Thread for Thought

My Godmother sent me this brief article on David Hockney’s withering opinion on artists such as Damien Hirst who rely upon assistants to “do the work” — Hirst has only painted five of the 14,00 in existence, and he was quoted as saying that many of his spot paintings are produced by others “because he finds it boring to do the detailed work.” I think it’s easy to cluck and tsk and agree with Sir Hockney — how could an artist relinquish responsibility for creation and/or execution to others? My stars, I bristle at the very suggestion!

But let’s step back for a moment and entertain the idea that this may actually be a matter of context and expectations. Some arts — painting in particular — have a history of being conceived and executed by one person. However, even that is not a hard and fast rule. Andy Warhol famously oversaw assistant-produced art at The Factory, and in fact the decentralization and democratization of the creation process was essential to the concept, which often involved the repetitious and machine-like branding of store items. It could be made and reproduced by practically anyone. Warhol hired Gerard Malanga, among others, as his assistant in 1963 and together they made some of “Warhol’s” best known silk screened works of art. Below you see Malanga working with Warhol, and two unidentified assistants playing with the collaborative Flowers while Warhol commands center stage while they literally blend into the background:

There are plenty of artistic professions where it is actually expected that a work is produced with the help of — or even in its entirety by — workers other than the name attributed to the final design. Architects work with teams who specialize in interior stairwells and elevators, energy efficiency, etc.; not every architect involved in the highly complex work of designing, say, the Whitney Museum’s expansion, will be known by the public: Renzo Piano’s will be, though. And if we’re talking about they physical production of art (or pawning it off, as the case may be), architects do not physically build “their” buildings at all; they simply provide the plans.

Renzo Piano "holds a model of his design for the new Whitney," 2011

This is more like the work of Sol LeWit, who has made his name as an artist by redefining the role of the artist as more of a designing architect, providing plans that disseminate the art-making to anyone who wants to follow his instructions. In the late ’60s, LeWit began a series of now-famous wall drawings, providing clients and galleries with plans for murals they could make themselves at any scale, with any colors, on any surface, displayed anywhere, and labeled “Sol LeWitts.” Some more exacting instructions are miniature versions on paper; other, more conceptual works are described with words, as with Wall Drawing #65. Here are the instructions:

“Lines not short, not straight, crossing and touching, drawn at random using four colors, uniformly dispersed with maximum density, covering the entire surface of the wall,”

…and the product, seen in progress at the National Gallery of Art:

Assistant executing Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #65

Though the point of this art is that anyone may create or “finish” them, the instructions, minimal as they are, are proved authentic by being presented on numbered certificates which interestingly include previous installations, as seen below:

Sol LeWitt wall drawing #541 certificate -- click to enlarge

Street artist JR deliberately includes local residents of the often violent and/or impoverished areas he targets for his building-sized photos, acting more like a project coordinator than a street artist (a.k.a. “graffiti artist”). Like LeWitt, he encourages people to take his idea and make it their own — in fact, this is essential to his work. He gained recognition with his posters of eyes and close-up portraits of residents pasted along war-torn borders or poverty-stricken neighborhoods and countries. JR’s latest efforts take this a step further by doing less of the actual art production. In the economically depressed (and notoriously rough) Hunts Point neighborhood in the South Bronx, he collaborated with the Hunts Point Alliance with Children to engage the neighborhood by making residents responsible for beautifying and “taking back” their own neighborhood. He had an open call for portrait volunteers — who would hold photographed eyes of neighborhood mothers — and he taught the willing participants how to make paste and install the enormous portraits he enlarged, effectively rallying the community in an art project and humanizing the neighborhood to residents and visitors alike. Distancing himself from the production of his art has become central to JR’s name which nonetheless brings cache to projects he undertakes. “They started to brainstorm and I just became a witness to the event,” he said. “I’m really just the printer.”

Anthony Ramirez II and Matt Rodriguez on JR Hunts Point project, 2011

JR's Hunts Point project, Bronx, 2011

This concept of authenticity and identity most certainly applies to fashion, too. Fashion designers, particularly those with recognizable labels and certainly those in haute couture, have armies of helpers to mold and build any garment. In Valentino: The Last Emperor (an outstanding documentary from 2008), you can witness “the emperor” Valentino loosely sketch a dress, merely make a bow with fabric on a live model to illustrate how he’d like the embellishment to fall before handing it over to his head seamstress, the formidable Antonietta de Angelis, who will guide her own team of seamstresses who must work backwards to create a pattern, cut fabric, stitch together (by hand!), and then present for critique to Valentino, whose name will, of course, be on the label.

Some fashion designers are more hands-on, some favor pattern-making or draping themselves, and some even sew garments themselves, but this is by no means the rule. And unless you’re phenomenally naive as an admirer or consumer of such goods, you don’t expect the designer to have done much more than come up with the idea of any given dress. I just finished reading Japanese Fashion Designers: The Work and Influence of Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo (my review here), and the intimate collaboration between fashion designer and textile designer is really stressed, yet it is typically the fashion designer whose name is recognized by the general public.

Costuming for films has touched upon this theme of credit: you may remember the recent controversy when the influential Mulleavy sisters of Rodarte demanded costume credits for their seven collaborative ensembles in Black Swan (2010), but Amy Westcott was the official Costume Designer who oversaw all costume choices (ironically, many movie-goers only recognized the Rodarte label, due to their successful self-promotion). Edith Head was similarly credited with the entirety of the costumes for Sabrina (1954), though now-famous Givenchy provided all Audrey Hepburn’s stunning gowns.

So I can see why people like David Hockney are dubious of Hirst’s artistic credibility when it seems the dissemination of the artistic process is not actually part of the overarching concept, but instead mere laziness. But money is very much a part of this argument, just as much as fame, or “credit.” People get their knickers in a twist when their concepts of authenticity are challenged, especially if you’re a wealthy art / fashion patron who is presumably throwing around a lot of cash for the satisfaction of not only buying something beautiful / spectacular but something that has retail value and ideally will appreciate in monetary value over time (see my earlier post on collecting). Un-wealthy consumers (we’ll call them “the norms”) are notoriously un-picky about “authentic” artistry, as proven by the rampant fashion knock-off industry.

This might be a complex issue after all.

Abbie Hoffman arrested in flag shirt: “I only regret that I have but one shirt to give for my country.” October 1968

I assume readers will agree that apparel can be a powerful tool of political and social dissent, such as the Communist / anarchistic subtext of Surreal fashions (see my earlier post). Costume has likewise been leveraged in political upheavals many times; for example Caroline Weber recently illuminated fashion politics in the 18th century with her tremendous What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution. I’ll concentrate on the antics of the Yippies in the 1960s.

Often indistinguishable from the less political hippies, the yippies (so-named to mimic an exuberant exclamation; afterwards the acronym Youth International Party was assigned) also cherished their long hair and thrifted clothes as protests in-and-of themselves against their buttoned-up, conservative parents and contemporaries. This is beautifully illustrated by Hair the Musical. The cast tries to explain to the authority figures, the “straights,” why they keep their hair long — is it a homosexual thing, or what? Though the lyrics leave this question largely unanswered, around 2:17 of the film clip below (1979– on the cusp of another big hair decade), the tune temporarily mimics the Star Spangled Banner, explicitly presenting hair as a political statement: “Oh say can you see… my eyes? If you can then my hair’s too short!”

Though the hippie culture was amply documented, it was still a subculture — specifically, a youth culture. In his seminal work Do it!: Scenarios of the Revolution, Yippie co-founder Jerry Rubin has a chapter “Don’t Trust Anyone Over 40,” the thinking that with few exceptions, people over 40 are too entangled in the economic systems rigged to favor the wealthy, and too enmeshed / invested in their achieved middle class quality of life to reject it. Often accused of being Communists, the Yippies actually favored communal but somewhat anarchic societies where people governed themselves. In Steal This Book, Abbie Hoffman devotes much page space to methods of obtaining goods and services for free, some of which were legal (clothes swaps, etc.), and some of which were technically illegal (stealing outright, deception). He justified the illegal methods because the Yippies believed in free necessities like food, clothes, shelter, information, and even entertainment. Woodstock (August, 1969) was a perfect example of a successful peaceful temporary community where people exchanged goods and services without money. When you consider the size of the crowd — 500,000 for 3 1/2 days — the absence of rioting and violence in favor of cooperation and generosity. There was a combination of colorful, flowing clothes, and nudity, satisfying psychedelic and au naturel aesthetics.

Woodstock campground by Burk Uzzle

Woodstock nudists, by Burk Uzzle

Outside special events or “happenings” like Woodstock, college campuses were hotbeds of hippie and Yippie protest activity. Yippies rejected institutional and commercialized learning (education should be free), and record numbers of students dropped out as they became disillusioned with the corporate management of their educations, preparing them not to be critical thinkers so much as model employees in the assumed next step of getting jobs, striving for management positions, jockeying for increased salaries, buying homes, etc., etc. The “straights,” terrified of the crazy-looking homegrown insurgents, treated student protests like another Vietnam: by sending in troops.

This was exemplified in the People’s Park, an unused plot of Berkeley-owned land (appropriated by totally sketchy eminent domain, evicting residents to do so) that students and non-students turned  into a communal park — with 100% donated materials, food, and volunteer labor — in 1969. In effect, they re-claimed the land in a reverse eminent domain. The University retaliated after several months by fencing the park off and ultimately leveling it. When outraged students and community members tried to storm the park to reclaim it, tear gas and even bullets were used by the Berkeley and university police. Though this could be considered guerrilla warfare, it is startling how obviously unarmed the hippies and yippies are in this military confrontation:

Peoples Park fence, 1969

Peoples Park confrontation, 1969

The more draconian the police beatings, macings, and shootings were, the more outraged moderate young people became, so that Jerry Rubin actually thanked police and extremist right-wingers for galvanizing and mobilizing would-be fence-sitters for the Left.

Anti-war demonstrators at the Pentagon, October 1967

As rag-tag clothes and unkempt hair were essential to the lifestyle of hippies and Yippies, so was nudity. A symbol of the natural body, unencumbered by material possessions, it was also a form of rebellion against the repressive sexual politics of the 1950s. Yippies sometimes used the naked body as part of a spectacle, an extra “fuck you” to the uptight straights. From Jerry Rubin’s Do It!:

“[Sharon and Robin] dressed as waiters at a big feast of liberal senators at the Hilton…. Expecting their dessert of apple pie and coffee, instead were served pigs’ heads on platters. Then Robin and Sharon stripped and stood radiantly naked before the thousands of middle-class people. Horrified women hid their eyes. Men giggled and stared. Shelly Winters threw her cocktail at them. Some women began beating naked Crazie Sharon’s beautiful thighs with umbrellas….”

I mean, just look at the absolute disgust and horror of those onlookers! Though public nudity has once again subsided into designated spaces, one has to wonder why the naked body is so offensive to so many.

Sharon or Robin at liberal senator dinner, c. 1969

To backtrack a bit, the Yippies were founded by adopted New Yorkers Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989) and Jerry Rubin (1938-1994), among others, in 1967, an offshoot of the less radical hippies. They set out to garner as much media attention as possible to their disappointment with America’s foreign agenda and domestic capitalist system. After organizing a protest rally of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago — it was a protest of the entire electoral process, not any specific candidate or party — the Chicago police, acting under Mayor Daley’s draconian orders, engaged in drawn-out warfare with peaceful rally-goers, employing tear gas, baton beatings, barbed wired jeeps, and large guns. Though Time Magazine noted, “Not so innocently, many [protesters] were equipped with motorcycle crash helmets, gas masks,… bail money and anti-Mace unguents,” these were protective measures, not offensive weapons, and were a direct result of the threat of violence from the oppressive mayor who denied many protest permits and gave “shoot to kill” commands at previous student protests. Furthermore, most protesters were armed with nothing but signs and flowers.

demonstration in Grant Park, Chicago, August 1968

After disrupting the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, eight token protesters (Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Black Panther Bobby Seale) were arrested and tried for conspiracy and inciting to riot. During the kangaroo court trial of these “Chicago Eight,” Abbie and Jerry used costume to humorously — and effectively — illustrate their discontentment with the American government and court system. After enduring an outrageous miscarriage of justice under Judge Julius Hoffman, Abbie and Jerry started rebelling even more aggressively than their normal unbathed and long-haired selves: they came to court one day wearing judge’s robes, and underneath were Chicago Police uniforms, mocking the kangaroo court they were forced to participate in (“Our attitude is basically satirical,” said Yippie Keith Lampe). Look at Abbie’s impish grin in the costume of a Chicago Policeman — his wild hair and beaded necklace identifying him with his subculture in the midst of the joke — even while in the midst of a rather serious trial where fellow defendant Bobby Seale was literally bound and gagged:

Abbie Hoffman in Chicago police uniform, spring 1969

And In front of the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Jerry Rubin dressed as a Viet Kong solider, and as an American Civil War soldier while handing out copies of the Declaration of Independence:

Jerry Rubin in HUAC hearing

To other HUAC hearings (he was investigated twice), Jerry tried to dress as Santa Claus (“to reach the head of every child in the country”), but was barred from defaming the Christian idol. He was, however, allowed to wear a full-on guerrilla warfare costume (toy machine gun included!), which he did multiple times, dressing as the revolutionary outcast he felt himself to be:

Jerry Rubin, at HUAC carrying a toy plastic machine gun in Washington, D.C., Oct. 3, 1968

More than stoned theatrics, farcical costume was deliberately employed to attract mass-media attention to the Yippies’ anti-war, free-speech, anti-corporate agenda. But where did the Yippies get their inspiration? The Boston Tea Party was an early American event where costume was used for political purposes. The Boston colonists rebelled against their controlling motherland England, and the conspired monopoly of the East India Company.  In December, 1773, Boston colonists, dressed as Native Americans, boarded three taxed tea ships and threw the goods overboard, as protest against taxation without representation. Costume was critical for multiple reasons: first, it created a spectacle that demanded attention; but though the outfits garnered interest to the group event, they also disguised the individuals from identification in an act of vandalism.

depiction of Boston Tea Party, 1773

Traces of the Yippies can then be seen in the historical costumes of the contemporary costumed Tea Partiers too, obviously from the opposite end of the political spectrum. The Yippies’ desired “free market” — literally free essential services — is twisted into the Tea Party’s desired “free [corporate] market”:

Tea Partiers protesting higher taxes in Santa Barbara, CA, April 4 2011

And though the costumed element is not as consistent thus far, Occupy Wall Street shares a great deal with the Yippies. It too has a nebulous but anti-corporate agenda, there is general anti-war sentiment, and there are a few people dressing up to illustrate their points. Zombies are being equated with blood-sucking corporations and bankers, and some veterans are donning Guy Fawkes masks, a symbol of the Anonymous group that started OWS:

While anger over injustices was most certainly a prime component of the Yippie movement, humor was the preferred method of communication. Abbie Hoffman specified: “The YIP is a party — like the last word says — not a political movement.” While localized rallies and sit-ins and happenings and marches are important, life itself should be a living theatre of protest. Costumes, perhaps, have a place in the former, while clothes with a conscientious message can be used every day to express one’s participation (or non-participation) in ingrained systems (see my previous post on Collecting Clothes with a Conscience). Politicize your clothes!

And if you’d like to hear more, I’ll be elaborating on this topic this at 10.45am on Friday (October 14) for Fordham’s (free!) “The Art of Outrage” conference in New York’s Lincoln Center. If you have Friday off, come on down!

Herb and Dorothy Vogel in their apartment

Earlier this summer I watched the tremendous documentary Herb & Dorothy (2008) which follows a ridiculously adorable, now elderly, couple (Herb and Dorothy Vogel) who started collecting art in the ’60s and amassed one of the finest and most extensive of modern and contemporary art in the world. The twist here is this: Dorothy was a public librarian and Herb was a postal worker, subsisting on public  servants’ salaries. Dorothy paid all the bills — their modest rent-controlled Village apartment, phone bill, etc. — and Herb’s salary was entirely devoted to their shared passion: collecting art. By 1992, they had amassed just under 5,000 works (all stored within their one-bedroom apartment!!) when they decided to donate it to the National Gallery for public consumption (they’d had offers from some of the largest art institutions, but chose to donate their collection to the National Gallery in part because it was free to the public).

Compare this story to another, published in June’s New Yorker, about Walmart heiress Alice Walton. Ms. Walton (third wealthiest woman in the world) has been aggressively collecting American art to open a museum in her hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas. Ms. Walton has been compared to other “great” female patrons of the art like Isabella Stuart Gardner and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, both of whose institutions I enjoy with some regularity (the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum and MoMA, respectively). And here lies my conflicted relationship with art patrons.

Alice Walton in front of Crystal Bridges American Art Museum construction

As Americans, one of the results of a consumerist mentality is that we have become collectors. Traveling thousands of miles by boat or even plane, our ancestors packed light, and even the wealthy did not have a lot to spare. Over time though, a substantial part of the American dream has become the accumulation of monetary wealth, and amassing a lot of things. Collecting things could be the habitual accumulation of “stuff” — unimportant things that we look at in our homes / backs of closets and say “gee, I never used that. Huh.” In the extreme, these people are labeled “hoarders” such as Homer and Langley Collyer who died in 1947 literally underneath 130 tons of collected (and booby-trapped!) items in their Harlem brownstone.

policeman searching for dead Collyer bodies

Collectors (with a capital “c”) take a more deliberate approach, honing their accumulation to a specific type of object, say, vintage bicycles, train models, cars, salt and pepper shakers, or clothes. Because fashion still lives in that nebulous region of is-it-or-isn’t-it-”art,” private fashion collectors have only recently been given gallery space to share their textile collections with the public. Exhibitions like Rara Avis: The Irreverent Iris Apfel at the Met (2005 – 06), or the upcoming Daphne Guinness at FIT. Ms. Apfel is known for her trademark humungous circular glasses and her free mixing of “high” designer and “low” retail, ethnic, antique, and contemporary sartorial elements, all within the same outfit. Ms. Guinness is recognizable by her towering, heel-less platforms, severe black-and-white hair, and her penchant for extreme silhouettes; I believe she wears haute couture or designer garments and shoes exclusively. Both women are buh-diculously wealthy, and therefore even my joy at fashion exhibits is tainted with the implicit suggestion that only the expensive wardrobes of rich women are worth displaying / studying / emulating.

Long-time street fashion photographer Bill Cunningham is refreshingly unimpressed with social standing (so often intertwined with financial worth); one of my favorite Cunningham-isms from the outstanding documentary Bill Cunningham New York is when Bill ignores the paparazzi-mobbed Catherine Deneuve because, simply, “she wasn’t wearing anything interesting.” !! The tragedy is that this is funny precisely because we all expect natural beauty, fame, and fortune to be the only justification necessary to report on people, in print or in pictures.

Even less formal outfit posting bloggers, usually the young and distinctly un-wealthy, often couch consumerist subtext in their blogs, offering photos of themselves in what may or may not be interesting, but is usually vaguely trendy, and oh-so-thoughtfully including notes about where they purchased the various pieces of their ensembles (skinny pants: H&M; tank top: F21; shoes: Steve Madden), insinuating that you too can run out to all our “local” box stores, buy these various items, and be as well-dressed/quirky as Susie Bubble. A typical post might be:

Caption: H&M blazer; H&M striped dress; TopShop block heels

Especially “helpful” bloggers thoughtfully include links directly to shops where followers may purchase precisely the same outfit or components of one (there was one such link for the shoes in the above post). In contrast, if I were to follow the dominant formula, one of my own daily outfit posts (which I have recorded for about 3 years now, but not blogged) might look like this:

Because you will never find precisely the same garment or accessory as I used, and because I layer and modify so frequently, the point of publishing my own outfit posts could only be to provide general inspiration / amusement, and perhaps to show how easy and cheap (not to mention ecologically sound) DIY fashion is. I recognize that not everyone is comfortable sewing or even manipulating her clothes, but H&M and Target are not the only cheap, colorful option for a fashion-forward, person with serious budget constraints. There was a particularly upsetting moment in Fast Food Nation (the 2006 film) when a hard-up African American girl says she doesn’t believe she can afford to loose weight because (low-calorie) Subway sandwiches are too expensive to eat daily (McDonalds was cheaper, and therefore her preference). The girl had been so imbued with the fast food lifestyle that her idea of healthy food was still wrapped up in a corporate mindset, the question was no longer “how can I prepare healthy, inexpensive food,” but “what chain advertises low-calorie options?”

Thrift stores abound in most communities and you can often find unusual items for dirt cheap in them, not to mention supporting the local community. Alternately, many cities have young designer markets (New York has several of these, and I recently stumbled upon on in my hometown in Cambridge, MA) where you can find some cutting edge designs for reasonable prices. etsy is pretty terrific too, as an online community of artisans, many are willing (even delighted) to work with you on a customized garment or accessory.

I suppose my point of this rant is that all too often, the middle and working class just seems grateful for the crumbs of “high” culture the wealthy are willing to put in a museum, usually after their own deaths; or for glimpses of the revered elite hobnobbing in their thousands-of-dollars finery, for us to drool over wistfully, understanding we’ll never obtain it without marrying an oil baron. Meanwhile, the national appetite for luxury goods — clothing and otherwise — is astoundingly increasing at a rapid pace, even while unemployment continues to rise at its own alarming rate. People who care about and/or collect fashion don’t have to subscribe to this luxury market to pursue our study and love of clothes. I understand the impulse to buy, I’m not living off the grid or anything. But think about where your money is going, how hard you worked to earn it, and if you’re like me and your closet is your own special curated Collection, do you really want your dollars circulating in the big box stores that put small, independent designers on the ropes, and which contribute to the fast fashion bubble? Let’s take a page from those adorable Vogels, who developed relationships with local artists, and even with their modest salary, nurtured some of the great artists of our time.

DIY and fashion inspiration blogs:

• OutsaPop Trashion
• A Pair & a Spare
• (In)decorous Taste
• Artfully Awear
• Advanced Style

This recent August 6 would have been Lucille Ball’s 100th birthday (1911 – 1989), and crowds of impersonators showed up to celebrate in her hometown, Buffalo, NY. There were polka dot dresses, garish red curly wigs, and red lipsticked lips galore in attempts to emulate the comedienne:

Lucille Ball 100th bday impersonators, 2011

Though this ensemble became iconic for the woman (even in black and white, her garish, dyed red hair was a frequent punchline), it was actually only representative of a carefully honed looked for her best-known character, Lucy Ricardo (which was, of course, based on her own larger-than-life personality), on her shows I Love Lucy (1951 – 57) and subsequent insinuated-reprises including Lucy Carmichael in The Lucy Show (1962 -68), and Lucy Carter in Here’s Lucy (1968 – 74). Prior to TV success, she had a less-celebrated stage and film career during which she and the studios (RKO and MGM) altered her look in ill-advised attempts to cast her in more traditional romantic roles (she was briefly a Ziegfeld Girl). During this time, she was barely recognizable — in that she was often legitimately glamorous, even modeling for fashion entrepreneur Hattie Carnegie! From a pretty but typical-looking young woman…

Lucille Ball c late 1920s

…to a bombshell uncannily mimicking some of the great sex symbols of the silver screen:

Lucille Ball, c. 1930s

Jean Harlow, 1934

Lucille Ball c. 1940s

Rita Hayworth in Gilda, 1946

Lucille was a cover girl for Max Factor in the ’30s and ’40s, and her lip outline changed radically over the course of these years. In the vaudeville tradition, Lucille uglified herself with clownish makeup to enhance her physical humor. Playing the housewife of a celebrity, she was attractive but made up to highlight her expressive faces. The false eyelashes and permanently arched penciled eyebrows accentuated her inevitable bug-eyed uh-oh face, and her lip shape morphed into the wide-mouthed smear that accentuated her smiles and grimaces. Compare the sophistication of Lucille’s Max Factor model persona (and her comparitavely normal lip shape…

Lucille Ball Max Factor lipstick ad, c 1930s

To the makeup of lovable but distinctly vaudevillian Lucy:

Lucille Ball faces

Though you can see Lucille was lovely and certainly capable of being glamorous, her impish personality and physical brand of comedy (still uncommon in female actresses) always tempered the glitz– she seems to be laughing at the outrageous fashions of her day, even as her Lucy character covets them (she is constantly trying to save money from the household allowance Ricky doles out so she can purchase pretty dresses).

While Hollywood was experimenting with camera and projection techniques like wide screens, 3-D, and special effects (think of all the sci-fi, B-horror, and spaghetti Western movies that came out of the ’50s), the new medium of TV often focused on the American home — daring to show more middle and even working-class family life like The Honeymooners (1953 – 56), The Donna Reed Show (1958 – 66) and Father Knows Best (1954 – 60) that generally reaffirmed the survival of the patriarchal American family dynamic in the post-WWII years. While I Love Lucy ostensibly follows this family drama formula, there were some notable differences between the Ricardo family and that of other superficially comparable TV shows.

The vast majority of I Love Lucy was filmed in the Ricardo apartment, as it was ostensibly about a good little ’50s hausfrau and her bread-earner entertainer husband who spends large chunks of time off-screen as we follow Lucy’s days. Accordingly, we saw Lucy in a lot of cinched-waisted house dresses and aprons as she goes about her household chores:

You might also note that in both the photos above she is not wearing the pointy, teetering stilettos of the day (that we can assume, say, Donna Reed’s character did while performing mundane housework), but rather practical ballet flats. Though she is dressed for housework, Lucy spends almost all  her days scheming how to break into showbiz / meet celebrities / buy pretty dresses. Again, unlike Donna Reed’s accomplished housewife, we do not get the impression that Lucy excels at cooking or decorating or budgeting the household allowance (see “The Freezer” episode where she buys beef in bulk to save money for a dress) because she has dreams that exist outside her apartment. Which leads to the logical question, who really wore the pants in the Ricky / Lucy relationship?

It has been suggested that audiences would not have enjoyed Lucy — a brash woman who frequently wore pants — taunting, insulting, and continuously disobeying her husband if Desi had not been Cuban. In spite of his good nature and machismo, his immigrant (a.k.a. “inferior”) status made it ok to root for his hairbrained wife, who frequently parroted his heavy accent like an infantile school boy to gain the upper hand in squabbles.  Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Lucille had tremendous business savvy and became the first woman to own her own TV studio (DesiLu Productions). Below, we see Lucy in rather loud plaid pants that speak to her dominant role in the marriage and one the show, and also recall her vaudeville roots (her father had brought the family to shows, and Lucille trained with Buster Keaton)

Pants on a woman was shocking in ’50s culture, much less ’50s TV portrayal of idealized family life. Though she’s not as known for it as, say Marlene Dietrich or Katharine Hepburn, Lucille wore pants on and off-screen:

Both women are buh-diculously wealthy heiresses.

Katharine Hepburn in pants

young Lucille in casual pants

Interestingly, Lucy was one of the first women to dare show herself in masculine pants on TV, and also in her feminine glory — that is, pregnant — on TV. The episode “Lucy is Enceinte” (aired December, 1952), was when Lucy revealed to Ricky she was pregnant — a word the censors would not let her say, hence the euphemism “expecting”. Lucille was also pregnant in real life, and you can see she her wearing fuller and frillier dresses and shirts leading up to the actual revelation. Pregnant women have always made the “general” (read “male”) public  vaguely uncomfortable, and it was a big deal that Lucy actually looked pregnant rather than hiding her bump until an off-screen birth.

Lucy in maternity clothes

Not only was she a awesome physical comedienne, Lucille Ball chipped away at what a woman’s role had been defined as in the ’50s. Lucy wore pants, sensible shoes, disagreed openly with her husband, and she never gave up on her dream: to be an entertainer. For all these reasons and more, I love Lucy.

Further Reading:

• Lucille Ball fashion photos

A couple months ago I found myself in Phillie for a family event and I was delighted, not only to spend time with my awesome extended family, but to visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Always a favorite of mine (I think they’ve corned the Duchamp market), they also happened to have multiple fashion exhibits up. I’ll skip over the Capucci: Art into Fashion, which was spectacular but has received much praise elsewhere, and focus on a much more modest exhibition, tucked away in an adjacent building: “Tailoring Philadelphia: Tradition and Innovation in Menswear.”

This was a collection of Francis Toscani designs (a man I’d never heard of), and though the dull title might lead you to believe you would be presented with a straightforward timeline of men’s styles, this Toscani chap was truly something special. Toscani (1915–1973) really experimented with traditional tailoring techniques to create inventive suits and jackets, even while following general menswear trends.

Toscani, c. 1967

The above piece is deceptively simple, I think, though it does have an interesting safari-come-dinner jacket look about it, with the practical cargo pockets and impractical creme color (I imagine myself staining this upon a first wearing). But the truly innovative aspect of this piece is… voila:

converted jacket, Toscani, c1967

It actually is meant to be a convertible jacket, from the cargo lounge version to the just-short-of-tails dinner jacket incarnation! To me, this points to the duality of men’s expected roles: a hyper masculine one who hunts lions by day, but who converts into the perfect gentleman at a civilized dinner party at night.

But this is the piece I truly gasped at with awe and delight:

Toscani Half and Half Suit, 1962-65

No, this is not a fashion teaching aid of two hacked suits, though it certainly could be used as one. Toscani created this “Half and Half” suit where one half (our right) was executed in the 1950s style, and the brown half reflected the current ’60s suit trends. After the elaborately embroidered, brightly colored, flamboyantly slashed, and sometimes even girdled men’s fashions of the 16th, 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries, it’s sometimes hard to notice the more subtle changes in menswear after the three-piece suits came into play. Toscani’s split personality suit really highlights the changes even within one decade: the ’50s half is 3-buttoned and about 6 inches longer; the leg is much fuller with the assistance of a hidden wait pleat; the shoulder slopes more and follows a longer, broader line; the lapel too is much fuller to emphasize a man’s chest breadth. The brown ’60s side is slimmer everywhere: leg, shoulder, lapel, arm; it is only 2-buttoned, further streamlining the look; I was interested to notice the waist is nipped much higher than the ’50s counterpart, favoring a leggier look over a torso-centric one.

This suit (which I intend to make for myself someday by upcycling and uniting two separate suits) does what fashion historians and curators must do for themselves — find visual comparisons to highlight trends stand out; this is not as easy as it sounds, especially when dealing with contemporary fashion, as Toscani was (he made this in the early ’60s). Magazines and blogs attempt to track trends and drive sales, but it’s difficult to separate a seasonal micro-trend from a sustained, decade-long one without some time passage.

Several decades had passed between the height of the zoot suit trend of the ’30s ad ’40s and when Toscani created his own in the early ’60s:

Toscani zoot suit, early 60s

Originally worn by young men (often black or Latino) as a form of rebellious expression, zoot suits had baggy pants and extra-broad chests that belied the fabric shortages imposed by WWII, and the slimmer silhouettes of men’s and women’s mainstream fashion. The son of an Italian immigrant, Toscani may have been reviving the conversation about race and fashion: black and Latino men were known to be taunted, chased, or even beaten when flaunting zoot suits in the ’40s, and Toscani made this as the Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum. Whether by a jacket that looks like one but can convert into two, or with a suit that looks like two but is one, or by reviving a several decades dead trend, Toscani experimented with time passage, functionality, and duality of purpose, masculine and racial roles. A man after my own heart.

Dorothy dress at auction, 2011

As you may or may not be aware, the auction of Debbie Reynolds’ extensive Hollywood costume collection was (not surprisingly) a smashing success, in that it set new new highs for what collectors would pay for literal fabric of Hollywood history. Items that have been reported on most have included:

• $4.6 million for Marilyn Monroe’s white subway dress from The Seven Year Itch (1955; costumes by Travilla):

Marilyn Monroe Seven Year Itch subway dress

• $3.7 million for Audrey Hepburn’s Ascot race dress in My Fair Lady (1964; costumes by Cecil Beaton):

Ascot dress from My Fair Lady

• $910,000 for Judy Garland’s Dorothy screen test dress from The Wizard of Oz (1939; costumes by Adrian):

Wizard of Oz Dorothy Dress

• $50K for Judy Garland’s Dorothy ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz (these actually look like the shoes as worn by the Wicked Witch of the East, and not Dorothy, to me):

Wizard of Oz Ruby Slippers

• $100K for Elizabeth Taylor’s headdress from Cleopatra (1963; costumes by Vittorio Nino Novarese and Renié):

Cleopatra headdress

Some items that were not so popular were some pantaloons from Mutiny on the Bounty (1962; costumes by Moss Mabry) and a lock of Mary Pickford’s hair (this is indicative of the under-valued silent screen era, I think– Ms. Pickford was one of the most popular actors of the silent era, though few remember her name now, even as a founder of United Artists Pictures production company). Predictably, few articles about the auction results even mentioned these low-sellers.

An interesting peculiarity about costumes is that they are generally made in multiples, as they experience accelerated wear-and-tear from being changed into and out of, often hurriedly between scenes. This sets it apart from most art forms (excepting photography and screen-painted pop art, for example) which prize the uniqueness of The Single Object.

San Giorno Maggiore at Dusk, Monet, 1908

People often conflate worth and importance with monetary value, a result of America’s aggressive capitalistic leanings. One of my favorite moments in The Thomas Crown Affair remake (1999) was during the opening museum sequence where a teacher is desperately trying to wrangle the attention of her disinterested class; after unsuccessfully trying to impress them with historical details about Monet’s San Giorno Maggiore at Dusk (1908) she finally says (I’m paraphrasing): “Get this: it’s worth a million bucks.” Her young audience snaps to attention at the mention of money, and collectively gasps, their attention suddenly focused. They have been brought up in a culture that values money above all else — including personal preference, historical import, quality or craftsmanship. If some wealthy patron is willing to blow a wad of bills on some painting, the press attention it receives increases exponentially, as does the public opinion of the work. Money subjugates all other artistic criteria.

Valerie Steele, in a NYTmes article from earlier this year which explored the rather tiresome question of whether fashion objects are museum-worthy, astutely noted:

“Most museum administrators are not particularly keen on fashion because it is not generally considered art, and these shows do take place at art museums…. Of course we realize that art is commercial, but it has a reputation for transcending that, whereas clothing does not” (my emphasis).

This commercialism is precisely the value system that leads to “fast fashion” — if a temporarily trendy skirt costs only $15 at (non-Unionized) Target, it’s easier to discard it after a season or two because the buyer doesn’t feel she’s throwing very much money away. This kind of monetary thinking omits the ecological impact of this careless behavior (an estimated 9.8 million tons of textiles were generated in 2001), and subjugates personal preference and individual style to fashion runway schedules and retail seasons which all promote planned obsolescence. But I digress….

I suppose what irritates me about this whole costume auction business is not that these garments do not deserve the press attention, or to be preserved or collected in the first place, but that it is only newsworthy if there is an impressive price tag to report on — articles almost always omit costume designer, technological film context, world politics of the day (which always imposes interesting constrictions on fabric availability, sexual mores, etc.), in favor of attributing all “worth” to the famous bodies these items hung on in one of the last stages of a costume’s long life. In the most basic, visceral sense, isn’t it utterly disconcerting to see the Dorothy dress divorced from its film environment? Compare the flattened, empty dress in the first photo of this post to the dress on Judy Garland’s body, within the Wizard of Oz environment:

Wizard of Oz poster

For me, the Dorothy dress is significant as an iconic piece of a film with breakthrough technology (color and black-and-white film in 1939); not to mention its powerful juxtaposition of the harsh Great Depression reality (Dorothy on her Kansas farm, portraying the devastating Dust Bowl that swept American and Canadian plains in the ’30s) with the fantasy dream world of ultimately rewarded optimistic aspirations. It differed from most ’30s Hollywood films where the Great Depression was completely omitted and a wealthy and/or comedic alternative reality was portrayed in lighthearted slapstick comedies and musicals. Dorothy’s gingham dress signified her farm heritage and her youth, while the ruby slippers were, in addition to being sparkly and fancy, were heeled, hinting at Dorothy’s needing to grow up. The literal contrast of texture and color between the blue cotton dress and spangly heels echoed the uneasy transition from innocent immaturity to worldly, grateful young woman. (Says me.)

Few articles have bothered mentioning the designer of auctioned costumes. It is extremely possible that many familiar with the “Marilyn Monroe dress” don’t even know it was worn in The Seven Year Itch (1955). The photos we see of this dress most often are actually from saucy publicity shots of Marilyn ineffectually hiding her panties while standing over a wind turbine-equipped subway grate, eclipsing the film itself — in which she was only filmed from the thighs down briefly (no underwear shot at all), and mostly from the waist up, due to censorship issues (as Elvis Presley’s gyrating hips were similarly cropped out of a ’50s performance).

Film posters had fewer restrictions, and so could get away with posters like this:

Marilyn Monroe publicity shot for The Seven Year Itch

Though I admittedly haven’t gone too deep into the histories of these garments, I have not even found an attempt to deepen the public’s understanding or appreciation of costumes in any article about these costume auctions, and once again, I feel that fashion has been given short shrift as an effective cultural educating tool, relegated instead to the realm of quaint prettiness, and graded by money spent to own it.

Helen Mirren, age 63

After the Huffington Post informed me Carmen Dell’Orefice, Oldest Working Model, Turns 80, I crinkled my nose, wondering why this is headline news, and furthermore, why a Huffington author would lead the story with “An 80-year-old model sounds like a fashion oxymoron”? In fact, it doesn’t sound like an oxymoron to me at all, but perhaps that’s because I’m familiar with the history of fluctuating beauty norms and recognize that the obsession with youth and youthful beauty is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Though youth has always been prized as an attribute for a wife– relating, as it does, with fertility, endurance, and longevity– the history of clothes modeling actually favored middle aged men and women. Charles Dana Gibson’s famous sketches of “Gibson Girls” just after the turn of the 20th century (unfortunately, most pictures of his you see are without his witty social commentary, often about the expectation of women to be beautiful and to marry wealthy older gentlemen, and the manipulation that goes along with this competition by men and women alike). In the example below (apologies for the terrible quality), a typical Gibson Girl beauty is ignored by gold-digging men who favor a wealthier woman. Note that the heiress does not appear to be older, so much as just dour; the lonely Gibson Girl could be in her twenties or even perhaps thirties, she has a womanly, curvy physique (assisted by the S corset of the day), and a sophisticated, loose upsweep hairstyle:

"$ $ $ $ $"

The 1920s were really the first years when extreme youth — specifically athletic figures that often resembled pubescent female bodies — established itself as the dominant beauty ideal (see my previous post on Athletic Aesthetics). The androgyny was heightened by modern women chopping off their long hair in favor of pageboy bobs, as exemplified by boyish silver screen star Louise Brooks:

Louise Brooks, c. 1920

The Great Depression brought more conservative, i.e. traditional, aesthetics back, and the more mature curves (and mouth!) of Mae West once again became desirable. Models in store windows and catalogs like Sears Roebuck were likewise women and not girls; this trend continued through the 1950’s, when Carmen Dell’Orefice started her career (you can see that though she’s young, she’s styled in a sophisticated manner typically associated with age and maturity):

Carmen Dell'Orefice, 1953

Other models of that era included Suzy Parker (1932 – 2003),

Suzy Parker, Time Life, 1957

Sunny Harnett (1924 – 87),

Sunny Harnett, c 1950

and Dorian Leigh (1917 – 2008),

Dorian Leigh, Time Life, 1950

who were in their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s respectively in the 1950’s. The sexual revolution of the 1960s shifted the focus from the motherly generation (albeit young mothers), to a newly discontented youthful one. Twiggy exemplified this “youthquake” with her ’20s-like prepubescent body, boyish “pixie cut” hair, and enormous baby doll eyes, exaggerated with painted and false eyelashes:

Twiggy, 1967

Since the ’60s, we have continued to glorify not just youthful-looking models (and all women, by extension), but actual, extreme youth, “discovering” models still in high school, their careers often ending before they would’ve graduated from college as hag-dom sets in. Brooke Shields posed for Calvin Klein’s sex-imbued jeans ad in 1980, still baby-faced at 15:

Brooke Shields' Calvin Klein ad, 1980

Or Kate Moss, discovered at age 14 (her career has probably lasted as long as it has in part due to her enduring waifish figure):

Kate Moss photographed by Peter Lindbergh, 1994

We are favoring youthful innocence in our women’s appearances, even as women think they’re claiming more political rights, fighting gender discrimination, raising their salaries to men’s, etc. (See my article on Grey Hair as Social Statement to read more on the blatant contradictions of women’s rights and women’s beauty.) Friends reading this will joke that I’ve always had a serious soft spot for the elder population (perhaps because I have not-so-secretly believed I was an old lady since my 20s), but I truly love the fine lines and wrinkles that form around our eyes where we laugh and smile, that have become our enemy according to the beauty industry which suggests creams and lotions and photo manipulation to wipe them out. I love seeing older models make more guest appearances on major runways (Iman and Kristin McNemany among them), though these women are still only older (than teenage models) and not truly elderly. For truly stylish, ballsy, creative elder fashion, I direct you to two of my favorite geriatric fashion blogs: the delightful Advanced Style, and Idiosyncratic Fashionistas, neither of which limits its subjects to vintage / classic ideals of mature beauty, but rather embrace creativity and personal expression through dress.

Between Carmen Dell’Orefice in the ’50s and now…

Carmen Dell'Orefice, 2005

I’ll take now, thank you very much.

Further Reading:

• Umberto Echo’s The History of Beauty

Though I don’t generally think of myself as a shoe fetishist, I do have a soft spot in my heart for Fluevogs. In their latest e-newsletter was a video of a Fluevog shoe being made (I must add the disclaimer that though I truly love Fluevogs, I truly hate the style in this particular vignette):

I have loved seeing the process of how things are made since I was a kid. Perhaps Mr. Rogers’ segment How People Make Things had something to do with it; in addition to the crayon factory (sooo many pretty pretty colors!), Mr. McFeely (the friendly postman) narrated how shoes are made in a factory. I do believe the shoes we see being made are the blue canvas Keds Mr. Rogers was known for slipping into. Go to How People Make Things and select the How People Make Sneakers video to see for yourself.

Though I’m mesmerized by the intricate process of shoe-making (it typically takes more than 100 steps to compose a shoe), I think it’s worth noting that these educational videos do not mention the mostly brown hands toiling with this fussy process, inhaling toxic glues, probably under-paid and over-worked. I can understand why Fluevog wouldn’t address this in their promotional video, but I feel Mr. Rogers missed an opportunity to discuss labor rights and exploitation (see my post on factory exploitation). The closest he gets is when he observes “she works so quickly!” and “She’s so careful!” So close, Fred. So close.

I think there are a lot of similar lost opportunities when viewing the arts and fashion as abstracted expressions of “genius,” emotion, or even kitsch: though a work of art may indeed be these things, these adjectives minimize the historical contexts and forces beyond the control of any particular artist / designer that inevitably are captured in works. That’s why I was so excited to attend the D-Crit conference last week– this two-year-old program within the New School is devoted to the serious analysis of design in all forms. These are my peeps! And yet there were at least two instances where speakers referred lightly to fashion as frivolous and superficial. This was not the thrust of any grand argument, but it was shocking to me in its carelessness–  uttered by two people who are intellectually devoted to the study of design, fashion still gets short shrift when in proximity to architecture, branding, and even audio design elements. I know I’m speaking to a converted audience here, but this was a reminder that even within the arts, fashion and apparel are denigrated. Art and design are powerful teaching / learning tools precisely because they touch every aspect of the human existence, and I just hope a thoughtful, critical approach is taken when discussing things as seemingly benign, or captivating, as a shoe factory video.

It was excitement and ultimate delight that I attended (and presented at) Yale’s “The Urban Catwalk” conference this past weekend. Though ostensibly the theme was street fashion, as with most conferences, this topic was expounded upon by a wide range of scholars from vastly different fields (performance studies, French history, literature, communications, etc.). More even than “street” or even “public space,” the concepts of “authenticity” and “identity” surfaced again and again in these lectures, and interestingly with vastly different implications.

April Calahan spoke about the French penchant for increasingly towering, sculptural hats during the WWII German occupation. While strict rationing of traditional fabric and leather limited fashions at first, soon tailors and cobblers began experimenting with non-traditional materials like cardboard, ribbons, fake food, etc. to create increasingly flamboyant and odd accessories. With gasoline shortages, bicycle culture rose steeply and clothes that facilitated athletic movement gained popularity, but as clothes became more practical, hats became less so. Though she focused on a large group– the French– Calahan emphasized that the often bizarre, towering hats of this period silently but obviously defied the Germans with a quintessential French industry– flamboyant fashion– to assert French collective identity against oppressive invaders.

French hats of '40s

Along similar lines of collective opposition, Jessica Metcalfe gave a fascinating talk about Native American resistance in contemporary streetwear. She pointed to the 19th century assimilation efforts of placing of Native American children in English/American-style boarding schools and that those children were ritualistically stripped of their native clothes and re-dressed in Western styles. (This very much reminded me of Marie Antoinette’s ritual stripping of her Austrian clothes and re-dressing in her adopted French styles.) Metcalfe showed many examples of current, young Native American graphic artists who screenprint familiar Native American motifs (blankets designs, Sitting Bull, buffalo) on modern Western clothes items (hoodies and T-shirts) as Native American activism. Christopher Columbus and 1492 are recurring references (“Fuck Christopher Columbus”) as a key moment of the marginalization of Native Americans. Metcalfe pointed out that there are many tribes all over America, but Native American activist organizations have consciously appropriated pan-Native American motifs, counting on their generic recognizable symbolism to communicate. For example, a feathered headdress– which is only actually worn by chiefs in the plains– to symbolize Native American strength, power, and a position of authority. This kind of “authentic” protest is especially important as Hipsters and stylists adopt sexified trendy Native American styles like fringed moccasins, “Navajo” print jackets, and headdresses.

Several people discussed the relationship between hip hop music, fashion, culture and black identity, and though I think this is a rich course of study, I also think it’s difficult to say anything new about it. Matthew D. Morrison spoke about sagging pants and the so-called relationship to criminality; this reminded several audience members (and me) of the recent French ban of veils, and I wished Morrison had spent a little more time dissecting how / why government attempts to combat cultural blight like criminal violence, oppressive misogyny, etc., by banning clothes associated as the result (or perhaps the precursor?) to these injustices. (See my earlier post on Innerwear as Outerwear.)

Siobhan Carter-David cataloged every Essence Magazine in the ’80s and early ’90s and made the interesting discovery that though no issue in the ’80s ever championed or even portrayed urban black style (layered doorknocker earrings, for example), in the ’90s they did retrospectives on the importance of hip hop fashions. Very interesting that showed how even the black community has been slow to acknowledge hip hop as a relevant style worthy of emulation (this reticence speaks to the strength of associations between hip hop fashion and urban criminality or other undesirable qualities).

In spite of my general boredom of things relating to hipsters, Heidi Khaled linked modern-day hipsters to their historical counterparts. From bohemian artists of the 19th century to the beatniks (apparently formerly known as “hipsters”), to the “hippies” of the ’70s, she traced the lingering associations between these arty types and elite liberalism, to the contemporary concept of consuming cool in today’s hipsters. By pointing out the fine line between earlier artists who were caught between the desire to create “authentic” art and the need to please their patrons, she indicates a puzzling disconnect between today’s aspiring artsy hipsters and true individualistic “authenticity.”

hipster with ironic glasses and mustache

Though he was not the only Performance Studies scholar, Kalle Westerling was the only presenter who incorporated performance into his discussion of performance, which I appreciated conceptually and thoroughly enjoyed. He opened by enacting a kind of poem, enunciating click sounds of lipstick and glosses and glitter as he applied the products to his lips, just before running this video in its entirety:

First: I want Erickatoure’s first ensemble for my own. Second, I loved the connection between Westerling’s lipstick clicks to the shoe clicks used as percussion in the video. He went on to discuss the intimate relationship between drag queens and their clothes– their shoes especially– in forming their identities which are sometimes separated from their drag characters and sometimes not. Performance pervades this relationship, whether on a stage or on a sidewalk.

Daphne Carr presented part of her book on Hot Topic stores and the irony of the existence of a serialized box-store that caters to supposed sub-cultures like Goth, Emo, Grindcore, etc. She has done exhaustive research on the Hot Topic store chain and it’s even more contradictory off-shot C28, the Evangelical Christian spin-off that uses the same “alternative” aesthetic in store decor and merchandise to sell Christian paraphernalia. What does it mean when “alternative,” “individualistic” visuals become corporate and even conservative religious, and why don’t consumers seem to find this contradiction problematic?

C28 T-shirt

Both Lauren Walsh and Pia Sahni spoke about the non-existence or exoticization of ethnic minorities, especially Indians. Though I certainly agree that there is undoubtedly pervasive white-ness to fashion spreads and fashion runways, and a simultaneous fetishization of those excluded “exotic” people, Walsh and Sahni used the word “authentic” to indicate there was a lack of authenticity in these slanted shows and ads– as though an “authentic” advertisement is possible or exists somewhere else.

Keynote speak Caroline Weber (author of the outstanding book What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution) also touched upon “authenticity” and “identity.” In her history of the dress form and mannequin, or “Pandora,” in Paris, she said a major downfall of Marie Antoinette was that she allowed a lifelike, life-size mannequin of herself to be created, to be dressed in her fashions and shipping all over Europe. Though ostensibly used to disseminate the queen’s style for imitation, the inanimate mannequin was greeted by cheering crowds who treated it as a stand-in for the queen herself. While charming, this nonetheless conditioned people to view the mannequin as a live person, and conversely to view the live queen as an inanimate thing to the point that, when the French Revolution rolled around, she had already been literally dehumanized and it wasn’t so shocking to dismember / behead her. In fact, part of the outrage the French people directed at the throne was due to Antoinette’s mannequin, which they now claimed sexualized and debased their monarchy by allowing commoner’s hands to paw the likeness of the queen. The royal authenticity of the queen had been questioned after her mannequin double was accepted as her; I imagine allowing copies of her royal wardrobe was a similar offense as revolution rumbled, even though the same people had clamored for those very knock-offs.

Not so very much has changed in subsequent centuries: don’t we love the supposed originality of new design collections, don’t we crave affordable knock-offs immediately, and then don’t we discard them when they are so affordable they’re pervasive and we no longer appear “individual” or “authentic?” My question is, does authenticity exist at all?