So I'm not going to pretend to understand the first thing about high fashion. I've been to a Cynthia Rowley show once, because a friend of mine from college works with her and I thought it would be a good adventure. It was startlingly brief and, yes, the women were strikingly thin. But I generally try not to stick my nose where it doesn't belong. I like thrift store shopping and bargain hunting. I'm just not cut out for the fancy stuff.
But even I recognize that this New York Times critic is slangin' some serious bullshit in this round-up of the recent Paris fashion shows:
The most successful collections address females with great respect, accepting them in their totality, acknowledging the emotional complexity of their desire to seduce and be seduced. A central theme of this season is what it means to be a woman in a post-feminist, post-consumerist, post-political society: independent of what men want and think.
Um, excuse me. Post-feminist? Post consumerist? Post-political? Has this journalist been in a cave for the last two years while an entire nation got insane over the presidential election, folks consume like it's going out of style (even in a recession), and our blog--among so many other amazing others-- has such a devoted and wide following? Someone please explain.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Fashion Critic Discovered in Proverbial Cave .
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/12446
Isn't post-consumerist almost the same thing as non-consumerist? How can a new line of clothes on being show cased on the runway be non-consumerist?
haha. coming from an industry that uses images of unhealthily thin women to project an unattainable beauty ideal that has no doubt contributed to women's body dissatisfaction and the prevalence of eating disorders...post-feminist, indeed. examples like how messed up the fashion industry is illustrate just how badly the world needs feminism.
I am so sure "post-consumerists" would be buying haute couture outfits which cost as much as my car.
These things do not make sense together:
"their desire to seduce and be seduced" and "their desire to seduce and be seduced". Unless the journalist is claiming the new season's offerings are aimed at lesbians.
Oops, that second quote should be "independent of what men want and think".
Hilarious. If the fashion industry is post-consumerist, I am post-respiration.
This journalist is using 'post-' like so many others are using 'post-racial': aspirationally and just (ugh) misguidedly.
HAHAHAH. post-respirationist!
yeah, that's bullshiiit. but i like that purple coat thing a lot...
Fashion is often about fantasy; it's divorced from reality. Maybe the writer meant to allude to the outsized and unrealistic aspect of fashion, and intentionally set them in another time and place.
But, reading the next paragraph:
I welcome the idea that this crisis is bringing some clarity to the matter and creating a separation between those designers who champion modern women and those who are still following cartoons and stereotypes.
Maybe you're right after all.
i think like a lot of fashion, edgy is more important than actually looking good, or being functional. it seems like this critic is just trying to sound as edgy as possible and has no idea how to write without sounding like an idiot.
it kinda reminds me of horoscopes... (you sometimes have concerns. you are good at problem-solving, and enjoy spending time with loved ones. you will soon fall into some good fortune, after which you will probably have a bit of bad luck. then you will meet someone, and if my prediction is correct... you will talk to them and you will like them.)-OMG THAT'S SO ME!! I LOVE SPENDING TIME WITH LOVED ONES!!
i don't want to speak to the sentiment of the writer, and really know nothing about fashion, but. . .
post-feminist works the same way post-modern or post-anarchist works. it doesn't mean feminism is dead. it means that there has been feminist thought and theory to happen since the feminist movement and that is classified as post-feminist.
post-political means that we are beyond the conventional theories and projection models that were previously reliable in politics. the 2008 presidential election (and especially the democratic primary) are examples of how the country is post-political. it doesn't mean non-political.
i'm not super familiar with the term post-consumerist but from what i understand it is a rejection of advertising and excessive packaging - not buying what you don't need, giving excess to charity. maybe (hopefully) the direction we're headed after these few decades of reaganomics and ultra-consumerism. although i do agree that it is a bit ironic to use the term (as i understand it) in a high-fashion context.
I stopped following fashion a little over ten years ago - I could no longer reconcile my interest in it with my feminism and after a couple + decades of following it was all starting to repeat.
The man who wrote the article you're citing works in a world that has an extremely limited definition and representation of women. I looked at all the images from the designers he mentions. Right designed for the modern "woman" - for most of the "professional" outfits anyone with any curves is going to look huge under all that fabric. And then there's Comme de Garcon, who he mentions first, sending all of their models down the runway with netting over their faces - very progressive.
Fashion is such an odd thing, living in the worlds of art and the everyday. The couture collections are supposed to represent the art side but I've found them derivative and uninspired as art for many years. That this "art" is hung on women's bodies instead of a wall is one of the reasons I stopped following. It is a world that is all about the surface of things,image - thus the appropriation of an "attitude" not the author's own as with the paragraph you quoted - look at how hip and progressive I am with the "post" language and stating how independent women are - while he is telling women what they should wear, completely missing the irony there.
A truly post-consumerist show would have outfits from the past say four seasons re-worked together so people wouldn't have to buy new - now that's a funny thought.
Looks like somebody took those Cultural Studies courses a bit too much to heart.
Lol. I was actually just going to say, it looks like someone just graduated with their C average bachelor's degree in cultural studies, art history, or film studies. Tacking on post- to everything whether it makes sense or not signifies 'depth' and 'profundity'. Sadly, a lot of tenured faculty in the humanities get by with this level of 'analysis'.
can't disagree with that.
Reading your post I took it to mean the fashion show was meant to be set sometime in the imaginary future, not calling the world now post feminist, etc.
Not to say that fashion can't sometimes be art.. but I'm a little puzzled by how someone can cram all of those big ideas into a purple jacket. "I want to make a statement about women's emotional complexity in a post-feminist space, so... painting? Essay? I've got it! I'll make a jacket about it!"
What's wrong with using a jacket to do it?
uh-huh uh- huh *nods* that hemline is COMPLETELY "independent of what men want and think" ... yup
xLx
If this were any other type of article, I'd agree that it is ridiculous, but as a fashion article, I don't necessarily see that it's problematic enough to deserve a write-up. Contemporary fashion, after all, is not about the past two years, nor is it about what actually happened. Like a lot of art, it's about what comes next and how people feel or would like to feel. I think that lots of women would like to feel as if they have transcended political back-and-forth or consumerist greed, and so these collections are trying to attract them by presenting something that feels more elemental and timeless.
Also, I think that the meaning of "consumerism" is getting lost here. Consumerism doesn't mean buying stuff, it's an economic term that refers to equating buying stuff with happiness. So people in a post-consumerist world would still buy things, but ostensibly they would buy them because they are functional or because they are quality things, not because they need them to feel happy.
Ew, how ridiculous! I see that kind of lazy journalism all the time; it's so tiresome and sometimes harmful.