Fashion, fashion, fashion

Photographer: Natalia Lipchanskaya
Fashion is on my mind at the moment. In different ways. I did a fashion show in aid of Victim Support fairly recently and I loved it, even though the venue was not glamorous. It had been organised by Models of Diversity and meeting their spokesperson, model Bonnie Bee (Bonnie Locke), a bubbly, highly articulate, young woman, was the highlight of the evening for me. We hit it off straightaway. We talked and laughed and we will be brainstorming together for the next show -all in due course.
Fashion is also on my mind because I was having a late afternoon snack at a local café where they were playing, to my surprise, the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show on a large TV screen, for the entertainment of the customers. I watched in amazement, I had never seen such kitsch before. The Victoria's Secret Angels were beautiful and surely, a carbon copy of each other. I have seen them before on the catwalk, I am talking of Miranda Kerr, Alessandra Ambrosio and co.  But this show was so kitsch it made them look like Barbie dolls. It was all about stereotypes, the girls throwing kisses at the audience and posing sexily. It was interesting to watch the reaction of the customers. A pretty girl sitting with two young men, one of whom was obviously her boyfriend, when one of them said that the models were not skinny, began to explain  they were 'lingerie models, a bit more curvy' and then felt a little uncomfortable about the men ogling the girls on the screen, so she asked for a different table, making an excuse, while saying to the guy who was not her boyfriend that he could watch the show in the mirror hanging opposite their new table, which reflected the large TV monitor.
The waiter thought I was quite weird because I forgot to look at the menu and order, so engrossed I was in the show, he had to come and remind me a couple of times.
And now I am thinking of fashion, generally, and why it has such an allure. Alison Bancroft, author of Fashion and Psychoanalysis, defines fashion as being  "primarily concerned with innovation in the surface decoration of the body, and the wider social and cultural responses to this innovation. More importantly, it is the wearer, and the act of wearing, that are central to fashion. Fashion is not a collection of singular items. A garment is not an independent, fully formed object that is superimposed on the blank canvas of a woman’s body. On the contrary, fashion comes into being only when it is in the process of being worn. When it is not being worn, it is something else – a product to be sold, a museum piece, or even laundry"
Fashion is activated by the body, in other words.
Lastly, fashion is on my mind because of the recent furore over Numero magazine and its use of white model with bronzed skin in a spread entitled African Queen.

Photographer: Sebastian Kim. Model : Ondria Hardin
I feel most ambivalent about it. Whilst having a white person impersonate a black one is reminiscent of the Minstrels Show, nevertheless the idea of race bending does appeal to me. Was it really wrong of Numero to cast their model as African Queen? The photographer Sebastian Kim is not white. Does this make it any better?

(All photographs apart from the last one are modelled by Alex B)

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