the garment. The runway is the undisputed ground of recognition of representation and promotion, both by influencing and by being influenced. My research questions are cemented on the palate of power weaved in fashion shows. The linchpin of success of any fashion show is an evocating an array of emotions, edgy or sharp, provocative or heart-warming, essentially anything garnered with attention, to create a long lasting impact. Therefore, the projection, protection 38
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and emancipation of the element of power in fashion shows is paramount. Power is materialised through clothes and symbolically produced by the subsystems (media, social media, magazines, consumers) in the process of defining fashion. Through this research, I argue on fashion shows as a platform of power and the embodiment of politics. I unmask the role of power in fashion shows with the help of case studies of Chanel 2015 Spring/Summer and Dior’s Spring 2018.
CASE STUDY ONE: CHANEL SPRING SUMMER 2015 READY TO WEAR COLLECTION Chanel’s Spring/Summer 2015 Ready-To-Wear show brings out the predicament caused by the undue power that resides in the fashion industry. I aim to look into Chanel’s 2015 show to unwrap the idea of power and the political tone vested in fashion shows. Coco Chanel has been widely acclaimed as the first lady in fashion. Ever since Karl Lagerfeld took over the throne, he took care of the house in his own distinctive way to protect the house and help it flourish. This show sparks serious sentiments and also calls me to rethink how a still unresolved issue like feminism can be treated to serve as a theme for trade. Is this the unanticipated impending fourth wave of feminism? Or is this fashion’s attempt to capitalize on a radical socio political movement? Djurdja Bartlett addresses women by saying, “After all, fashion was one of the social vehicles of a female citizenship, just as the suffragette movement was a political vehicle.” [2] Politics and fashion are both supplementary to each other in nature and precisely offer each other rich visual and narrative spaces for manifestation. In addition to courting controversy and being called a supremacist, body shamer, and Islamophobic while gravely disassociating from the fashion industry’s connection with eating disorders, Karl Lagerfeld did not truly resonate with the theme of feminism. This was clear in his witty choice of feminism as a theme. Even though he was far from being identified as a feminist himself, he understood the commercial potential of the undercurrent of Chanel and feminism. He anticipated the wave of controversies that such a theme could potentially bring, the kind of media attention it would attract, and how it could hold the public in suspense until the next season of shows began. 40
Blooming from the cauldron of feminist movements in 2015, especially Emma Watson’s global “He for She” campaign for the United Nation, Largerfeld’s 2015 Spring Summer ready-to-wear show glorified functionality by addressing women of the world. The jargon of mixed messages overshadowed the true message of the show and got stirring bold statements by feminist groups about whether this was another void marketing play of Chanel to garner attention. The linchpin of the strategy was not to carry ahead a progressive message for women, but instead to use feminist themes for a clever fashion marketing ploy. The show was held in the Paris Grand Palais, which had been transformed into a photographic facsimile street complete with puddles. The setting evoked an atmosphere of protest, linking the ready-to-wear collection to Chaka Khan’s 1978 song “I am Every Woman” from 1978, to the undercurrent of Coco Chanel, who tied feminism to fashion. Keeping in mind the theme, the show was reminiscent of women’s first air of liberation and employment in the 60s. The models had purses with messages like “je ne suis pas la solde” or “I am not for sale” which took the audience back to the 1960s, when deep-seated transformations were allowing the entry of more women into the sphere of paid roles. The end of the show witnessed the same models marching and chanting slogans. Led by Cara Delegvine and Gisele Bundchen, other models marched down together with fashionable faux politicized slogans like “Ladies First,” “Women’s Rights Are More Than Alright” and “History Is Her Story.” Reflecting Karl Largerfeld’s sense of humour, some of the slogans screamed “Make fashion not war” or “Tweed is better than tweet.” The clarion call was a megaphone, with Cara Delegvine shouting “Who are we?” and other models answering with traditional protest cries.
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A myriad of sentiments were touched on and the
media collected responses from everyone – from the feminist groups to the fashion panellists. Surprisingly, from a consumer perspective, this satire worked: Chanel reported a 6.24 billion business in 2015 with a 23% profit margin. But then, are we really challenging the position of this superstructure or are we feeding it? Feminism is fashionable but that cannot be used to tag expensive clothes and sell them. The idea of fashion and feminism is disruptive. This helps me analyse the fashionable propaganda behind the show when accessories and the bags, particularly made for this show, had political messages attached, to ensure the afterlife of its message lasts. Thus, this can also be seen as a way to capitalize emotions when fashion is so connected to the dialogue between the commodity and the consumer. CASE STUDY 2: DIOR 2020 SPRING SHOW Dior has been a champion of feminism ever since it was reborn after Maria Grazia Chiuri stepped in as its first female creative director for the first time in the 70 year history of the house. Chiuri’s Dior debut had a kickstart with a slogan t-shirt that read “We Should All Be Feminists” from a Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie TED talk. The 2016 show of Dior received a unison of plaudits and cheers from millennials as Maria Grazia Chiuri proved her prowess with the collection of slogan T-shirts and its feminist tagline. Unlike the case of Chanel, the media frenzy around Dior was accepted as a positive change and spread of ideas. Dior’s show made a point that rooted in the minds of women and connected them. The collection’s success was the afterlife of the shirts that long remained visible. Taking an inspiration from the archive “Support Miniskirt,” Dior’s collection resisted the air of pants and brought back a new silhouette of ballerinas to fashion. Fashion is about 42
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representation, and the success of Dior’s reinvention etched itself into people’s hearts received a warm reception from the media. With slogans like “We all should be feminists” and “It’s a No, No, No,” Maria Grazia has glorified the relevance of the brand by clipping it to the modern issues of women. This brings me to the difference in the communication of political messages. Chanel’s show, which was also founded on feminism, made a joke of the theme and was met with unforeseen rebukes. However, the same doesn’t apply to Dior. The show’s message was profoundly feminist and brought people together for a common cause. The subversive attempt to speak about the plight of women, coming from Dior’s first woman creative director, united craftsmanship with a cause. The spell lasted with Instagram hashtags and Twitter trends, and the brand told the world that fashion is not deaf to social causes. Again, politics has always been carried ahead with fashion as a social vehicle. Here, the idea of politics is negotiated but not a part of it. The method was traditional but the message was thought provoking. CONCLUSION
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This research aimed at the concept of politicized fashion, with runway as a medium. The Chanel show is a clear example of political infiltration and dilution, and the Dior show is an example of a pressing political infiltration, a ripple result of fashion’s contribution to the a new wave of feminism and resistance to oppression. In both the shows, fashion is commodified and used as a social and political vehicle. Thus, politics and fashion intersect. Therefore, the representative and the communicative power of fashion shows must be treated with calculative care. In the wake of the pandemic, fashion consciousness has become the call of the hour. Rather than being subjected to resistance, I believe that with the growing fast paced overnight fashion can be judiciously used to communicate by repurposing the role of fashion.
FASHION IS A PRIVILEGE. BY USURY SACRAMENTO
Lost and still not found, I sometimes stop and think if this is fo Doing this since my sophomore year of high school. My first official job at Barneys New York at the age of 16. Fashion, an elitist career. A leader in pollution. Unpaid internships, and paid connections. Fashion.
Being the only person of color in my Parsons classroom.
Knowing the small chance I had of being here. Knowing many who deserved this opportunity as well, yet never A person who grew up in the projects. NYCHA. A person considered a minority. Discrimination. A person who knows pursuing art is a privilege.
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or me.
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r received it.
Limited resources and a lack of support. Being in places that weren’t meant to be for me, up until now.
Here I am. Standing in front of a classroom, explaining issues that affect Bl I am not privileged. Yes, I am privileged. I’m here, aren’t I? In this classroom. A small amount of power, yet a massive one.
Fashion, a form of systematic oppression. No longer where I onc now. I was questioned multiple times and also left them in shock
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lack, Indigenous, People of color, to the people enabling it. No,
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ce was, yet having to work 10 times harder for what I have k several times.
The Research Lab of Ambiguous Futu
We are living in uncertain times, some might even say, ambiguous tim Disposable Things. Our technology is becoming smaller and cheaper underpaid labor that we view as disposable. We no longer care abou impact is on the world. We are creating so much waste, and have n ourselves?
We produce Future Heirloom
They are designed with the uncertain future in mind. They are design forms. They can be repaired to restore the future use. They can be r can be upcycled to transform its initial form and/or function. 50
urology is concerned about the future. BY SDK
mes. The Internet of Things has evolved into the Internet of to produce. We are buying fast fashion made by cheap, unsafe and ut WHO makes our clothes, HOW they are made, or WHAT their no way of processing it. What is the future we are creating for
Yes, we create objects. But, we want to change our relationship with those objects by rethinking our values around care, production, and materials. An heirloom is an object that is traditionally passed down in a family. Sometimes that object can still be used, like jewelry, dishes, etc. But sometimes that object can no longer be used, and it is retained for its sentimental value. What if we brought that sense of sentimental value to all of our objects. What if we treated everything with care, from a t-shirt to a wedding dress.
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ned to be valued and cared for. That value and care can take many recycled to become material for another future heirloom. Or they
Future Heirlooms are concerned with our relationship to nature and our environment.
Future heirlooms are a way to question and poke at things. They ask us to rethink nature. They ask us to rethink the body. They ask us to rethink what heirlooms are. They ask us to rethink how they are treated. They ask us to rethink how they function. A Future Heirloom is made with tenderness and care. It teaches you about labor. It teaches you about preservation, recycling, upcycling, and repurposing.
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At the Research Lab of Ambiguous Futurology, we are not trying to change how garments are made, but rather to put that labor at the forefront.
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A Future Heirloom, like any heirloom, demands care. We want you to care about the labor. About the impact of the materials, labor and life of the Future Heirloom. We are trying to change how we treat the objects in our lives.
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RACED BODIES + AN ‘OTHERED’ EXPERIENCE
FASHION OUTLIERS: AFROPUNK AND THE EMBODIMENT OF RESISTANCE BY DOMINIQUE NORMAN
Fashion is used as a tool of communication, to convey messages of our public and private selves, to decide what we make visible and the ways in which we choose to do so. Fashion also communicates messages in the literal sense, such as political statements like “Make America Great Again” or “The Future is Female.” However, for those whose visibility of their public and private self is not simply navigated through clothing choices, those who are visibility seen as ‘other’ due to their appearance deviating from white, heteronormative, able-bodied, and/or thin—all conditions of Western standards of beauty—fashion becomes a tool of control. Sociologist Erving Goffman invokes the term “impression management,” which is further contextualized by Emma Tarlo in Visibily Muslim. Tarlo explains how people that are visibly categorized as ‘other’ use fashion to achieve different effects. She describes it as, “the process by which people seek to manage the impressions they exude, thereby influencing the way others respond to them.” [1] Impression management through fashion allows the individual to have some control over the way their identity is viewed by others and often allows them to navigate spaces safely and successfully, often being one of the only facets of their appearance they can control. Fashion as a tool of impression management has become increasingly relevant due to the heightened awareness of violence against marginalized groups, such as transgender women of color, Muslim, Asian, and Black communities. Tarlo describes how the visibility of being considered an ‘other’ the
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arouses suspicion, leading to “public anxiety and condemnation which easily turns to racist abuse.” [2] Navigating the world in an othered body requires impression management using fashion to communicate messages of belonging. This can take the form of cultural assimilation, dress codes, or even just conveying social status. Fashion serves as a tool of communication, but in this way, it also serves as a survival mechanism in navigating daily systems of oppression and violence. For the Afro-Punk, their experience as ‘other’ exists not only in their visible race and other intersectional factors such as class, body, gender, sexuality, but also in the subcultural aesthetic. The first academic reference of AfroPunks is written by Greg Tate in “Of Afropunks and Other Anarchic Signifiers of Contrary Negritude,” where he discusses the intricacies of the subcultural identity: The 1980s and 1990s would also see the advent of the black punk rocker, a species recently anthropologized in James Spooner’s epochal documentary Afro-Punk. This group was shown to have its own peculiar set of behaviors around the thickets of racism, racial identity, Afrocentricity, class alienation, class privilege, class betrayal and interracial dating, black rage, black pleasure, and black feminism. [3]
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The Afro-Punk subculture, while unfortunately lacking in academic research, is believed to be a product of 1970s punk music performed by Black musicians. The rise in visibility of the subculture is widely credited to the Afropunk music festival, created in 2005 by James Spooner. [4] While the space of the music festival has changed drastically since its grassroots beginnings, its subcultural ethos of creating a safe space for Afro-Punks to use fashion as a creative outlet has remained the same. Many who utilize the festival for this purpose do not have
freedom to do so in their day-to-day lives due to issues of safety and surveillance. In a video produced by online news outlet AJ+ titled “The Very Black History Of Punk Music,” musician and director Sacha Jenkins mentions the undercurrent of white privilege associated with the punk subculture. “I can’t change the color of my skin. There is a level of privilege that goes with ‘I’m going to put a safety pin through my nose and dye my hair green for three years, and then I’m going to clean up and put on a suit and get a corporate job.’ We don’t really have that luxury.” [5]
Musician Honeychild Coleman follows up Jenkins’ statement, noting, “you also get cred for having punk years. But in my experience, working in the corporate world, I can’t let everybody know what I do outside of work because it could cost me my job.” [6] This conflict of visibility, of negotiating various positions of marginalization simultaneously is especially pertinent for the Afro-Punk. Often at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities, actively choosing to use fashion in a way that may be read as further othering you from social norms heightens the pressure of just picking out an outfit for the day. Sacha Jenkins summarizes this, stating, “when you’re Black, you’re punk all the time.” [7] The power of reclaiming fashion and using it as a tool of resistance is one of the staples of the Afro-Punk subculture. Janice Miller describes this in Fashion and Music by stating how Black music created a formula, and fashion is the outlet:
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Here, they might be seen to take power not only with regard to their own part in the music industry and thus conceptually over both cultural spaces— establishing some autonomy for themselves— and cultural identities… This can equally apply to their attitudes to bodies shaped by a celebration of physical attributes that had previously been open to ridicule. As a result, the power of fashion to symbolically resist the limitations placed upon a particular group, and to be in and of itself confrontational, was established early on in music. Equally, the role that fashion and clothing could play in maintaining and articulating a cultural identity was also in place. It should be no surprise, then, that in writing on both music and fashion, black music has been identified as a place where these two forms of expression powerfully intersect. [8]
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For the purpose of this research, which was originally conducted in 2018 for my graduate thesis, I employed the term ‘space’, expanding on Susan Kaiser’s use of the term in her 2012 book Fashion and Cultural Studies. I expand the term to reflect a combination of time (context of the present tense) and place (social and geographical location), which is at all times relevant to fashion. It is particularly relevant to the ways in which fashion is used as a tool of resistance, communication, control, and impression management for marginalized groups. For the AfroPunk, space can dictate when you can actively display membership of the subculture. The Afropunk festival serves as one space where they can choose to embody and perform their identity to its entire extent without fear of consequence, harassment, limitation, punishment, silence, or discrimination.
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SHARP & SHARP II SERIES “LOCAL BLACK TAILORS AND STYLISTS” Captured on 35mm and 120 film BY ISAIAH WINTERS
The SHARP images were set in Baltimore, Maryland, in locations less likely to be chosen as backdrops for a conceptual fashion series. Divided into two sections, SHARP is set at a local diner and SHARP II at a locallyowned Black restaurant. This series of images plays around with spoke language and the notion of Black men’s sartorial flair. I wanted to recreate that feeling of pride and agency, as I witnessed Black men in my community dressing up and showing off. The models involved in this series are part of Baltimore’s creative scene, using fashion as a tool to tackle sociopolitical issues. In SHARP II especially, as opposed to leaning into an Afro-futuristic aesthetic, I had the subjects use the elaborate mural featuring greenery and sprawling fields as a backdrop. In doing so, I created an alternative history or narrative in which these Black men could have been landowners discussing day-to-day life, furthering a more significant conversation around reading Black imagery and the perception of the Black community. -
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CHALLENGING THE ‘FASHIONABLE’ SILHOUETTE: ARGENTINIAN LINGERIE DESIGNERS BY LORENA PÉREZ
For decades, the fashion industry has defined fundamental elements of culture including standards of beauty and “ideal” body types. Today, these beauty ideals are being challenged as people demand better representation of a diversity of body sizes, the majority of which do not fit within the extremely limited confines of long-standing stereotypes. Such a change takes time because of well established and engrained cultural expectations. In the Argentine fashion market, the need to reformulate size tables to consider different body shapes is especially important considering that current sizing is inadequate and incomplete for Argentine women’s bodies. This lack led to the emergence of independent underwear designers with online platforms available for direct sales that solve everyday wardrobe situations, such as wearing bras according to the actual measurement of the bust. In Buenos Aires it is not possible to buy bras by cup size and band size, as bras only come in a single digit numerical size. “I make a constant modification regarding sizes because it is not about selling regardless of the final result. I am interested in working on products that can be used well, that fit well and last. That is why I offer a personalized service, I ask for the measurements and adjust the size to the client “, says Clari Nociti, head of Clarabella, a lingerie brand that is distinguished by a size chart that ranges from small to extra-large. “I can’t understand another way of working that is not from inclusion and respect. Most brands discriminate
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against different people who do not fit into the status quo, affecting the self-perception of women and leaving them outdated. 70% of the population has problems wearing what they like, because there are no sizes for more than 30% of the population, which significantly affects the self-esteem of the rest,” explains Maru Arabéhèty from Elle Van Tok. The designer started her brand with nine sizes of bras that she customized with the measurements of her wearers. Thus, she reached 15 sizes made with European sizing and today offers models with adjustable strap and a perfected cup that adapts to the volume. Another business model in plus and inclusive size lingerie is that of Lucía Righetti. With Santa Lucía she wanted to create a brand of made-to-measure lingerie. It seemed absurd to her that despite the fact that there are many different body types, everyone must adapt to a limited and scant size chart imposed by the market. “Through personalized design, I was able to dedicate myself to each person, and her body in particular, so that the models could better adapt to their activities and personal tastes. Different materials and models are always emerging. If I did not work on demand I would not have the freedom to explore.”
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Plus-size bloggers and fat activists drive and challenge the status quo of the fashion system. These women not only have practical dress needs, but they want to participate fully in fashion as a form of expression. Women who wear plus sizes now have greater access to fashion products and interact through new online spaces that challenge and modify the established system. The evolution of the gaze towards the female body is being defined in the fourth wave of feminism.
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While the global fashion system is attempting to be more inclusive, the Argentine market has already found success. By utilizing a different system of sizing, Argentine designers are adapting to the fashion needs of a larger population of consumers.
MARCH 8 BY MAUREEN MUSE
Artworks for sale by artist, all profits donated to: Pandeo - The Multisocial Venue for Affective Health contact: maureenmuse@gmail.com
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Still fountain water dyed red; a symbol of blood spilled, reflected by the afternoon sun. Sitting high, gripping the thin metal edge, carefully looking backwards to over 50,000 women moving forward. March 8, 2020. Women’s Day. Mexico City. Boots hit the ground. A veiled face, clad in black descends swiftly and dips into the ocean of bodies. Tenia 7 anos y la mataron. She was 7 years old and she was killed, written on the city walls. 7 years old. Smash the advertisements. Spit in the lattes. Destroy the surveillance cameras. Burn the skyscrapers. Bang the cross walks. Today come out and meet in the streets. 7 years old. Seven years! Murdered.
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And tomorrow the streets are still. Walking to work past unrecognizable faces that belong to the eyes. Eyes under black fabric. Eyes watching. Ready to take back what is theirs.
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GENDER + PERFORMATIVITY
BOYS WEAR BLUE, GIRLS WEAR PINK: MOLOTOV-FASHION & CULTURAL RESISTANCE IN BRAZILIAN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY BY HENRIQUE GRIMALDI FIGUEREDO
POLITCS AND GENDER AUTHORITARIANISM [THROUGH FASHION] “Boys wear blue, girls wear pink.” It is with this phrase that in January 2019, the newly appointed Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights, Damares Alves, summarizes what she calls the “new phase” of Brazilian politics. [1] At that moment, the only woman in the first echelon of a government that has been characterized by the mitigation of difference and the incessant reaffirmation of a heteronormative family and moral ideal, the minister’s declaration establishes two major propositions. First, it reifies gender to two unique possible coordinates, reducing the subject’s experience to the roles directly associated with biological sex, and; second, it reaffirms the gender component to a direct association with fashion, or rather, to the socially consolidated paradigms of gender roles in fashion that condition their community presentation to very well-established coordinates, in which it is acceptable for only girls to wear pink, and boys to wear blue. Fashion, in this sense, manifests, in fact, a power [2] in the regulation of bodies and subjectivities, providing very specific and conditioned routes of existence that is understood ideologically or socially as possible or acceptable. [3][4] In defining what is normalized, this kind of idealized behavior - through fashion - will fragment and hierarchize the subjects, condemning uncoordinated existences and subjectivities to ostracism and social disqualification. No wonder Brazil is - paradoxically the country that murders the most transgender people in the world and also the one that most consumes their image through pornography: an inherent tension between 90
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submission to the accepted norm and the impulse of individual - and not standardized - desire. THE BODY: A BATTLEFIELD The body is a space for struggles and the central component that manifests tensions and deviations from norms. [5] The restriction of bodies - habits, clothing - corroborates a reapplicable notion of a certain civilizational process. [6] What is experienced in Brazil at this moment is precisely a new effort of internal colonization of the Other (the strange among us), producing existential molds based on a politicalreligious logic, which defines and civilizes ‘barbarism’, that is, everything that intended to be dissident. The norm seeks to conform subjectivities; it exerts power in social macro-structures - removing, for example, gender debates from schools or even through massive television advertising - concentrating the discursiveness of what is possible / acceptable as a body, desire, behavior and clothing. If on the one hand there is an evident civilizing project (in a politicalideological sphere), there is, in opposition, the elaboration of heretical experiences, that is, the emergence of what Wouters (2004) establishes as informalization of social life. [7] The informalization is about relaxing emotional and behavioral constraints in social interactions, and points to a rupture with patterns. Informalization as a complex (re)codification process manifests itself, sometimes, through a carnivalization, a suspension of rules that allows other bodies and subjectivities. Therefore, if there is a civilizing project, there are also alternative processes of disruption of the social life, which find in fashion - as perhaps in no other cultural phenomenon - their material means of manifestation.
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DISSIDENCE HETEROTOPIES Fashion, especially that developed experimentally and alien to the specifications of the large market, assumes in this context a potential for resistance and definition of reexistences. [8] This definition of the norm and gender is challenged in Brazil by fashion designers and fashion collectives managed by queer people - transgender people, agenders, gender fluids, gays and lesbians, etc. - that is, active members of society although in disconnection with the norms currently enacted by the government. In a social space where only, either boys or girls clothing can exist, brands like Daspu (created by a collective of prostitutes from São Paulo) and Vicente Perrota (whom only uses queer people in his production and fashion shows) compete in the practical world for other possible manifestations of sexuality and different forms of clothing: a way of writing their existences in the social imaginary, in the city, and in institutions. These deviant bodies are promoting an idea of fashion and desire that transcend the current reductionist and subjugating dualization. Similar to Daspu and Perrota, the Debauxe [9] brand, idealized by Noah Mancini, mobilizes dissent existences in a festive and affective space, in which carnivalization is a fundamental break with this [new] civilizational project. Noah’s brand manifests itself not only in clothes but also in the construction of a lifestyle expressed as an eternal fête nocturne (images 1-4). In this sense, fashion can be both a photograph of the social imaginary and a response to it; whereupon the disruptive fashion has a certain premonitory and emancipatory potential in outlining others ways of existing. In a country of continental proportions - where there is a state project that aims to disqualify the minorities - the aesthetics of creators such as Daspu, Perrota and especially Debauxe become Molotov-experiences, sublevaciones [10], pointing to a new trend in Brazilian underground fashion. A revolution born from youth, this DIY queerpunk explodes from sounds and voices of marginalized and 96
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peripheral groups, promoting a constant rewriting of culture as a social practice. In mocking attempts at ideological imprisonment, this guerrilla fashion not only embraces the displaced people constantly attacked by the system, but also promotes their own communities with security and emotional support. The molotov-fashion have been acting in a social redemption in the flawed Latin American democracies.
THE HOUSEWIFE BY ITALA AGUILERA
When my grandmother married my grandfather, she gave up her life, her desires, and her freedom in order to be a housewife. Marriage was (and probably still is) thought of as just a ritual you had to go through, a common practice, a simple transaction; it was necessary to put on that dress and show your family and friends you were part of the system, just like them. When my grandmother put on that wedding dress, she didn’t know the real implications marriage would have on her life. She didn’t know she was going to become prisoner of her house. In what I believe was an attempt to keep her sanity (or perhaps was just a manifestation of her repressed creative impulses) she started compulsively collecting dolls, figurines, and various objects; up to the point where one couldn’t walk through her room because they completely covered the walls and the floor. I always thought of those figurines as a form of resistance: if she had to be confined in the household; she would slowly invade the house, quietly reclaiming it. My grandmother passed away many years ago, but the figurines remain. This wedding dress is my way of telling her story. I collected some of her objects and reproduced them with a material that I believe to be sacred: ceramics. I crocheted them together with wool yarn. The handmade processes and materials used take the dress to a sublime dimension, like an altar made for my grandmother.
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MIRRORMASQUE BY LILIA YIP MirrorMasque, a fashion project by designer and artist Lilia Yip, takes its name from the surreal film MirrorMask by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, which tells the story of a girl who feels trapped in her life with the family circus, longing to escape. Through clothing design and fashion photography, the project explores specific historical and contemporary uses of body adornment as symbols of freedom and rebellion. In Chinese, the characters ‘ ‘ ’ meaning the self and ‘
’ (zi you) mean ‘freedom’. ’ the ability to be.
The use of these characters in placement prints within the collection call to mind protest t-shirts such a Katherine Hamnett’s iconic anti-nuclear slogan t-shirt of 1984, as well as corporate uniforms branded with company logos - items of clothing that have used text to respectively express or mask the individual self. Michael Godfrey writes in his article,“The End of the Queue: Hair as a Symbol in Chinese History,” published in the Chinese Heritage Quarterly: “Hair has a way of personalising history. The Normans wore theirs short at the time of WiIliam the Conqueror, which is said to have prompted the English to grow theirs quite long. Both long locks and bald craniums have demonstrated political power and its absence.” [1] Hair has at varying times been a physical expression of submission, subjugation, identification or rebellion. In China during the early decades of the Qing dynasty (1644 – 1912), the braided queue was a focus of resistance to 11
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Manchu dominance and cutting one’s own queue became a symbol of political revolution in the last few years of imperial rule.
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Throughout MirrorMasque, the words ‘ ’ are playfully interwoven with elements of hair, manifesting as digital prints and fashion details that allow the wearer to contemplate their own freedom, its tenuous existence and how easily its symbols can be removed or displaced.
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REFERENCES AND CREDITS SYSTEMS: CRITIQUE INSTITUTIONALIZED MEMORY Image courtesy of Asato Kitamura CEREBRAL CORTEX: A NOSTALGIC JOURNEY OF MEMORY WITH MY MOTHER Images courtesy of Asato Kitamura LA MODA LATINOAMERICANA: FROM CASTA PAINTINGS TO COLONIAL STEREOTYPES Image 1: Courtesy of Mailye Matos Lopez Images 2-4: Meisel, Steven, Linda Evangelista, Vogue Italia, February 1989. [1] Chris Kortright, “Colonization and Identity,” accessed February 14, 2021, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/chris-kortright-colonization-andidentity. [2] “La Raza En Los Cuadros De Castas De La Nueva España,” ADN Cultura, May 31, 2020, https://adncultura.org/la-raza-en-los-cuadros-de-castasde-la-nueva-espana. [3] “Castizo, Za,” in Diccionario De La Lengua Española, 23.ª Ed (Real Academia Española, 2020), https://dle.rae.es/castizo. [4] Regina Root and Mariselle Meléndez,“The Latin American Fashion Reader,” in The Latin American Fashion Reader (Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers, 2005), pp. 17-30. THE POWER OF THE ARCHIVE: (RE)TELLING HISTORICAL NARRATIVES [1] Alexander Fury, “In Fashion, the Beauty (and Challenge) of Looking Back.” New York Times, 2017. [2] Joanne Entwistle, The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Social Theory. (Oxford: Polity Press), 2015. 31. [3] Richard Hobbs, “Repository Spotlight: Pendleton Woolen Mills Archives,” Society of American Archivists, 2017. [4] Ibid. [5] Jonathan Michael Square, “Opinion: A Stain on an All-American Brand: How Brooks Brothers Once Clothed Slaves,” Vestoj. [6] Alexandra Walsham, “The Social History of the Archive,” 2016, pg. 10.
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[7] Michel-Rolph Trouillot. Silencing the Past. 2015, pg. 21. [8] A recent article documented the whiteness of museum collections. Even in the Palais Galliera in Paris, which Vanessa Friedman points out is “one of the largest and most extraordinary collections of fashion in the world,” out of 200,000 objects, only “77 pieces of clothing were created by Black designers.” (Vanessa Friedman, “The Incredible Whiteness of the Museum Fashion Collection,” New York Times. 2020.) [9] Maura Reilly. Curatorial Activism. 2018, pg. 21. [10] Reilly, pg. 21. [11] Walsham, pg. 9. UTOPIA THROUGH DYSTOPIA: THE FASHIONABLE USURPATION OF POLITICS BY DIOR AND CHANEL Images 1-3: Chanel via Getty. Image 4: Dior via Huffington Post. [1] Djurdja Bartlett, “Fashion and Politics,” Yale University Press, 2019. [2] Ibid. FASHION IS A PRIVILEGE Images courtesy of Usury Sacramento SDK Images courtesy of Sasha de Koninck
SYSTEMS: RESISTANCE RACED BODIES + AN ‘OTHERED’ EXPERIENCE Image: Winters, Isaiah. Local Black Tailors and Stylists, SHARP & SHARP II SERIES, Baltimore.
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FASHION OUTLIERS: AFROPUNK AND THE EMBODIMENT OF RESISTANCE Images: Williams, Diahann. Afropunk Brooklyn, 2018. August 25-26, 2018. Brooklyn, New York. Williams, Diahann. Afropunk Brooklyn, 2017. August 26-27, 2017. Brooklyn, New York.
REFERENCES AND CREDITS [1] Emma Tarlo. Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. [2] Ibid. [3] Tate, “Of Afropunks and Other Anarchic Signifiers of Contrary Negritude,” in Bourgeois to Boojie: Black Middle-Class Performances, edited by Vershawn Ashanti Young and Bridget Harris Tsemo. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central. [4] James Spooner, dir., Afro-Punk, 2003, California. [5] Sana Saeed, The Very Black History Of Punk Music, produced by Al Jazeera Media Network. http://www.ajplus.net/english/. 2018 [6] Ibid. [7] Ibid. [8] Janice Miller, Fashion and Music. London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central. SHARP & SHARP II SERIES Images: Winters, Isaiah. Local Black Tailors and Stylists. SHARP & SHARP II SERIES, Baltimore. Courtesy of Isaiah Winters FASHION DESIGNERS WHO REALLY RESPECT WOMEN AND DISRUPT THE SYSTEM Images: Courtesy of Lorena Pèrez MARCH 8 Images: Muse, Maureen. March 8, c- print , 8x10 in., 2021. Courtesy of Maureen Muse
GENDER + PERFORMATIVITY Image: Thaysa Paulo. A noiva [The Bride], Courtesy of Debauxe. Model: Lady Thusa. BOYS WEAR BLUE, GIRLS WEAR PINK: MOLOTOV-FASHION & CULTURAL RESISTANCE IN BRAZILIAN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY Image 1: Courtesy of Henrique Grimaldi Figueredo Images 2-3: Xzmcrz, Do you love Brazil’s Carnival? Courtesy of Debauxe. Model: Noah Mancini. Image 4: Almeida, Bianca. Yes, nós temos [Yes, we have it]. Courtesy of Debauxe. Model: Noah Mancini. Image 5: Mancini, Noah. A última gladiadora [The last gladiator]. Courtesy of Debauxe. Model: Lady Thusa.
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[1] Madov, Natasha (translated by). “Boys Wear Blue And Girls Wear Pink,” Says Human Rights Minister. Folha de São Paulo, 01/04/2019. Available: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/brazil/2019/01/boyswear-blue-and-girls-wear-pink-says-human-rights-minister.shtml [2] Foucault, M. (1971). The Order of Things. New York: Vintage Books. [3] Butler, J. (2006). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge. [4] Preciado, P. (2018). Countersexual Manifest. New York: Columbia University Press. [5] Langman, L. (2008). Punk, Porn and Resistance: Carnivalization and the Body in Popular Culture. Current Sociology, 56(4): pp. 657–677. [6] Elias, N. (2000). The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. London: Wiley. [7] Wouters, C. (2004). Sex and Manners: Female Emancipation in the West 1890-2000. London: Sage. [8] Granata, F. (2017). Experimental Fashion: Performance Art, Carnival and the Grotesque Body. London: I.B. Tauris. [9] The brand name alludes to the Portuguese word deboche, in English debauchery. [10] In George Didi-Huberman sense, sublevaciones as revolutionary seeds. THE HOUSEWIFE Images courtesy of Itala Aguilera MIRRORMASQUE Images courtesy of Lilia Yip
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[1] Godfrey, M.R. (2011) “The End of the Queue: Hair as a Symbol in Chinese History,” Chinese Heritage Quarterly, 27 (September). http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/features.php?searchterm=027_queue. inc&issue=027.
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