One of my male housemates told me the other day, in a conciliatory manner, that he “quite likes” fashion because “sometimes it’s pretty”. Now, as an English student and Gossip Girl glutton, I’m fairly accustomed to my interests being considered trivialised and discounted; notified that they’re not merely insignificant but even ridiculous. So you may not get the point of poetry, or believe in Chuck Bass as a psychological creation of genius. They’re your opinions; everyone’s entitled to them. Mine, for instance, is that yours are wrong. But somehow that’s even more wrong. While I recognise lamentingly the deficiencies gaping in my own awareness of the world, those who claim indifference to fashion do so as a badge of superiority, a praise-worthy ignorance, and implicitly censure those who care about it. In the wake of Tanya Gold’s provoking article, ‘Why I hate fashion’, I thought I would try and explain why I can’t.
In The September Issue, a documentary which leads us down corridors lined with rails of thousand-pound pieces of hand-made couture into the New York headquarters of Vogue magazine, we watch as (the dragon-lady, the devil in Prada dark glasses, the demonised editor) Anna Wintour baulks to meet the camera’s gaze as she lists the achievements of her siblings: a brother who finds housing for low-income Londoners, another who is the Guardian’s political editor, and a sister who supports farmers in Latin America , before finding with hesitant candour the words, “They’re very amused by what I do. They … they’re amused”. Earlier, the documentary-maker had asked the magazine’s publisher, “Can you think of an aspect of the fashion industry that she isn’t somehow involved in?” He runs his mind through the multi-multi billion dollar business which encompasses not only the media, but innumerable designers, models, companies, manufacturers, stores, and is able to respond with certainty, “No”.
The vulnerability – almost embarrassment – which shows through her immaculate defence for a brief second is both completely disarming and completely confusing. A businessman who wielded the kind of power she does might think about hiring some real protection; Wintour’s emotional barriers are usually portrayed as bitchiness. Why should someone who has risen not only to the top, but to become the uncontested ruler of an industry, feel that being the very best still isn’t good enough? This woman is fiercely intelligent, supremely successful, passionately admired – and the family failure. I can’t help but think in some ways it must have something to do with her sex. In the same way that a house-husband ignites a kind of respect and interest, by virtue of what he has given up, of what he could have been instead, which rarely flickers when encountering a house-wife, fashion (and other ‘female’ professions such as cookery and hairdressing) is a predictable way for a woman to occupy her time, but an inspired one for a man. The different ways in which these professions are portrayed is noticeable too. Jamie Oliver runs around solving social ills (for the duration of the making of a documentary) and tossing ingredients madly around, where Nigella’s programme focuses on the homely, the kids wandering in during filming and taste the simple, familiar dishes she concocts while ringing her husband’s colleagues to invite them round to dinner. Get it? The man cooks: its art! Its revolutionary! It’s a privilege to watch him at work! The woman cooks: And?
So “pretty” didn’t really do it for me, as a compliment. Not only does it smack of a patronising pat on the head, a twinge of go-out-and-buy-yourself-something-nice-with-this-crisp-five-pound-note-while-im-at-the-office-honey, but it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the whole of what we call “fashion” about as severe as commenting that a Rembrandt could make a good addition to your interior decoration. Fashion is only about transient, fickle trends in bad, cheap magazines made to perpetrate this idea in order to shift New Look stock. In fact, the apparently lightning movement of fashion makes it perhaps the most relevant art to contemporary society.
Come back, let me explain. Think back over the political movements of the past century: sixties liberation, seventies revolution, eighties yuppie-culture, nineties punk. How were they most obviously, and most democratically, defined? Miniskirts to release the female body from subjugation, loose fitting clothes to define the relaxation of institutions, power suits and big shoulders to lend dominance, ripped and torn garments to antagonise the authorities: the clothes that designers produced in these times sprang not from some sheltered bubble, but emerged as a reaction to the times which people recognised and responded to. Like any art, such creation is a result of both collective awareness and individual vision. The clothes we wear are not an arbitrary decision made by some ivory-ateliered designer who petulantly insists on his ‘new’ whatever, they’re an expression of how and what we are.
The problem with fashion as an art form is its very necessity. We have a conception of art as something which is elevated above the everyday – and what could be more everyday than the clothes we see on every passing pedestrian? You might argue, though, (and I do), that the difference between that and real style is the difference between the small talk you make under the hairdresser’s duress and that of Shakespearean verse. We are numbed to these creative enterprises in a way which we aren’t to, say, visual art or classical music, because by using them so habitually, we forget that we are creating something every time we dress or speak; we’re creating our own identity each time we choose which hat others will see us in or which words will communicate our thoughts. It may not be conscious, and in fact it will more likely than not be unconscious, because we don’t like to remember that that’s what we’re doing, and we certainly don’t want others to suspect it. People who indulge in the sartorial are portrayed as superficial, but refusing to engage in it is a denial of superficiality which is as unthinking an attitude to the world as any. The typical ‘not-interested-in-fashion’ utilitarian uniform is just that; and as much a statement about yourself as a feathered skirt or an old admiral’s jacket. Every time you get dressed, you’re telling people a story; you might as well make it an interesting, individual – and thus a non-superficial – one.
The problem with fashion as an art form is its very necessity. We have a conception of art as something which is elevated above the everyday – and what could be more everyday than the clothes we see on every passing pedestrian? You might argue, though, (and I do), that the difference between that and real style is the difference between the small talk you make under the hairdresser’s duress and that of Shakespearean verse. We are numbed to these creative enterprises in a way which we aren’t to, say, visual art or classical music, because by using them so habitually, we forget that we are creating something every time we dress or speak; we’re creating our own identity each time we choose which hat others will see us in or which words will communicate our thoughts. It may not be conscious, and in fact it will more likely than not be unconscious, because we don’t like to remember that that’s what we’re doing, and we certainly don’t want others to suspect it. People who indulge in the sartorial are portrayed as superficial, but refusing to engage in it is a denial of superficiality which is as unthinking an attitude to the world as any. The typical ‘not-interested-in-fashion’ utilitarian uniform is just that; and as much a statement about yourself as a feathered skirt or an old admiral’s jacket. Every time you get dressed, you’re telling people a story; you might as well make it an interesting, individual – and thus a non-superficial – one.
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