F O R M F O L L O W S F U NCTION BY Mia Pattillo & Nick Roblee-Strauss ILLUSTRATION Leslie Benavides DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt
Overshadowed by her own sweep
of the Grammys, Billie Eilish walked the red carpet this past January with the lower third of her face hidden. Her slime-green, oversized Gucci pajama set was completed by a sheer patterned mask, giving her the ultimate 'bad guy' look. With a nod to the surgical face masks that have been increasingly used to combat contagious disease in Asia and Europe, air pollution in Australia, and facial recognition in Hong Kong, Eilish alternatively donned the mask as a marker of high fashion. By no means is Eilish the first to uncouple the mask’s aesthetic from its practical usage. At Paris Fashion Week last September, Cardi B turned heads with her ski-styled face mask made of opal cut black glass set in silver, exposing only her eyes. The mask took the company CoutureMask 36 hours to make. CoutureMask's customized masks cost anywhere from $3,000 to $7,000 and have been worn by Rihanna, Future, and French Montana. Virgil Abloh’s streetwear label Off-White also offered $135 face masks with graphic prints as part of a limited collection, which sold out in days. Designer Marine Serre often highlights doomsday themes in her pieces: several 'apocalypse chic' couture masks are featured in her 2020 collection, which specifically addresses notions of survival in a looming violent future. Much of the collection is constructed from vintage fabrics to evoke an imagined world where resources are limited— the body is protected in layers of militaristic wrapping, while jewelry, fur, and feather embellishment persist. Here, the mask becomes euphemism for the myriad environmental conditions that are today’s crisis and tomorrow’s imagined realities. Even within traditions that have long-practiced face-covering, the mask on the red carpet seems to signal that survival is as chic as (if not more than) exposure. MaisonArtC, a Moroccan fashion collective, has long used face coverings to obscure and androgenize their models’ faces. But the company’s face coverings have recently manifested in new frequencies with blatant nods to the surgical mask, as beaded gowns are paired with equally elaborate muzzles. In a recent Instagram post by the collective, a mask blooming with silk and beaded flowers reads: “WE WILL BE GOOD.”—a statement that may refer to both the air-purifying qualities of nature and the precaution of the mask which so much hope is placed upon. Luxury face masks are increasing in popularity all across the fashion world, from brands like A Bathing APE to Louis Vuitton to Heron Preston. But designers not only exploit the face mask as aesthetically appealing—it is symbolism that is at the crux of their mission. In fashion and streetwear, scarcity often goes hand in hand with hype. Supreme is one company that has harnessed this tactic: its reputation is built on maintaining product scarcity, channeling collaborations with other brands or designers and limited releases of odd accessories. Now, mask-shopping takes on a dystopian role, as communities across the world scramble for a once-39-cent piece of paper while the elite don masks of finer materials ranging from linen to mesh to jewels, constitutive of streetwear and high fashion culture. Luxury branding and design juxtaposes against the mask’s utility and function as a political flash point: though current media is dominated by surgical mask shortages in the wake of coronavirus, such masks have long been worn in Hong Kong by
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SCIENCE+TECH
HOW FACE MASKS AS A FASHION TREND POINTS TO INESCAPABLE PERIL
political protesters hiding their identities, as well as in Australia to help citizens breathe in poor air quality after fires. While celebrities have been known to flaunt their clout with clothes signaling abundance and a life of leisure, these masks may now mark an embrace of the treacherous, a fetishization of imminent threats. In the face of fascism, air pollution, and an epidemic, the mask carries with it a sobering message: the world is in danger. Through the casual gesture of donning a mask, its typical wearer evokes something potentially sinister. But for the elite wealthy, a bejeweled mask points to an ignorant fascination with peril, the privilege of display without exposure to the danger itself. +++ Though the fashion world has only recently adopted the mask as a trend, surgical masks have long been used in hospitals and by factory workers. The general public first began using them in East Asia during the 1918 rise of the Spanish influenza pandemic, which eventually killed 23 million people in Japan and 50 million people worldwide. These early commercial face masks were made of cloth stretched over metal frames tied to the face. Sales surged once again during another flu outbreak in 1938, creating a precedent for wearing face masks during any outbreak. The most recent spike in mask sales occurred during the 2002 SARS epidemic in Hong Kong, which caused 774 deaths worldwide. The softer frameless masks used today, whose precursors entered the market in 1948, are made of woven cloth. These masks are designed to protect the outside world from the mouth-borne germs of the wearer, whether that be surgeon or sick person, not the other way around. They serve as barrier protection against large droplets, but do not effectively filter small particles from the air or prevent leakage around the edge of the mask. The reality is that the typically white or blue surgical mask, used in a multitude of contexts today, provides its wearer with little protection from environmental viruses. The typical mask wearers of the 20th century were
the mildly sick, who hoped to avoid passing on illness to others on the morning train. But the mask became a normalized part of everyday attire following the swine flu outbreak in 2009, when it was expected that everyone would wear a mask. A mask subculture has now become widely accepted throughout Japan, where people even wear masks purely for the aesthetic, known as “date masuku,” (“date” means “just for show”). In 2011, a Japanese news site that surveyed people in Shibuya, Tokyo reported that 30 percent of mask-wearers wore them for reasons unrelated to sickness. Many use it to accentuate certain features deemed attractive: emphasize the eyes, make the face look smaller, hide poor skin, or lend an air of “mystery,” as one surveyed high school girl said. The mask can also allow its wearer to move through public space without having to bother putting on makeup. Others point to its psychological effects, as it creates a social firewall between self and society that allows for better focus in school or work, hiding emotions, or avoiding gender-based harassment on trains. Regardless of whether the mask is used for beauty or psychology, all of these utilizations hinge upon its original purpose of serving as a physical barrier. And as with any trend, companies have found ways to create and market masks that extend beyond the functional and into the fashionable: boutique stores in Tokyo’s Harajuku neighborhood offer a wide range of options beyond the typical white or blue masks, from zebra-print, to anime designs, to K-pop inspired masks, to black leather ones with studs on them. Most recently, Instagram influencers have used the mask to turn the outbreak into an opportunity to post photoshoots under the guise of raising awareness. While the intention behind most of these influencers is to supposedly encourage their followers to adopt good hygiene habits and support those affected by the coronavirus, the self-promoting nature of modeling a mask diminishes their altruism. Co-opting the aesthetics of crisis, models caption their seductive poses in masks with the hashtag #coronavirus. Instagrammer Jada Hai Phong Nguyen accompanied her black mask with tight checkered black-and-white
06 MARCH 2020
