Musings of an Inappropriate Woman

Street style and the rise of the “attention economy.”

Regular readers of this blog will know that I go back and forth when it comes to this whole fashion thing.

Some days I see it as an amazing tool for creativity and transformation, that wielded with the correct eye and skill, affords the capacity to “become” a different person each day or the week. Other days, I believe it encourages us to invest too much into appearances, peddling the myth that “if only we were beautiful enough, fashionable enough, thin enough, our lives would magically become better.” Not to mention reinforcing the idea that a woman’s value - her fabulousness - can be found in how she looks.

On this particular day, I find myself sitting somewhere in the middle. I do think that our perception of what it “fashionable” hinges as much on adherence to a narrow body type (and wealth, obvs) as it does on creativity and aesthetic nous. But I also think that some of the outfits worn on the pavements outside the major fashion weeks are incredible, and I respect the visual intelligence of the women and men who put them together. I certainly don’t have it myself!

And I am fascinated by what International Herald Tribune editor Susie Menkes calls the “peacocking” side of fashion, the degree to which what we currently and collective perceive as “stylish” is driven by what is photographable and shareable on social media. So I decided to head down to London Fashion Week a couple of weeks ago to check out the scene and write about it for Daily Life.

Here is a taster of what I came up with:

“A mix of social media, digital photography, and reality TV culture have turned fashion professionals like Vogue Japan’s Anna Dello Russo, fashion retailer Moda Operandi’s Taylor Tomasi Hill, Wonderland Magazine’s Julia Sarr-Jamois and Vogue Australia fashion director Christine Centenera into international celebrities, whose images are sought out by photographers, sold for cash, and reproduced and emulated by fashion fans online, on websites such as Pinterest, Polyvore and Tumblr.

And while the scene at Somerset House isn’t all fringed caps and oversized cat’s heads, there is a uniformity of purpose to the pin-thin heels, oversized accessories, designer logo t-shirts, and bare legs in near-freezing temperatures. They are dressing for the camera, and for social media, where he or she with the most dramatic outfit – think Dello Russo’s fruit-shaped hats or Tomasi Hill’s cartoonishly large Comme de Garcon shorts – wins.”

You can read the rest here.

And to leave you, a picture one of my favourite looks from London Fashion Week, from the outstandingly well put together Soraya De Carvalho:

Images via Daily Life, Stockholm Street Style.

Elsewhere: Street style and the attention economy (Daily Life)

When 'style icons' speak: My response to Alexa Chung on Body Image →

finalfashion:

I’m a skinny girl, I always have been, blessed with one of those metabolisms that allows me to eat whatever I want with no apparent effect. Also, I’ve always been fairly pleased with my physical appearance and have no experience with eating disorders. So when it comes to body size issues, my usual policy is to keep my mouth shut. I’m pretty sure the experience of someone who is privileged in both size and self-esteem would not be reassuring to anyone who is experiencing real social problems related to appearance. In this article, Alexa Chung provides a pretty good example of how body talk is the one thing skinny girls can’t pull off. Still, she’s inspired me to give it a long shot.

I first befriended Danielle after I interviewed her for a story I wrote about ‘it girls’, so it’s no surprise that when it comes to the ultimate early 2010s it girl, we disagree (albeit in a different way to our original discussion).

I liked Alexa Chung’s comments last week about body snark and style iconhood. I thought they were honest, feisty, and yet another sign of a woman who is wisely ambivalent about the accolades she has been afforded for her ability to wear clothes well. Danielle, on the other hand, thought they were in bad taste; as she put it on Twitter, “Size talk is the one thing that skinny girls can’t pull off.”

The differences in our responses can be attributed partly to the fact that I read about Alexa’s comments on Jezebel – which boiled the interview down to a couple of prize quotes about existing in a particular body shape not being the same thing as promoting it, and Alexa having ripped her prized fashion sense from Jane Birkin and Francoise Hardy – and Danielle reading them in their rather more rambly form on Fashionista.

But there are a few points she raises in her response that I’d like to respond to in turn.

‘Skinny girl’ privilege

Danielle argues that a skinny girl talking about size is like a multi-millionaire talking about money. Sound too pleased with your body and you’re boasting; complain and people will think you’re petulant and ungrateful. As a life-long “skinny girl” (which I am not), it’s safe to say she is speaking from experience.

But I’m not wholly comfortable with the privilege she describes in her post. Or rather, I don’t think it tells the whole story: either of the advantages of being a woman who remains pint-sized no matter what she eats, or the experience of standing at any other spot along the body type continuum.

If skinny girls “have every other advantage” (aside from the ability to speak openly about their body issues, or lack thereof), that raises the question of a) what kinds of advantages they have, and b) at what point the advantages of being a “skinny girl” kick in.

One advantage, I suppose, of being the kind of skinny Danielle is talking about might be never being plagued by the worry that you are “too fat”. But I have known enough present and former models with histories of eating disorders to know that’s not always the case.

I have also spent enough time around models to know that being tall and thin and having a great bone structure is not an instant formula for popularity, or a vaccination against feelings of physical awkwardness. The traits that win you a contract with an international modelling agency are not often the same traits that put you in the running for homecoming queen (or equivalent) when you’re sixteen.

The point is, whether we look more like Alexa Chung, Lena Dunham or Rebel Wilson, we all have embodied experiences which are complex mixes of privilege and not-privilege, and each of those are valid. The Blake Lively-esque prom queens have their stories to tell, too: rarely as pretty or perfect as their outer visages would suggest.

The embodiment of the ‘it girl’

I enjoyed Alexa’s comment that, “You can appreciate my style without having to appreciate my weight. It’s not actually mutually exclusive. I just get frustrated because just because I exist in this shape doesn’t mean that I’m like advocating it.”

And she’s right. Just because she is naturally waif-like (even by model standards, going on other interviews I’ve read), doesn’t mean she wants everyone else to be a waif, too. Nonetheless, Danielle is also right when she point out that “Chung owes her entire career to being appreciated for her appearance. Protesting that her size should have nothing to do with it is at best, naive, at worst, a calculated spin.”

As I’ve written here before, style icons aren’t just born through the clothes they wear on their bodies, but through the bodies that wear the clothes. And the widespread appreciation of Alexa Chung’s wardrobe has as much to do with the shape and size of her body as it does with what she wears.

I don’t think this makes her a hypocrite, and I don’t think it makes her “thinspiration” (at least, not intentionally); she can’t help the body that she was born into. But it is understandable why the women who were harassing Chung on Instagram were frustrated, even if their frustration was misdirected. In an age of smart phones, Instagram and lifestyle blogs, we are evaluated on our images more than ever.

When ‘style icons’ speak out

But the point I appreciated most about Alexa’s interview with Fashionista was that she seemed so cynical and blasé about her “style icon” status. Take this quote: “I’ve been dragging my ass around castings for years without anyone saying, oh you’ve got unique style. I think it was very much a case of being in the right place in the right time. I’ve really just been ripping off Jane Birkin.Sorry, has no one else seen a picture of Françoise Hardy? Look it up. I’m just the middle man.”

Loves it.

Danielle argues that “Chung is in the business of being judged on appearances, not intellect, and when she wanders into the world of words … she comes off as a sub-articulate babe in the woods.” But I disagree.

Like most people with a superficial streak, I enjoy looking at pictures of pretty people in pretty clothing – and I do like the way Chung dresses - but it was only when I started reading interviews with her that I began to get an inkling that I might also like her as a human being. And the more I read, the more I like her.

She’s honest. She’s got that whole British self-effacing thing going on. She seems to get that her current position in this world is utterly bizarre. And while she might put her foot in it sometimes (don’t we all), she seems like a genuine human being, rather than a carefully calculated brand.

Elsewhere: My response to Alexa Chung and body image (Final Fashion)
Alexa Chung on body image (Fashionista)
Alexa Chung doesn’t want to be your thinspo (Jezebel)

fotojournalismus:

Fashionistas pose for photographs in front of a homeless man outside Moynihan Station following a showing of the Rag & Bone Spring/Summer 2013 collection during New York Fashion Week September 7, 2012.

[Credit : Lucas Jackson/Reuters]

Book Dress (via amandaonwriting)

(via freakingggginger)

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To Alexa or not to Alexa… part deux

I have a bit of a tricky - if utterly one-sided - relationship with Alex Chung.

On the one hand, like most people who enjoy looking at pictures of pretty people wearing pretty clothes, my eye was instantly drawn to her… even before she started popping up in all the women’s magazines. On the other hand, it baffles me that she (and people like her) are held up as Awesome, Holistic Role Models for Modern Womanhood, when the only reason for their fame is that… they are pretty and wear pretty clothes.

I was heartened though to see that, in a profile story in this month’s UK Elle, Alexa herself recognises the peculiarity of her situation. See:

“A friend of mine recently said, ‘Dude, I didn’t know you’re a TV presenter! I thought you were some rich b**** whose dad paid for her to stay here.’ I really I hope I don’t appear stupid…” She raises a perfect eyebrow. “Model hang-ups.”

And:

“I feel like I’m blagging it, even now. On stage at the Fashion Awards, standing with the other winners who worked really hard to achieve their success, it was like I’d been given a prize for having a pretty face.”

And perhaps ironically, it’s quotes like that that lead me to think that, as Erica Bartle commented in my Cosmo article on the subject last year, women like Chung have “a lot more to offer the world of fashion and culture” than the catwalk they are usually given.

Related: I can’t be the only person who’s noticed that so many of the women we’re sold as role models don’t actually do that much
To Alexa or not to Alexa..

To Alexa or not to Alexa…

That is the subject of next week’s mag article.

It’s not just Alexa, though. It’s Olivia Palermo, Daisy Lowe, Lauren Conrad, Whitney Port, Kate and Pippa Middleton, Kim Kardashian, Miranda Kerr, Lara Bingle, Edie Sedgwick and all those women have pushed down on our throats on a daily basis as interesting, aspirational, sparky and fabulous… all by virtue of the fact that they are beautiful and wear clothes well.

Don’t get me wrong - I love me some Alexa (and Olivia and Daisy…) as much as the next ladymag reader. When I first saw her photos floating around the internet back in 2008 or so, I was entranced. There’s just something about her that draws the eye. The woman oozes “cool”. Yet it is a coolness that is not consequence of what she does but of how she looks.

It’s like Caitlin Moran writes in my favourite chapter of How To Be A Woman, about her teen desire to be first a princess, then a muse:

I wanted to be a muse. I wanted to be a muse quite badly. To be so incredible that some band wrote a song about me, or some writer based a character on me, or a painter produced canvas after canvas of me, in every mood, that hung in galleries around the world. Or even a handbag. Jane Birkin inspired a handbag. By way of contrast I would happily have settled for my name on a plastic Superdrug bag.

Because that’s what most of the famous-for-being-famous women we admire are - or at least the reason they’re sold to us as being worthy of admiration. Muses, elevated for their faultless embodiment of different personas of femininity. And it makes me profoundly uncomfortable, in the same way that the businesswomen who are so often promoted to us are promoted on the basis that they produce products that will help us look, dress and smell like these women (here in the UK, you will often read about how “fragrant” the Middletons are).

And yet, I also feel somewhat conflicted about my discomfort. I’m not against aesthetics, after all - I once moved into a house based primarily on the fact that I liked my future housemates’ decor (which turned out to be a fairly decent indicator of broader compatability), and I recoil every time I have dress in a manner that doesn’t feel “like me”.

I’m open to the idea that the ability to put together a “look” is a form of self-expression worth celebrating, like music, literature, or fashion design. And I’m also conscious that - in some of the above cases, at least - the problem isn’t that the women themselves aren’t worth celebrating, so much as it is the things we celebrate about them.

And yet, it still makes me uncomfortable. I’m going to chat to a whole bunch of folks about this next week to get my thoughts in better order (and hopefully to a place of greater insight), but to help me along that journey, I’d like to first throw it out to you.

Does “it girl lust” make you uncomfortable? Do you wish we had more substantial role models, or that we celebrated more substantial things about our role models? What do you think is the appeal of these ladymag staples?