The Breakdown of Fashion as We Know It

From the New York Times, September 4, 2008. “Wanted: Genius Designer” By Guy Trebay:

“What seems disorienting about this absence [of a genius designer] is that fashion is no longer a discipline of interest mainly to female consumers and a cult of aesthetes. Like it or not, fashion has become something larger, a viral cultural force that sometimes seems only incidentally concerned with clothes. Cocteau wasn’t kidding when he said style is a simple way of saying complicated things- a point the United States Olympic Committee clearly noted (American teams may not have dominated in the medals, but in the parade of nations they killed the competition in jauntily classic Polo Ralph Lauren uniforms), as do politicos. Were the Dead Sea scrolls subjected to more exegesis than Michelle Obama’s floral print sheath at the Democratic National Convention in Denver? (Thakoon, by the way.) The voices of the blogosphere say, No.

"Yet, contradictory as this may seem, the notion of a Next Big Thing in fashion may itself be culturally discordant. As in film, music, and other arts, consumers have wearied of big names and labels. Except on TV, they are bored with diktats, with taste legislated by self-appointed “experts” and with camphor-scented archaisms like “stars.”

"They have lost the desire to partake of media in hunks: an entire musical album, or a single artist’s whole career.”

It sounds like Marx has predicted the downfall of the designers of 2008, more specifically the New York based designers in Fall 2008’s collections. Marx says, “The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion the devaluation of the world of men” (71). He goes on to say, “this fact expresses merely that the object which labour produces- labour’s product- confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer” (71). The power that is independent of the producer, in fashion’s case, must be the individual’s agency over a garment’s representation, associations, and thus socially derived meaning or value. [Hidden] labels mean nothing in society- garments’ meanings endlessly fluctuate as they are relatively created by the wearer and the viewers.

Trebay’s article goes on about a DIY attitude prevalent among young consumers, which ultimately gives more power to the individual over the masses (even though the style of the masses is really composed of an elite club of “Heathers”). I can sense a DIY ethos, or at least a “tweak-it-to-your-one-of-a-kind-satisfaction” ethos. Alienation, or at least a visceral desire to be unique, and express yourself as accurately as possible, has surely created this new DIY ethos. For instance, even among the insanely rich and fashionable, one-of-a-kind dresses, or even custom fit dresses always surpass a “mass-produced” dress, even if (in the case of couture), “mass-produced” only means eight. It seems to me that the alienation Raymond Williams and Karl Marx define is still raging today. An unmatched, truly unique connection to garments, and more broadly the presentation of the self in society, is what our hearts are truly yearning for. Fashion may be breaking down from an oligarchy to feudal markets and homemade garments.

Celebrity Gossip, Identity, & Power

Left: Angelina Jolie Doll by Noel Cruz




Debord writes of the spectacle as a mode of relating to the world through representations and illusions. The consumption of entertainment and celebrities seems like an obvious manifestation of the spectacle, and thus socially harmful. But because of my allegiance (read: addiction) to celebrity gossip and consumption of celebrities, I cannot help but think that celebrity gossip is a fun, social, and perfectly acceptable practice.

Celebrity gossip is a lot like the spectacle in that we do not have real relationships with celebrities, but we do have relationships with the representations (including images, gossip, and professional work) of celebrities. Celebrities are, by definition, representations because they are known by the masses, but very few people have actually seen them in the flesh. They become almost supernatural because their existence as images, or representations, does not directly relate to most people’s lives. They are whatever images or movie clips one has ever seen of them, and thus they are different in every person’s life. While I see the Jonas Brothers as hilarious little curly-haired boys, most American pre-teens and young teens see them as gorgeous, talented, sexy men (ha!). Similarly, the spectacle is anything and everything that you know it to be- surely the endless amount of images and signs I have seen in my life differ from those of a boy born and raised in Greece, or even Montana. Basically, celebrity identities and one’s experience of the spectacle are all relative.

Celebrity gossip and identities are like the spectacle in that they are all a mode of relating to the world. My relation to the world is definitely tempered by my ideas and conception of celebrities. For example, I really do not like the recent leggings trend that has swept Hollywood, the country, and even the runway, the chief patron of which is Lindsay Lohan. As a result, I hardly ever wear leggings as pants. This may sound extremely trivial, and often times it is, but nevertheless, I recognize celebrity gossip as a dominating force in the construction of my social being. My incessant definition of myself against those identities is another way that celebrity gossip and identities act as a mode of relating to the world. Their money, fab frocks, and ridiculous vacations all over the world constantly remind me that I am far from their world- that I am a student at Williams College in Massachusetts with a very tight budget.

I am fully aware that I voluntarily involve myself in this world of celebrities by going to Perezhilton.com and Style.com almost everyday. But I do believe that celebrity power and gossip has become unavoidable for the average person. I think the day came very recently- CNN closely followed the mess that was (is?) Britney Spears. Uninvolved, uninterested elders know who Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are. It is ubiquitous: “the spectator feels at home nowhere, for the spectacle is everywhere” (Debord 23).

The most haunting parallel between celebrity gossip/ power/ and identity is the religious patronage that people give to this gossip, just like they do to the spectacle. Debord says, “the spectacle is the material reconstruction of the religious illusion” (Debord 17-18). I immediately thought of Madonna’s iconic song “Material Girl.” For those of you who haven’t heard this, shame on you. But here are some lyrics:

They can beg and they can plead

But they cant see the light, thats right

cause the boy with the cold hard cash

Is always mister right, cause we are

Living in a material world
And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl

First off, I think Madonna fans are pretty intense and the status they give her is surely God-like. But just like the spectacle, celebrity gossip is followed fervently with the utmost devotion. Quite honestly, I am probably more “religiously devoted” to Perez and Style.com than I am to any established religion. This is becoming more of a norm and totally acceptable, which kind of scares me, but I am a voluntary, educated part of the problem. My deep problem, that you may have already picked up on, is my mixed feelings about celebrity gossip and my fidelity to the ridiculous tales of their lives. I do not think there is anything wrong with it, but I get this deep feeling that everything is wrong with it, just like Debord thinks everything is wrong with the spectacle.

By Hand

One way that people used to envision the mind was as a set of gears, in which little switches would go off and alert another, which would kick another into gear until a task was fully performed. Almost like a cuckoo clock. But today, the brain has moved into a virtual territory in which cause and effect are not so literal, and the mechanisms of the brain are conceived of in a much more mysterious way- like a computer. “The Mechanization of the Mind: On the Origins of Cognitive Science,” an essay by Jean-Pierre Dupuy traces ways that “the human mind can know itself rationally by virtue of the fact that it can conceive and fabricate a replica of itself” (Dupuy 31). The tendency to model the mind after a computer began in the mid-20^th century. Fordism, mass production, and thus mass consumption have strongly influenced this tendency because of their inherent tenets. Furthermore, the technological innovations of the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries have invaded our minds, and the inhumane efficiency of computers is becoming more desirable in the human mind.

If the initiation date of Fordism is 1914, it only took about 30 years for the tenets of Fordism to seep into the cognitive realm. Fordism can be seen as a sort of root to the stringent requirements of perfection and efficiency in many aspects of life, especially the image of lines. Just as accurate and economical mass production has become a proper way to produce, efficiency and precision are now required of the brain. David Harvey, in “Fordism” speaks of the rise of mass production: “It was hard for either capitalists or workers to refuse rationalizations which improved efficiency at a time of all-out war

effort” (Harvey 127). But can we resist efficiency today? Hardly not.

A catalogue of contemporary drawings that I came across at work, By Hand: Pattern, Precision, and Repetition in Contemporary Drawing, is a poignant dialogue with expectations of perfection and efficiency in the visual arts. The meticulous hand-drawings challenge the modern conception of the perfection of computers and their ability to render drawings and graphics by

refusing to take the “easy,” errorless way out. These artists are working off the idea that intense levels of detail in line drawings now demand perfection by the consumer, or viewer of art. For instance, if one wants to draw 300 “straight” lines, each a quarter of a centimeter away from each other, one is expected to use a computer. The expectation of performing the task on a computer is not only for ease and efficiency, but it is to succumb to the expectation of perfection and precision. The viewer imposes this expectation upon the artist. But where does the average art consumer get such expectations? To echo Adorno and Horkheimer, they come from the world around him or her, and the perfection of line that never falters in media images or mass-produced images.

These drawings are barely fathomable to the average viewer. All my friends whom I showed the catalogue to had shocked responses, usually containing the phrase, “How the hell did they do that?!” The amount of time and concentration required to execute any of these hand-drawings is made all the more remarkable by the perfection attributed to computers and the imperfection attributed to the mind. Nonetheless, expectations for the mind remain high, and almost unfair, because of the contemporary tendency to model the mind after a computer. Interestingly enough, as the artists featured in By Hand challenge the perfection of computers by executing meticulous hand-drawings, they are conforming to the modern model of the mind as computers because they are striving for perfection. The lines in Gerhard Mayer’s Untitled Drawing #125 are so precise, the spaces between each line so calculated, it looks perfect.