Fashion, Identity, Image 9781350183216, 9781350183209, 9781350183247, 9781350183223

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Paul Jobling is the author of Fashion Spreads (Berg, 1999), Man Appeal (Berg, 2005) and Advertising Menswear (Bloomsbury, 2014). He was Visiting Professor between 2018 and 2020 for the MA Fashion Studies at The New School, Parsons Paris, France.

Philippa Nesbitt graduated from the MA Fashion Studies, The New School, Parsons Paris. Her MA thesis explores the emergence and impact of gender non-conformativity in global fashion modelling and media. She is currently digital curator for Revue magazine.

Angelene Wong graduated from the MA Fashion Studies, The New School, Parsons Paris. She is a doctoral student at School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and a dance artist. Her research deals with the intersections of fashion, dance, and performance.

FASHION, IDENTITY, IMAGE Paul Jobling, Philippa Nesbitt and Angelene Wong

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2022 Copyright © Paul Jobling, Philippa Nesbitt and Angelene Wong, 2022 Paul Jobling, Philippa Nesbitt and Angelene Wong have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image: Gucci Fall/Winter 2018/2019. © Filippo Monteforte /AFP/Getty Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jobling, Paul, author. | Nesbitt, Philippa, author. | Wong, Angelene, author. Title: Fashion, identity, image / Paul Jobling, Philippa Nesbitt and Angelene Wong. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021034470 (print) | LCCN 2021034471 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350183216 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350183209 (paperback) | ISBN 9781350183223 (pdf) | ISBN 9781350183230 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Fashion–Social aspects–Western countries–Case studies. | Fashion–Political aspects–Western countries–Case studies. | Identity politics–Western countries–Case studies. | Intersectionality (Sociology)–Western countries–Case studies. | Body image–Western countries–Case studies. | Fashion writing–Western countries–Case studies. | Advertising–Fashion–Western countries–Case studies. Classification: LCC GT525 .J63 2022 (print) | LCC GT525 (ebook) | DDC 391.009182/1–dc23/eng/20211015 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021034470 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021034471 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-8321-6 PB: 978-1-3501-8320-9 ePDF: 978-1-3501-8322-3 eBook: 978-1-3501-8323-0 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgementsix Introductionx 1

Authoring Fashion, Intersecting Sex and Gender 1 Introduction1 Maria Grazia Chiuri’s ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ T-Shirt for Christian Dior: Branding, identity and authorship 5 Between the womb and the gay parade: Alexander McQueen’s ‘The Widows of Culloden’ as poetic text 14 Subverting the symbolic order: McQueen’s abject woman 16 Conclusion: Squaring up to the phallic mother 27 Notes30

2

Written on the body: Fashion, clothing and age 33 Introduction33 ‘Active ageing’, youthfulness and fashion 35 ‘Fashion For All Ages’ and the new old model army 41 Race and reversing convention 48 ‘States of truth and fiction’: Ari Seth Cohen and Magali Nougarède 52 Conclusion: From idiotic methods to the realities of time and place 61 Notes65

3

(Un)Gendering the runway 67 Introduction67 Forerunners of transgender and non-binary identities in fashion 70 The advent of transgendered models 74 The abject trans-model 75 Between abjection and acceptance 76 ‘Come into the (trans)garden’: The heterotopia of fashion 79 The authentic self 84 Other models: Intersectionality and wider diversity in the fashion industry 92 Tokenism versus activism 96 Conclusion: Between tokenism and authenticity 101 Notes103

Contents

4

Loving the alien: Fashion and cyborg identities 105 Introduction105 Andrea Giacobbe and ‘Simplex Concordia’ 107 Alessandro Michele and the Gucci Cyborg 115 Compromising race and diversity 124 A ‘genuine cyborg manifesto’? 128 Conclusion: Towards emancipatory possibilities 134 Notes136

Epilogue138 Bibliographic references 143 Index157

vi

ILLUSTRATIONS

1

Amanda Googe models ‘We Should All Be Feminists’, T-shirt, 2016

2

Maria Grazia Chiuri and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Paris, 2017

3

3

Maria Grazia Chiuri on the Dior runway Paris, 2020

4

4 Maria Grazia Chiuri, fencing inspired outfit, Spring/Summer 2017 ready to wear 5

Alexander McQueen, ‘The Widows of Culloden’, Fall–Winter 2006–7

xviii

8 19

6 Alexander McQueen, ‘The Widows of Culloden’, Autumn/Winter 2006–721 7 Alexander McQueen, ‘The Widows of Culloden’, Autumn/Winter 2006–723 8 Alexander McQueen, ‘The Widows of Culloden’, Autumn/Winter 2006–726 9

Daphne Selfe and David Gant, 2019

32

10

Valerie Paine, ‘FFAA’, 2016. Photo by David Newby

43

11

Hugo Woddis, ‘FFAA’, 2018. Photo by David Newby

47

12

JoAni Johnson, TOMMYNOW, Fall 2019 runway, NYC

49

13

Pam Lucas, ‘FFAA’, 2019. Photo by David Newby

51

14 Left to Right: Joyce Carpati, Ilona Royce Smithkin, Lina Plioplyte, Deborah Rappaport, Tziporah Salmon, Jacquie Tajah Murdoch, Ari Seth Cohen and Lynn Dell

53

15–16

Magali Nougarède. Crossing the Line, 2002

56

17

Magali Nougarède. Crossing the Line, 2002

58

18

Magali Nougarède. Crossing the Line, 2002

59

19–20

Magali Nougarède. Crossing the Line, 2002

60

21

Tracey Norman, 2019

66

22

Andrea Pejic

69

23

Hari Nef, 2019

78

24

Teddy Quinlivan, 2019

80

25–26

Rostok Smirnov, Instagram screenshot, 2021

88

Illustrations

27–28

Rostok Smirnov, Banana Models Polaroids

89

29

Richie Moo, 2021

91

30

Meme Meng, 2019

93

31

Ceval Omar, 2018

95

32

Andrea Giacobbe, ‘Simplex Concordia’, 1996

104

33–34

Andrea Giacobbe, ‘Simplex Concordia’, 1996

109

35

Dwight Hoogendijk and Unia Pakhamova, Gucci ‘Cyborg’, 2018

117

36

Jeppe Julius and Oumie Jammeh, Gucci ‘Cyborg’, 2018

118

37

Leopold van der Not d’Aasche, Gucci ‘Cyborg’, 2018

120

38

Lily Nova, Gucci ‘Cyborg’

122

39

Mae Mei Lapres, Gucci ‘Cyborg’, 2019

126

40

Oslo Grace, Gucci ‘Cyborg’, 2019

132

viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The inspiration for this book was a postgraduate seminar about identity politics and fashion, led by Paul Jobling when he was Visiting Professor at The New School, Parsons Paris in the autumn-winter semester, 2018–19. Without the stimulating crepuscular discussions that took place on Wednesday evenings at 45 Rue St Roch it would not have seen the light of day. We would like to thank, therefore, all the students who were involved in helping us to gestate, sharpen and refine our ideas: Olivia Johnston, Lily Li, Emma Shouse, Clara Smith, Ariel Stark, Abbygail May Talao, Katie Wilkes, and Melissa Zuleta Bandera, and Lisa Durand and Sarah Laurier from Sciences Po (The Paris Institute of Political Studies). A special word of thanks is due also to Florence LeclercDickler, Dean of Parsons Paris, and Marco Pecorari, Associate Professor and Program Leader for the MA Fashion Studies, who facilitated the seminar in the first place, and to Karen Decter, Administrative Assistant at Parsons Paris, for her intellectual curiosity about the material as well as all the assistance in helping things run smoothly. While the book was conceived in relatively calm times, its composition took place during one of the most turbulent periods for the health of the world with the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic in January 2020. On a personal basis, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the following humans and non-humans for supporting us and helping to keep us sane as we were knocking the chapters into shape during such unsettling times: Max Ardencote, Lynne Bosetti, Marsha Meskimmon, Harrison Nesbitt, Annie Ng, Caitlin Prince, Joel Traptow, Ed Wilding and Lawrence Wong. Likewise, we extend kind thanks to Andrea Giacobbe, David Newby and Magali Nougarède for the generous permission in allowing us to reproduce their work in Chapters 2 and 4, and to our participants interviewed in Chapter 3 for their unstinting willingness to share their experiences, and their continued openness and contributions to advancing the rights of non-binary fashion models: Oslo Grace, Alana Jessica, Meme Meng, Richie Moo, Ceval Omar and Rostok Smirnov. More generally, one of the positive outcomes of the impact of Covid-19 has been the way that major fashion houses, including Dior and Gucci that we discuss in this book, realized the creation of so many different looks and the imperative to produce seasonal designs to display in major cities twice every year are wasteful material practices. All power, then, to them and this ethical and ecological vision of practice in the fashion industry. We dedicate this book to all like-minded souls that have an interest in fashion and want to enact positive change in the world. Finally, we extend our appreciation to Georgia Kennedy and all the fashion and textiles editorial team at Bloomsbury for keeping faith in our project through thick and thin.

INTRODUCTION

In his opening editorial for the Autumn–Winter 2015 issue of Purple Magazine, Paul B.  Preciado crystallized his own transitioning from female to male subjectivity and, indeed, how transfeminism at the start of the twenty-first century enjoins us all to consider the tactical role we can play in reforming societal norms: There is a revolution taking place. Not only inside me, but all over the planet. This revolution did not happen in the glamorous and hippie 1960s. It will not take place in 1,000 years. This revolution is happening now, in front of you. You are in the middle of this revolution and, no matter if you know it or not, you are part of it. Accordingly, the revolution that he asserts is unfolding has repercussions not just for those involved in gender reassignment but also to the wider project of identity politics across the spectrum. Originating with the radical social movements of the 1960s, identity politics seized the right to define oneself outside of official or expert categories; it thus seeks to give agency to subjects society has regarded as subordinate or inferior and to dismantle such binaries as masculine/feminine, straight/gay, black/white, young/old and human/ nonhuman. The insistence in identity politics to be regarded as a distinct individual may sound at the outset like nothing more than a matter of solipsism and something that controversially coincides with the politics of postcapitalism or neoliberalism. As Stephen Metcalf (2017) describes it, the latter ‘has become a rhetorical weapon, but it properly names the reigning ideology of our era – one that venerates the logic of the market and strips away the things that make us human’. Thus, neoliberalism exploits the idea that human beings can only attain a true sense of freedom or independence in the global economy of the free market through limitless acts of consumerism and digital communication, and not through any reliance on the welfare state: ‘Neoliberalism represents a highly efficient, indeed, an intelligent system for exploiting freedom’ (Han 2017: 3). And yet, the same economics of dehumanization have ushered in a renewed sense of both diversity and solidarity, which puts the emphasis on sentient inter-subjective and somatic experiences  – a phenomenon that has been chiefly manifested by the social activism of the #MeToo (f. 2006) and Black Lives Matter (f. 2013) movements against all forms of sexual harassment and racial discrimination. As Preciado posits, the challenge facing us all now lies in crossing boundaries: ‘To move from feminism as identity politics to an extended politics of de-identification. To resist normative identifications instead of fighting to produce identity’ (Preciado 2015). In fact, as originally defined by black queer feminist Combahee River Collective in America in a statement of April 1977, the

Introduction

term ‘identity politics’ is deliberately expansive and, entwined in a network of human relationships, its objective not only to focus on the forms of oppression endured by black women but also on the struggles all people at the margins of society face in trying to achieve recognition, if not equality: ‘We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression … To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough’ (Combahee, 1977). But while identity politics has been a source of strength and empowerment for marginal and exploited groups, enabling them to interrogate their subordination to dominant social norms, it has simultaneously been criticized for overlooking the complex multidimensionality or intersectionality that human identities encompass. It is black feminist lawyer Kimberlé Crenshaw who is credited with coining the term ‘intersectionality’ in an article in 1989 that highlighted how the American legal system failed to recognize that race and gender were simultaneous factors in cases of discrimination against black women. But in the 1970s, black feminists in the United States  – including the Combahee River Collective  – had already begun to probe why one-dimensional identity politics that dealt with the ‘holy trinity’ of gender, class and race as single entities were inadequate: ‘We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously’ (Combahee 1977). Hence, in a pamphlet first published in 1969, Frances Beal (2008) invoked the double jeopardy of being black and female to pinpoint how racism and sexism were combined in capitalist societies to subordinate black women by keeping them in low paid menial and stereotypical female work as nurses, nannies and domestic help. For some black feminists this notion of black jeopardy was, however, in turn regarded as an insufficient, if necessary, means of encompassing the different experiences of oppression that individual black women have had to endure over time. After all, as Silvia Federici (2021) states, colonization in the United States was built simultaneously on the slave trade and the witch-hunt, thus subjugating both female and black bodies in the spirit of American expansionism and progress. Audre Lorde (1984) and Deborah King (1989), therefore, speak instead of a multiple consciousness. They alert us to the fact that intersectionality does not signify the same thing as inclusivity – ‘a pretense to a homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist’ (Lorde 1984: 116)  – but rather emphasize how the inequality of power relations that occurs in everyday life in both private and public domains is experienced on different and individual levels by those who are categorized as sharing a uniform group identity. It is in this vein that Crenshaw also argues: The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite – that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences … Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrain. (Crenshaw 1991: 1242) xi

Introduction

As she proposes, therefore, the issue at stake is what happens when one form of visible, or invisible, difference and marginalization is complicated by considering it intersectionally alongside (an)other form(s) of difference and marginalization. It is with such an ethos of intersectional identity politics that this book is engaged and in it we take stock of its impact on fashion and fashion media between 1990 and 2020 in Europe, the UK and the United States. As such, it affords a timely opportunity to reflect upon the challenge made to oppressive norms of identity – whether they relate to gender, sexuality, race or age  – and the extent to which fashion matters in helping to advance debates about such issues. Of course, this is not to argue that the fashion system was not ever involved with debates about identity before 1990, but to interrogate how it has grappled with the dialectic between the need to belong and the desire to be valued as a freely constituted individual that intensified during the period in question. Hence, this project takes the year 1990 as a post quem or starting point, not because of crude decadeism or to suggest some kind of ground zero from which suddenly fashion, people and identities changed. Rather, by the turn of the millennium, a renewed nonbinary consciousness not only became evident but  – particularly as engendered by marginalized groups – also began to coalesce around modes of resistance that contested dominant narratives of identity and systems of social, political and cultural power. Moreover, in a rapidly and continually changing field of praxis, a body of seminal writing about identity, in both its original versions and English translation, appeared during this period: Judith Butler (1990 and 2004) and Michel Foucault (2004) on sex, gender, power and performativity; Donna Haraway (1997 and 2003) and Rosi Braidotti (2013) on cyborgs and the posthuman; Luce Irigaray (1993) and Mike Featherstone (1991 and 1995) on ageing; and Phillip Vannini and Alexis Franzese (2008) on the authentic self. Each of the four complementary chapters that this book comprises acts, therefore, as a set of case studies that trace the genealogy of and analyse the relevance to fashion of a particular movement or way of thinking about corporeal identities on a non-binary and intersectional basis since the turn of the millennium. Chapter 1 deals with the concepts of authorship, l’écriture féminine (women’s writing), the poetic text and creativity, as propounded by psycho-linguistic feminists Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva, in regard to Maria Grazia Chiuri’s ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ catwalk show for Dior (Spring–Summer 2017) and Alexander McQueen’s ‘The Widows of Culloden’ collection (Fall–Winter 2006). Accordingly, we evaluate how identity is performatively en procès – that is both under construction and on trial – and how the intersectional identities of authors themselves complicate the act of l’écriture féminine, while simultaneously opening up a space of ambivalence in which fashion designers, both female and male, can transcend Jacques Lacan’s emphasis on the Law of the Father and phallogocentrism in the creation of womenswear. Chapter 2 addresses the longevity revolution and the so-called baby boom generation’s experiences of ageing, clothing and turning grey-haired in regard to cultural gerontology. As Julia Twigg insists, ‘Age is surely one of the key or “master” identities, along with gender, class, race and other contenders. We should not, therefore, be surprised to find it reflected in ideas about clothing’ (2012a: 1032). Thus, we analyse fashion’s contradictory xii

Introduction

relationship with getting old and the concept of the ‘mask of ageing’, whereby individuals negotiate ‘between the subjective experience of growing old and how old one looks objectively in the eyes of the world’ (Featherstone and Hepworth 1991: 378–9). At the same time, issues about cultural gerontology bolster both overt and covert forms of intersectional ageism involving women and men, though – grounded in the compulsion to maintain a youthful appearance – it is the former who have mostly been the target of ‘the double standard of ageing’ (Sontag 1979), whereas the latter are often described as ‘silver foxes’. Thus, we examine the demographic impact of global ageing populations in regard to the following topics: the representation of white and non-white female and male models aged fifty years and over in the Guardian’s ‘Fashion For All Ages’ (FFAA) feature between 2009 and 2020; Ari Seth Cohen’s film and blog, Advanced Style (2012 and 2016), as an ethnographic means of curating the dress preferences of seven stylish females aged fifty and over living in New York City in terms of their age, race and class; and Magali Nougarède’s photography project, Crossing the Line (2002), involving women and men, both young and old, who resided in Sussex, England and Normandy, France. Her predilection for the close-up and body cropping emphasizes the embodied, haptic quality of fabric to connote how its warp and weft are bound up with the sitter’s age and relationship to clothing. Such a tactic, which she states hovers between the ‘states of truth and fiction’, invites us to contemplate the symbolic life stories of the sitters and garments represented and, thereby, her photography can be read on the level of the poetic text (Nougarède and Jobling 2006). Chapter 3 interrogates the idea of fashion as a heterotopia, or alternative safe space, alongside issues of authenticity and non-conformity for global trans models. It explores such changes in the acceptance of transgender and non-binary models in the mainstream fashion industry through combining a historical trajectory of their treatment over time – from April Ashley in the 1960s and 1970s to Tracey Norman, Lauren Foster and Connie Fleming in the 1980s and 1990s – with a discursive analysis of the experiences related by six contemporary non-binary subjects in first-hand interviews: Oslo Grace and Alana Jessica (both from North America); Meme Meng (from Taiwan); Rostok Smirnov (from Ukraine); Richie Moo (from Puerto Rico); and Ceval Omar (from Norway). The interviews highlight the necessity for transgender and non-binary models to foster and sustain the social ties required to succeed in the contemporary fashion industry and media. Crucially, all six models involved also reiterated the idea of being authentic as a motivating force (Vannini and Franzese 2008) that enables them to participate in the heterotopia of fashion in the first place. In so doing, they evince the transitivity that takes place between the individual’s conception of the real self in private and how it coincides with the conventional social interactions and performances expected of them in the public domain. Finally, Chapter 4 expands on the matter of fluidity and mutability in identities, this time by dealing not only with those bodies that already exist but those that could exist in the future. As such, it assesses the genetic and biotechnological recrafting of bodies and the cyborg or posthuman as a redemptive queer figure in regard to the hybrid fashion identities symbolized in Alessandro Michele’s 2018 runway show for Gucci and xiii

Introduction

Andrea Giacobbe’s digital fashion spread, ‘Simplex Concordia’ (1996). In both cases, the ideas expressed by Donna Haraway in ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ and her other writings on alterity loom large as an analytical frame, insofar as she maintains that the cyborg locates, ‘biology in its intersection with many other communities of practice, made up of entangled humans and others, living and not … The cyborg is a figuration, but it is also an obligatory worlding’ (Gane and Haraway 2006: 138 and 139). We also return in this chapter to the way that the intersectional identity of the producer – in this instance, Michele – impacts the style and content of the collection(s) he designs. Although each of the chapters has its own distinct thematic and analytical emphasis, they all address gender, sexuality and race in tandem, and illuminate how intersectional thinking is not purely a question of imposing theory on the material and identities explored in them. Instead, they demonstrate that intersectional identities are immanent in the material itself. Accordingly, Chiuri’s catwalk show for Dior co-opted the phrase ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ from the title of a TED talk and essay by Nigerian-born writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; FFAA showcases both male and female models from various race and ethnic backgrounds; the myriad queer and trans models from across the globe whom we interviewed use their own words and bodies to contest any form of normative categorization; and Michele’s ‘Cyborg’ collection for Gucci resorted directly to theories of identity by Michel Foucault and Donna Haraway, and simultaneously mobilized ethnic dress in the name of high fashion. Consequently, we are left to ponder whether Michele reinforces a colonial point of view on race through cultural appropriation or effectively portends a postgender ‘pluriverse’ in which ‘the Cyborg is the expression that blends different evolving identities. Hybrid and shifting identities, built on multiple belongings, that transgress the normative discipline’ (Gucci 2018). It is on this level, then, we expand on Patricia Hill Collins’s idea of intersectionality as existing within ‘a matrix of domination’ (1990: 299), such that it frames how positions of gender, sexuality race, class and age overlap to constitute a techne or tool of inquiry that enables us to analyse the relationship between theory and practice.

Naming, language and identities This techne also entails harnessing language as a political weapon, to the extent that the multiplied self can be difficult to put into words. Hence, intersectional identity politics postulate a new or different use of rhetoric in describing and defining what identity means in everyday life. The Book of Disquiet (1982) by the Portuguese author, Fernando Pessoa, pinpoints the very problem of using language when things are obscure or confused and he nudges us towards regarding grammar not as restrictive law, but as an emancipatory tool. Published posthumously, the book gathers together fragments of aphoristic prose and poetry that he composed between 1913 and 1934 to represent the life story of Bernardo Soares, ‘someone who never existed’ and yet is one of several alter egos Pessoa conjured up in his oeuvre to allude to his own existence as a writer. At one point, Soares/ Pessoa ponders on androgyny and how best to sum it up in words, rejecting hackneyed xiv

Introduction

descriptions of a boyish-looking girl, ‘That girl looks like a boy’ or ‘That girl is a boy’, in favour of a coinage of his own, ‘She’s a boy’, as a way of violating grammar in order to express the contradiction her/his identity embodies (Pessoa 2010: 231). The issue of nomenclature is, therefore, a minefield in intersectional identity politics and probably most evident in Chapter 3, which addresses the pronouns that different queer and trans models prefer. At the time of our interview, Oslo Grace, for example, resisted the English binary singular pronouns, he/him and she/her in favour of the neutrality of the plural they/them. Since undertaking gender affirming surgeries, however, he has resorted to the pronouns he/him, which preference we honour in this study. Nonetheless, most fashion agencies do not categorize models as gender neutral and BMG, his agency, includes Grace in both its male and female categories. The personal pronoun also becomes problematic and politicized in Chiuri and Adichie’s use of ‘We’ in their call to arms, ‘We Should All Be Feminists’, since it raises questions about who is included or excluded from such identification and activism. But equally, naming compels us to ruminate on the non-stereotypical or appropriate ways of categorizing people over fifty years old in a culture of ‘active ageing’ – Senior? Silver? Baby boomer? Third Ager? Or the indefinite status of cyborgs – Alien? Posthuman? Mongrel? When it comes to race and ethnicity, things are even more problematic in expressing a group identity: Black? People of Colour? Visible Minorities? Throughout this book we respect the specific identities of the individual subjects we discuss, and we have tried to avoid the umbrella terminology used to describe people as uniform groups or categories. In Chapter 2 we resort to the term BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethic), which is current in the UK, though only when it has been used already as a collective acronym in the official and journalistic discourses that we cite. We appreciate that, in common with other categorizations or labels, it is opposed by many of the people it seeks to represent on the grounds it lumps together too many disparate racial groups. Hence, according to Muslim lawyer and podcaster Raifa Rafiq, it flattens out singularity and difference, ‘almost as if the type of oppression and the issues that they face are on a level playing field’ (Fakim and Macaulay 2020). However, we include it in the sense that Leah Green, video producer for the British daily the Guardian, supports – that is, as the least reductive or offensive of the current shorthand codes for being ‘not white’, rather than a means to undermine or mask racial difference (Okolosie et al 2015). Certainly, this kind of criticism could also be levelled also against the acronym LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, Asexual/Agender, and Ally) that we refer to in Chapters 3 and 4, but the communities it bands together generally support it as a convenient inclusive signifier for anyone who is not straight or heteronormative (Finamore 2018).

The poetic text, identity and fashion In Chapter 1 in particular, we explore how processes of naming and objectifying afford an opportunity to analyse fashion authorship as an embodied practice in relation to xv

Introduction

the psycho-linguistic theory of l’écriture féminine (women’s writing), the term coined by feminist scholar Hélène Cixous in ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ (1976) to refer to the use of language as a political gesture: ‘Woman must put herself into the text – as into the world and into history – by her own movement … I write this as a woman, toward women’ (Cixous 1976: 875). Thus, the project of l’écriture féminine inverts the Lacanian emphasis on the spoken/written word (logos), which bolsters the ‘Law of the Father’, and turns back to the act of vocality, the utterances between the mother figure and infant that stand apart from the symbolic order of language. Consequently, Julia Kristeva argues in Revolution in Poetic Language (1974), it recuperates the repressed abject  – that is, the pleasure of the maternal voice – as a key component of identity formation and creativity, and thereby reclaims the semiotic chora as a space that connects mother and child as an indivisible somatic totality (1986: 95). We assess the implications of this in two ways. First, we explore how Chiuri’s ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ T-shirt foreshadows the #MeToo movement, vocalizing her personal identity as a feminist mother figure as well as being a collective call to action for women everywhere. By extension, the turn to pre-Oedipal vocality enables the production and reception of what Cixous calls the poetic text (or embodied writing) that is repressed in the Lacanian system of phallogocentrism. In this way, the poetic text acts as a voice for women to contest the norms of the patriarchal order and constitutes a different kind of embodied writing for developing a unique, creative voice that is apart from and prior to the symbolic order. But we also ask whether the sex(uality) and gender of the producer complicate the act of l’écriture féminine and the idea of the poetic text, and thus we examine how Alexander McQueen’s ready-to-wear collection, ‘The Widows of Culloden’ (Fall-Winter 2006), troubles the sexual difference that Kristeva and Cixous propound. With these complexities in mind, we pose several key questions. How does McQueen’s collection successfully represent the female/feminine abject? What are the implications of a gay male designer practising l’écriture féminine? And how does the fashion collection, viewed as a poetic text, enlist a political voice for both McQueen’s Scottish ancestry and the phallic women, such as his mother and his friend and patron Isabella Blow, which influenced his life and work? The concept of the poetic text re-emerges to different effect in Chapters 2 and 4. In the former, we engage with Jay Merrick’s (2002) contention that Magali Nougarède’s photographs of the garments old people wear provoke a sense of storytelling to analyse how clothing represents the relationship between time and memory, evincing poetry such as Ted Hughes’s ‘The Blue Flannel Suit’ in the mind’s eye of the reader/spectator. By implication, we ask what type of narrative or memory work is going on here? And what type of unspoken agendas about the intersections of clothing, age and the body? In contrast, in the latter chapter we evaluate the hybridity and historicity of Alessandro Michele’s ‘Cyborg’ collection that, for example, incorporates elements of Art Deco and Renaissance dress, in light of the poetic anachronism that Jacques Rancière argues is a question of thought rather than fact (2015: 24). He argues that anachronism deconstructs ‘the very idea of … the error of time’ and this enables us to consider Michele as a (quasi) xvi

Introduction

poet-philosopher, insofar as his collection resists merely resembling the time to which it belongs (2015: 34). Accordingly, the poetic text is one of several recurrent themes and theories that, in the spirit of intersectionality, we explore across all four chapters, the others being: objectification, abjection and the gaze; authenticity and visibility (Chapters 2 and 3); queer identities and fashion heterotopias (Chapters 3 and 4); and cultural appropriation by Italian designers (Chapters 1 and 4).

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CHAPTER 1 AUTHORING FASHION, INTERSECTING SEX AND GENDER

Introduction One of the most strategic interventions in fashion and identity politics of the early twentyfirst century was Maria Grazia Chiuri’s ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ T-shirt (Figure 1). As the first female creative director at Christian Dior, she used it to trumpet her debut Spring–Summer 2017 runway collection and, along with Alexander McQueen’s ‘Widows of Culloden’ collection for Fall–Winter 2006 (Figures 5–8), it forms one of the case studies that we analyse in this chapter concerning the following inter-related concepts: authorship, l’écriture féminine (women’s writing), the semiotic chora and the vocality of the poetic text. Chiuri co-opted the phrase from Nigerian-born writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (both pictured in Figure 2), who had used it initially as the title of a polemical TED Talk in 2012, and afterward for a modified written manifesto in 2014, to vocalize both her personal identity as a feminist and as a collective call to action for people everywhere. The tactics of fashion designers such as Chiuri constitute, therefore, a significant vocalization of the inequities and powerlessness women still endure across the globe. Hence, the fashioned body is at once a key expression of feminist consciousness and a site of contestation. This much is paramount in the context of the hypersexualized portrayal of women in fashion publicity since the early 2000s that flirts with porno chic and retrosexism, such as the fashion campaigns photographed by Terry Richardson for Sisley and Tom Ford, by Henrik Purienne for American Apparel, and the putative scenes of gang rape in ads for Calvin Klein in 2010, photographed by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott.1 Taking place alongside such sexual objectification, however, was the espousal of provocative styles of dress that mimic ultra-femininity and that, as Rebecca Munford (2007) and Monica Titton argue, exemplify a ‘dangerous slippage between feminist agency and patriarchal recuperation’ (Titton 2019: 751). Such an ‘uncommon politicization of fashion’ partakes in a marketing strategy that aims both to popularize and to subvert feminism in the name of fashion, a process referred to as ‘femwashing’ (Gill 2016: 8; McRobbie 2015: 8; Titton 2019: 749; Zeisler 2016: xvi) and ‘commodity feminism’ (Winship 2000: 34). Hence, we explore how Chiuri’s statement T-shirt engages with this complex reclamation and/or redefinition and commoditization of femininities, and we Figure 1  Amanda Googe models ‘We Should All Be Feminists’, T-shirt, 2016.

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do so in regard to Luce Irigaray’s tactic of mimicry, which she argues enables women to regain control of their self-image and, in so doing, to destabilize the patriarchal stereotyping of female identities as inferior. The intersection of feminist critique and postmodernism opens up a space to interrogate authorship as a matter of ethics, which we take to be those of the fashion designer, whether female or male. As Sara Ahmed argues, Roland Barthes’s influential essay ‘The Death of the Author’ (1967) not only universalized the text as being a-historical but effaced the agency and gender identity of the producer along with it, as if the work was written ‘by no-body, no-body who is identifiable either as subject or body’ (1998: 123). More particularly, the likes of psychoanalytical feminists Hélène Cixous (1976) and Julia Kristeva (1982) developed the instrumental theory of l’écriture féminine to contest the authority of symbolic speech or phallogocentrism, as posited by Jacques Lacan (1977), and to recuperate what it makes abject – the semiotic chora.2 In foregrounding the latter, Kristeva deals particularly with the corporeal relationship between mother and child in terms of the voice (rather than speech) and the mother’s utterances to the infant in and ex utero. Alongside Cixous, she contends that this form of vocality constantly haunts how identity and language function and is something that bursts forth most powerfully in the poetic text. As Cixous insists, it is in acknowledging and utilizing vocality through the poetic text that women can challenge the symbolic order, thereby attaining autonomy and a creative voice. To this extent, then, we probe what kind of poetic text Chiuri has (re)produced with ‘We Should All Be Feminists’, a theme she has since continued in Dior runway shows like ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists’ in Spring–Summer 2018 and ‘What If Women Ruled the World?’ in Spring–Summer 2020 (Figure 3). Simultaneously, we enquire which women she addresses through such an act of l’écriture féminine and for whom does she speak. Women only, or women and men intersectionally? In other words, we consider whether the physical T-shirt itself and its virtual circulation online are inclusive to both genders or exclusive to the mother/daughter relationship, of which Chiuri partakes. If, as Kristeva argues, the semiotic chora links together mother and child as an indivisible somatic totality, this bond must furthermore be as compelling for boys as it is for girls. (Kristeva’s only child, after all, is her son David Joyaux, born in 1975.) As a corollary, we debate whether the task of reforming patriarchal systems of power and deconstructing phallogocentrism should be a matter of concern to female subjects alone. Adichie attests, ‘There is a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better. All of us, women and men, must do better’ (2012). Throughout the chapter, therefore, we refer to both sexes – male and female – not to reinstall this binary or fall back on sexual essentialism but to establish a theoretical tunnel to ‘pass through’ in order to arrive at understandings of how gendered and sexual identities continue to be troubled. We take our cue from how Irigaray is ‘passing through’ a sexed

Figure 2  Maria Grazia Chiuri and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Paris, 2017. 2

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Figure 3  Maria Grazia Chiuri on the Dior runway Paris, 2020.

position in her ‘speaking (as) woman’ as a way of ‘jamming the theoretical machinery’ of masculine-favoured ‘sexual indifference’ (Irigaray 1985: 119 and 78; Whitford 1991: 103; Xu 1995). It is the ethos of ‘passing through’ identity construction that also informs the second case study of this chapter, which analyses the work of a male fashion designer, Alexander McQueen, and in particular his ready-to-wear collection, ‘The Widows of Culloden’ (WOC). It is a highly autobiographical body of work through which his intersectional identity  – white, male, gay and working-class  – problematizes the production and reception of l’écriture féminine, and calls into question the implications of sexual difference that Kristeva and Cixous propound. Cixous, for instance, contends, ‘Woman must write woman. And man, man. Men still have everything to say about their sexuality and everything to write’ and, in respect of McQueen’s fashion design, we aim to unravel the gender and sex binaries that her statement anticipates (Cixous 1976: 877). With these complexities in mind, therefore, we pose several key questions about the WOC as a poetic text. How does the collection successfully represent the female/ feminine abject? What are the implications of a gay male designer practising l’écriture féminine? Finally, how do the female models on the runway symbolize what Kristeva calls the maternal phallus and her concept of the semiotic chora as a space of creative reunion? Which is also to ask, how do they represent the intense relationship McQueen had with his mother Joyce and his friend and patron Isabella Blow, as well as to his imputed Scottish ancestry? 4

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Maria Grazia Chiuri’s ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ T-Shirt for Christian Dior: Branding, identity and authorship The ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ T-shirt that Chiuri sent down the runway on model Amanda Googe in 2016 not only marked the beginnings of Christian Dior’s first ever female director’s creative and ideological agenda, but it also implicated their clothing in a fashion discourse regarding how feminism could impact global neoliberal capitalism. The statement on the T-shirt, borrowed from Adichie, consolidated the performative approach to sloganizing fashion activism such as Elle’s ‘This Is What a Feminist Looks Like’ T-shirt campaign of 2014, and collections by Chanel (Spring–Summer 2015), Prabal Gurung (Autumn–Winter 2017), Christian Siriano (Autumn–Winter 2017) and Public School (Autumn–Winter 2017). But, by 2017, her statement had taken on added momentum after the #MeToo movement surfaced in social and mass media and mounted a tactical challenge to patriarchal gender relations in the wake of revelations of producer Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault on multiple women in the Hollywood circuit. In the same vein, the cases of Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Nassar and Brett Kavanaugh (not to mention the numerous cases that go unreported) pointed towards the urgent need to reconsider how gender norms enable the silencing of sexual abuse victims of all genders. To speak of fashion as a site of political struggle that involves human bodies and the negotiation of identities is not new. However, in the context of the neoliberal market, clothing bears the weight of its own exploitative commercialization and it has become even more crucial to conceptualize fashion as a source of activism and social change. For instance, in Fashion and Politics, Djurdja Bartlett acknowledges how the potential for protest and dissent can be compromised, if not capsized, by the fetish of the commodity (2019: 17). Moreover, the ‘citizen-consumer’ as a product of the neoliberal market represents and transacts with fashion brands in an exchange that conflates economic, social and cultural values. By this measure, so-called commodity feminism risks flattening out the diversity of protean human relations, which can be both reduced and traduced by using an aphoristic slogan such as ‘We Should All Be Feminists’. Accordingly, while Chiuri avowed she intended to reveal that ‘there is not one kind of woman’ (Mower 2016), she appealed to Dior’s affluent clientele by retailing a utilitarian garment initially for $710. It was only after a media outcry that the company claimed to give an unspecified percentage of its profits to Rihanna’s Clara Lionel Foundation. Thus, in its pricing, celebrity endorsement and philanthropy-as-an-afterthought, Dior conforms to Bartlett’s observation that, ‘serving the existing social and economic order, fashion pretends to participate in the traumas of the Other, keeping instead a safe distance in order not to alienate its well-off customers’ (Bartlett 2019: 39). And yet, she insists that it would be myopic to dismiss the fashion system for being entirely materialistic and dissuades us against thinking that commodity feminism is fundamentally reactionary. Instead, she argues, it is more productive to interrogate how powerful political affects can be ‘sewn into fashion’ and co-exist alongside the potential for clothing items to become fetishized commodities (Bartlett 2019: 17; Banet-Weiser and Mukherjee 2012: 1–17). 5

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Bartlett’s suggestion that empowerment and disempowerment are incorporated dialectically into fashion brands leads us to analyse the radical emancipatory potential of the ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ T-shirt and Chiuri’s role as a producer of l’écriture féminine. What sort of intersectional identities does she author(ize), for instance, in ventriloquizing another producer’s words? Adichie herself advocates a form of feminism that is unapologetic of traditional notions of femininity. She distils the essence of her identity as a woman through the recollection of how she once referred to herself as ‘A happy African feminist who does not hate men and who likes to wear lip gloss and high heels for herself, and not for men’ (Adichie 2012). Thus, she believes in feminism as equality, sets out to destabilize the popular image of the man-hating radical feminist, reclaims the pleasures of female consumption and disavows the male gaze as having any weight on her self-presentation decisions: Of course, much of this was tongue-in-cheek, but what it shows is how that word feminist is so heavy with baggage, negative baggage: you hate men, you hate bras, you hate African culture, you think women should always be in charge, you don’t wear make-up, you don’t shave, you’re always angry, you don’t have a sense of humor, you don’t use deodorant. (Adichie 2012) Indeed, Adichie’s ethos is emblematic of a blended postfeminism that Angela McRobbie outlines as the ‘double-entanglement’ between neo-conservative (or anti-feminist) values regarding gender, sexuality and domestic relationships, and liberated attitudes about freedom of choice and diversity, such as refusing marriage and gay rights (2008: 12). As Matthew Lecznar has pointed out, it is precisely the ‘interpretive risks’ of Adichie’s labile message that make it well-suited for dissemination into public discourse and adaptable across material and textual formats (Lecznar 2017: 169). Her argument is at once egalitarian and privileged, and she speaks from the position of a sexually liberated Nigerian woman, despite having grown up in a largely patriarchal society. Adichie relates what she understands as discrimination against (cisgender, feminine) females, which not only guides her feminism towards ‘the social, political and economic equality of the sexes’, but also entails the inclusion of men, the better to educate them about it (2012). Nonetheless, her feminism is prone to some compromise. In an interview with Hillary Clinton in April 2018, for instance, she completely overlooked interrogating her about her questionable human rights record, which included support for the invasion of Iraq and arms transfers to Saudi Arabia (Bhutto 2018). Rather, Adichie seems to conflate class, sex and gender identities with an assumed essentialism concerning femininity, while echoing postfeminist sentiments about the male gaze being merely ‘incidental’ (2012). And it was the ambiguity of this rhetoric that was mobilized indirectly by Dior to bolster their message purporting ‘there is not one kind of woman’, although in practice, it is elitist and reinforces the glamorous femininity with which Adichie identifies (Mower 2016). Perhaps what is most telling is how Chiuri designed Adichie’s message into the garment. The modal exhortation on the white cotton and linen T-shirt is printed centrally 6

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in a sanserif typeface in capital letters: ‘WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS’. Thus, Chiuri co-opts Adichie’s statement and transfers it onto a garment in such a way that mimics the guerrilla tactics of Katharine Hamnett’s ’58% DON’T WANT PERSHING’ slogan T-shirt, which she wore to meet Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984. Yet, as Titton has pointed out in reference to this and subsequent collections by Chiuri, the ‘systematic rebranding of Dior as a feminist luxury brand’ was eclectic; that is, it integrated slogans and props from radical feminism but also maintained a ‘conservative design aesthetic [that] revolves around a reinterpretation of Christian Dior’s silhouettes from the 1940s and the 1950s’ (Titton 2019: 752). The T-shirt, for example, was worn by Googe on the runway tucked into the pinched waist of a long skirt, made from translucent midnight blue tulle and embroidered with tarot cards and animal imagery in gold. The outfit paid homage to the ‘New Look’, the term Carmel Snow had coined in an article in Harper’s Bazaar in 1947 to sum up Dior’s hyper-feminine couture (Flory 1986: 27). Coterminously, photos from the show went live online on Vogue Runway and were also broadcast on Instagram, enabling fashion influencers to curate and promulgate its feminist discourse digitally (a point to which we return later in this chapter). Chiuri, therefore, adopted a militantly prescriptive style of gender activism but filtered her message through a postfeminist lens that presumed one’s ability to participate in such tactics. Chiuri herself grew up in an environment where gender equality could be taken as a given. To this end, her debut collection for Dior in 2016 was influenced also by fencing attire (Figure 4), inasmuch as she argued the sport is ‘about heart and mind, not about the body’ or the gender of the player (Spiegelman 2017; W Magazine 2016). Who, then, does the ‘DIO(R)EVOLUTION’ emblazoned in block capitals on another T-shirt in the same collection benefit in the long term, and whose is the body that she writes into Dior’s heritage? Fashion critic Sarah Mower (2016) mused in her review of the runway show that young feminists ‘might have something to wear from Christian Dior for the first time in their lives’, while Israeli fashion designer Alber Elbaz commented, ‘If I was a woman, if I was skinny, I would go for it’, amplifying the ectomorphic exclusivity that characterizes its design (W Magazine 2016). In fact, the atelier’s womenswear displays have tended to showcase all-white models with idealized bodies. Chiuri continued this trajectory, underscoring a specific experience of womanhood regarding an established level of privilege. In reducing the ‘We’ in Adichie’s message to only those affluent and thin enough to buy into the Dior aesthetic, she evidently does not speak to ‘all women’; it is noteworthy that, alongside Adichie, guests in the front row for the runway show included singer Rihanna, models Kate Moss and Karlie Kloss, and socialite Olivia Palermo. Those who cannot share in or embody this form of ‘activism’ are consequently excluded from Chiuri’s feminist project. In contrast, Cinzia Arruzza et al. (2019) postulate in their manifesto Feminism for the 99 per cent that global feminism must concern itself with those at the bottom as well as the top of the social scale, and by extension reconcile anticapitalism and antiracism with concerns about the anthropocene and the ecological impact of unbridled consumerism on climate change (Davies 2016; Moore 2015). As 7

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Dipesh Chakrabarty cogently summarizes this situation, ‘there are no lifeboats for the rich’ (2009: 221). Although Christian Dior’s donation of an undisclosed percentage from the sale of the slogan T-shirts to Rihanna’s Clara Lionel Foundation allowed the brand to demonstrate concern for those at the bottom of the social scale, it achieved this in hindsight and maintained the idea of ‘woman’ as a homogenous class. From a materialist perspective, neither is there any information available about the labour involved in the manufacture of the T-shirt. Christian Dior’s lack of transparency reinstates global inequalities in the garment industry, obfuscating the workers that enable its ongoing capitalist profiteering, paying lip service to ‘global inclusivity’ and simplifying the complexity of female identities through its prescriptive iteration of feminism. The message the T-shirt proclaims is undermined by its commercial context that subtends the materialist priorities for the project: ‘not “meaning” per se, or “truth” or “reason”, but ‘“winning” attention, emotional allegiance, and market share’ (Hearn 2012: 28). Furthermore, it is significant in this regard that Chiuri’s ventriloquizing of Adichie not only arrogates the underlying power negotiations involved in promoting Dior but also reveals the ‘racial plagiarism’ (Pham 2017: 74) that can take place in the name of fashion (to which point we return in Chapter 4). Strategically mobilizing Adichie’s ideas, therefore, provided her with a politically correct platform to disseminate the intersectional feminism of an author who stands outside of the Eurocentric cultural canon while also enabling her to adjust Dior’s market agenda. Between feminism and femininity Exploring what gender equality should be in contemporary society, Chiuri was clearly guided by Adichie’s postfeminist argument. At the same time, several of the ideas that Adichie expressed coincide with, yet redefine, the strategy of mimicry that Luce Irigaray had elaborated more than forty years ago in This Sex Which Is Not One (1977). In it, she states that it is pointless for women to try and attain power in patriarchal societies by striving to be the same as or equal to men. Rather female empowerment lies in the sequestration of their sexual difference through the strategy of mimicry. Women can interpose themselves in the phallogocentric order through the performance of the feminine role the same order has prescribed for them – it is in exaggerating femininity that they are able to parody men’s phantasies of what they should act or look like. Hence, as women regain control of their self-image so too do they destabilize the patriarchal stereotyping of feminine identities as inferior: ‘One must assume the feminine role deliberately. Which means already to convert a form of subordination into an affirmation, and thus begin to thwart it … It also means “to unveil” the fact that, if women are such good mimics, it is because they are not simply resorbed in this function. They remain elsewhere’ (Irigaray 1985: 124). It is this negotiation of femininity and feminism that Chiuri attempts to undertake in the poetic text of fashion. Figure 4  Maria Grazia Chiuri, fencing inspired outfit, Spring/Summer 2017 ready to wear. 9

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Adichie’s framing of postfeminism clearly emphasizes an unapologetic attitude towards the pleasures of female consumers, and likewise, she appears to deploy femininity as an act of empowerment. Whereas, in fact, both she and Chiuri significantly invert Irigaray’s logic of mimicry, insofar as the rhetoric of feminism that they mobilize to demonstrate solidarity with intersectional gender politics serves all the while as a strategic masquerade to bolster a traditional kind of femininity. Chiuri conveniently co-opted Adichie’s statement for the T-shirt on two levels. First, to afford Dior’s clientele a sense of self-empowerment and engagement with protest. And, second, to recuperate the atelier’s archetypal New Look, displaying it on the runway alongside a long tulle skirt with appliqué motifs. This begs the question of whether such an act of l’écriture féminine compounds femininity as deficient in relation to phallogocentrism. (Or, as Lacan put it, ‘there is no symbolization of woman’s sex as such’ [1993: 176].) Chiuri hands over the immaterial labour of performing and disseminating Dior’s feminist agenda to those who buy and wear the T-shirt and, as we shall see, those who participate in its online circulation. Hence, female/feminine identity and power can be seen to reside in nothing more than the purchase of merchandise and the effort involved in performing the masquerade is left politically ‘uncompensated’, as Irigaray contends (1985: 84–5). By this measure, then, feminism does not so much redefine Dior’s aesthetic brand of femininity but is paradoxically deradicalized by it. In subsequent collections, Chiuri reiterated this type of inverted mimicry, drawing inspiration from lesbian photographer Claude Cahun and art historian Linda Nochlin; indeed, at the Spring 2018 Christian Dior runway show in October 2017 she placed a copy of the latter’s seminal essay, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ (1971), on each guest’s seat. Nonetheless, such tactics once more reveal the double-entanglement with which Chiuri is involved: sincerity and sensitivity for women’s rights on the one hand, and the desire to promote a global fashion brand on the other. In her Spring– Summer 2020 collection, for instance, collaborating with Judy Chicago, she engaged the Chanakya School of Craft, an Indian embroidery school, to make banners with ‘feminist’ maxims such as ‘What if women ruled the world?’ (Figure 3). These decorated the womblike structure in which the collection portrayed women as divine goddesses, inspired by neoclassical silhouettes, warrior motifs, and the golden hues that have coloured the collective imagination of the ancient world. But, as with her relationship to Adichie, Chiuri leaves us in no doubt that, even when she co-opts the handiwork of other women and thus appears to script them into Christian Dior’s feminist discourse through their own ‘writing’, it is she who we finally regard as author and mastermind of the collection. And, in marketing terms, it is normative femininity that once more has the upper hand. In an era of globally advanced capitalism, where the material life of a garment is also constantly stalked by its representation online, the contexts for l’écriture féminine to fulfil its transgressive potential remain few and far between in the fashion system. Cixous insists, ‘It is by writing, from and toward women, and by taking up the challenge of speech which has been governed by the phallus, that women will confirm women in a place other than that which is reserved in and by the symbolic, that is, in a place other than silence’ (1976: 881). Yet, if Chiuri’s feminist intervention attempted to challenge 10

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the far-reaching and deeply internalized effects of such phallogocentric power, it did not entirely undo them either. In the final analysis, the nexus between the patrimonial fashion house of Dior and Adichie’s provocation, through which Chiuri proclaimed feminism as a poetic text on a T-shirt, remains a relatively narrow one, privileging the English-speaking world and the affluent  – that is, the ‘Dior woman’, who serves as a proxy for consumption in the neoliberal Global North. The poetic hypertext L’écriture féminine underscores the potential of self-authorship in identity formation and, thus, Chiuri faces up to the challenge posed by Cixous in ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ that: Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women into writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies – for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text – as into the world and into history – by her own movement. (1976: 876) For her part, Chiuri achieved this movement initially with a resort to intertextuality, referencing Adichie’s message and printing it onto a utilitarian T-shirt that, in turn, she combined with a version of Dior’s hyper-feminine New Look. As we have argued, this bricolage symbolizes the tricky negotiation between femininity and feminism, as well as the intermingling of the semiotic (embodied tactility of the garment) within the symbolic realm (its linguistic circulation). But Chiuri also engaged with the online possibilities of writing Dior fashion in virtual space and, thereby, the tactility of the poetic text is incorporated into the language of the digital hypertext. Accordingly, what we identify here as a hybrid poetic hypertext builds on and intertwines with the materiality of the T-shirt but at once modifies it as it moves across the digital sphere, where looks (through images of clothes as worn and celebrity endorsements) are circulated and adapted as fashionable identities. Agnès Rocamora’s study of fashion blogs contends how hypertextuality in the age of digital media decentralizes authority as well as agency in the production and circulation of fashion discourse. Hypertextuality, coined by Theodor Nelson, designates how ‘texts are inscribed in a complex formation of texts, a network, that they connect to other texts and exceed their limits’ (Rocamora 2012: 95). As Rocamora identifies, the Bakhtinian notion of intertextuality assessed by Kristeva (1980: 64–91) also manifests in hypertext (Rocamora 2012: 95). Through the phenomenon of fashion blogs, she suggests how a given post turns into ‘a multi-layered text whose many threads lead … towards a potentially unending flow of images, words, and sounds’ (2012: 95). The infinite network of hyperlinks and cross-referencing differentiates it from the top-down hierarchy of fashion magazines. Vetement, for instance, uses meme logic by quoting from popular culture, such as in their use of the DHL logo (Skjulstad 2020), while Viktor and Rolf ’s Haute Couture Spring 2019 collection appropriated popular online expressions and 11

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amplified them onto colourful tulle gowns of exaggerated volume  – a simultaneously humorous and relatable spectacle that prompted those behind the screen to interpret and share the fashion images at their own will. Invoking Ahmed’s formulation of the ‘disobedient reader … who interrupts the text with questions that demand a re-thinking of how it works’ (1998: 17), similar opportunities for dialogic exchange exist in the digital realm, where material can be infinitely and freely dispersed to and between consumers, who interpret, alter and disseminate it. Fashion discourse, then, transcends its original materiality and takes on the virtual form of a poetic hypertext that is repeatable and malleable in the hands of respective digital audiences. Thus, Adichie’s lapidary statement was disseminated promiscuously to and by a sizeable internet audience – on 28 December 2020, #weshouldallbefeminists recorded 59,000 posts on Instagram alone, and no small number of them had also featured Dior’s T-shirt itself. At the same time, the T-shirt appeared on Instagram alongside celebrity endorsements by the likes of actors Jennifer Lawrence and Natalie Portman, musicians Rihanna and ASAP Rocky, and entrepreneur Chiara Ferragni. The tactic of deploying celebrity profiles online broadens exponentially the visible scope of any fashion brand, even if it does not necessarily result in product sales. By the end of 2020, for instance, Dior had amassed 34.5 million Instagram followers.3 But this following was bolstered through its simultaneous association with Rihanna Savage X Fenty’s 3.9 million followers, Ferragni’s 22.5 million and Portman’s 7.3 million, as well as the hashtag, #weshouldallbefeminists.4 Moreover, Instagram’s most active users are females between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four, which aligns with Dior’s target clientele which is between fifteen and forty years old (Bhasin 2018; Statista 2019). By extension, these endorsements partake intertextually in a larger matrix of visuals and messages that mutually alter one another’s meanings, as tech-savvy individuals (including those that lie outside Christian Dior’s target market) interact with them. One such, _memes_creators, published an Instagram post on 24 November 2019 in support of the campaign, while also pointing out that the ‘tee costs around $600-$800’ but that ‘if you can’t afford it, which would be understandable, just search … on the web and you’ll find lots of dupes!’ In the overflow of its feminist message in myriad and protean forms online that constantly create new networks, therefore, Christian Dior’s monopolistic power to author a feminist discourse for fashion is diffused into the digital rhizome. This rhizome embodies the capitalist logic of fashion’s constant and infinite renewal, but with authorship continuously displaced, multiplied and individualized (Rocamora 2012: 96). At the outset, promulgating the T-shirt online through brand ambassadors ostensibly compromises Dior’s feminist agenda as being little more than a glamorous prop for celebrities in Instagram photos. But, offloading the immaterial labour of dissemination onto whoever chooses to engage with it, the digital rhizome also involves women and men who, as proactive authors in a global and intersectional fashion discourse do not just publicize but transform the original message printed on the garment as well. As Brent Luvaas asserts in his ethnographic study of style blogging, it is ‘a relatively rare aesthetic … a photographic documentation of exceptions’ (2016: 115). On Instagram, for example, cecile_alva posted an illustration of a grey-bearded man wearing the Dior T-shirt; 12

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empooderadas a photograph of a woman wearing a T-shirt with words in Portuguese that subverted Chiuri’s message into ‘Feminism isn’t fashion’ (‘Feminismo não é moda’); and _girlwonderful_ a portrait of a black female child in a marl grey T-shirt with ‘Girl President’ printed onto it. Thus, as they nomadically propel through hypertextual space, these words and images re-inscribe feminism into a global network. In the process, they transcend – but interact with – Adichie’s original statement concerning inclusivity. The semiotic chora and the woman–mother The way that Chiuri disseminated Adichie’s message is clearly open to complex tactical negotiation as both poetic text and hypertext. By implication, appointed Dior’s first female creative director of womenswear in July 2016 at the age of fifty-two, Chiuri’s family life has also been woven into a discourse that imbricates her feminism with motherhood. Hence, she has disclosed that, leading up to the creation of the collection, she had to reconsider the feminism she had taken for granted growing up, as she witnessed her daughter, Rachel Regini, become a young adult. Observing how the dichotomous stereotyping of women as either intelligent or beautiful was regaining prominence in Italy, she encouraged her daughter to study in London in the hope of developing an alternative worldview about diverse and intersectional female identities. According to Chiuri, her daughter is a muse, enmeshed in ‘a multicultural time’ to which both she and the Dior brand had to respond with fresh rhetoric and design ideas (Spiegelman 2017). Her aim to conceptualize the T-shirt on this level, working in synergy with Regini, coincides with the way Kristeva evinces the semiotic chora to symbolize a productive maternal space and to describe the experience of ‘the preverbal and unconscious sphere, not yet inhabited by the law of the sign, where rhythmic and vocalic drives reign’ (Cavarero 2005: 133). Kristeva inherits the idea of the chora from Plato. In the Timaeus, Plato argues the cosmos is formed in accordance with three classes of things. First, there is pure knowledge and intellect, which are imperceptible and that he attributes to the divine realm of the gods or the father. Second, there are the perceptible manifestations or imitations of the divine realm that exist relative to time and place in the material world of mankind or the son (2008: 42–3). In between them is a third class of things – the chora – that he postulates is indistinct material, while also being eternal and indestructible. He describes it, therefore, as ‘space … which acts as the arena for everything that is subject to creation … an invisible, formless receptacle of everything, which is in some highly obscure fashion linked with the intelligible realm. It’s almost incomprehensible’ (2008: 43–5). That Plato also likened the chora to the figure of the nurse or the mother, ‘the … receptacle of every created thing’ (2008: 42–3), is precisely what makes it an interesting and triangulating concept for Kristeva. She rehabilitates it not only as something that exceeds the symbolic realm of language but as the maternal body that is necessary for the vocalic (re)production of language as well: ‘The mother’s body is therefore what mediates the symbolic law organizing social relations and becomes the principle of the semiotic chora’ (1986: 27).

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Such an act of social and vocalic mediation is evident in Chiuri’s role as a concerned professional attempting to reconcile patriarchal values for future generations and, in particular, her own journey as a mother and wife, who had to leave her family in Italy in order to assume a new position as the creative director at the French atelier. Thus, Dior both invents and exploits her role as ‘materfamilias’ as part of its rebranding of a traditionally paternalist enterprise. As a corollary, her first collection emerged out of a dialogue with her daughter where both had read Adichie’s text and subsequently contacted her together to discuss it (Spiegelman 2017). The dialectic between the production and consumption of the statement ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ in this instance is paradigmatic of the way Plato argues that material is initially given shape and form in the creative space of the maternal receptacle. But Kristeva goes further than this. She alludes not just to the semiotic chora as a rhythmic space that entails the embodied exchange of vocalic sounds, which occur between mother and infant in the pre-Oedipal phase, but also reminds us of the ‘uncontrollable excess’ of the maternal body (Cavarero 2005: 137–8), insofar as such vocal utterances precede as well as complement speech and language. In other words, while the semiotic chora threatens to undermine the symbolic order, so too is it necessary to the formation of identity in the latter (much as the relationship between the object and the subject achieves this for Lacan). Consequently, for Kristeva, as for Cixous, there can be no symbolic without the semiotic: ‘The Voice sings from a time before law, before the Symbolic took one’s breath away and reappropriated it into language under its authority of separation’ (Cixous and Clement 1986: 65).5 L’écriture féminine serves to remind us of this dynamic and reciprocal negotiation between the semiotic and symbolic and, moreover, in the performative exchanges between different authorial subjects, is always en procès, under construction and coming into being. To this extent, then, the synergistic collaboration between Chiuri, Regini and Adichie signifies the need for reconciliation in the semiotic mother-daughter relationships that Irigaray (1985 and 1991) and Kristeva postulate as ‘the reunion of a woman-mother with the body of her mother’ (Kristeva 1980: 239). But it also facilitates the positive and intersectional resolution of the linguistic disputes between different ‘generations’ of feminists as well.6

Between the womb and the gay parade: Alexander McQueen’s ‘The Widows of Culloden’ as poetic text In her trenchant essay, ‘Motherhood According to Giovanni Bellini’ (1975), Kristeva pinpoints how male artists of the Italian Renaissance, such as Bellini and Leonardo, fixated on the female body  – especially through the trope of Madonna and Child. They did so to sublimate the sense of desire they felt towards her and to overcome their anxiety in being separated from the (abject) maternal phallus. As she asserts, ‘Sublimation here is both eroticizing without residue and a disappearance of eroticism as it returns to its source … The artist, as servant of the maternal phallus, displays this always and everywhere unaccomplished art of reproducing bodies and spaces as 14

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graspable, masterable objects, within reach of his eye and hand’ (1980: 240 and 246). In other words, the source or space to which she refers is the semiotic chora, which the male producer, in the creative act, attempts to render ‘graspable’ or at least to return to. It is not for nothing, then, that she also categorizes giving birth as one aspect that the practice of ‘art’ comprises (240). In the following case study about Alexander McQueen, we expand on this analogy and Kristeva’s conclusion that only certain modern painters have come close to replicating the sense of maternal jouissance (or bliss) that Bellini attained in his use of colour (thus, she cites Rothko and Matisse as examples – Kristeva 1980: 250). In particular, we focus on ‘The Widows of Culloden’ (WOC), the Fall–Winter 2006 collection of womenswear that he designed for the company he had founded in 1992 and which has been underwritten by Gucci since 2000. Accordingly, we analyse the work of McQueen as paradigmatic of the reunion the male producer seeks with the semiotic chora, and we explore the link between the body of work and the identity politics that subtended his life and career as both a gay man and creative director. McQueen himself once famously declared, ‘I went straight from my mother’s womb onto the gay parade’ (Vogue August 2002), and the WOC is widely acknowledged to be his most autobiographical collection in this respect. We unpack the collection as a form of poetic text, therefore, on two levels. First, in respect of the designer’s intersectional sex, gender and ethnic identity; and second, how his vision for female clothing and bodies represents the idea of female/feminine empowerment. Given that Cixous also propounds that it is women who should reclaim their objectified bodies, from which they have been violently driven away (1976: 875), it could appear a paradoxical (if not heretical) gambit to insert McQueen into such a concept of l’écriture féminine. Central to any interpretation of his work on this level, however, are his relationships with two women – his mother, Joyce, and his patron-friend-muse, Isabella Blow. Inevitably, they inform our analysis of it in specific regard to the dialectic between ‘distance-pleasure’ and ‘distance-anguish’ that Kristeva identifies underpins the trauma of separation from the semiotic chora (1980: 259). Moreover, framing the WOC in this way, we keep in mind Judith Butler’s cogent argument that the performative reiteration of gender identity is not necessarily the result of one’s biological sex and that it must expel what threatens to undermine ‘the illusion of an abiding self ’ (1990: 140). As she asserts: Sex is both produced and destabilized in the course of (this) reiteration … its power to establish what qualifies as “being” … works not only through reiteration but through exclusion as well. And in the case of bodies, those exclusions haunt signification as its abject borders or as that which is strictly foreclosed: the unlivable, the non-narrativizable, the traumatic. (Butler 1993: 10 and 188) We interrogate, therefore, the extent to which McQueen’s the WOC symbolizes the unresolved processes involved in the iteration of his own non-normative identity and how it enabled him to recuperate the figure of the abject phallic mother. 15

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Subverting the symbolic order: McQueen’s abject woman Both fashion media and fashion historians have been ambivalent about McQueen’s womenswear collections. Some have accused him of being a misogynist in how he dressed his models and had them perform on the runway, while others have defended his intentions, arguing that his ideal woman was so strong and aggressive that men were afraid of her (Wilcox 2015: 33). Rather than fetishizing female victimhood, therefore, Caroline Evans proposes that McQueen’s women embody an ‘uncompromising and aggressive sexuality, a sexuality which in his Dante collection shown in March 1996 … came to resemble that of the fin-de-siècle femme fatale’ (Evans 2003: 145). Similarly, Alison Bancroft argues that McQueen, like John Galliano, employed avant-garde historicism in his assemblage of the ideal woman. But, whereas Galliano reinscribes women and female sexuality within the patriarchal symbolic order, McQueen’s vision enlists women to subvert and transcend the symbolic (Bancroft 2012: 89). Adam Phillips contends, ‘everybody is terrorized by their own misogyny and they have to be. What you do is aestheticize it and that’s one way of keeping something troubling in circulation that mustn’t be forgotten about’ (Wilcox 2015: 33). But, as we shall see, McQueen’s work is not simply a matter of aestheticizing (and thereby masking) misogyny but a way of sublimating his real-life relationships with women. He empathizes with the phallic mother, which drives him towards elevating the abject – Kristeva’s ‘uncontainable body’ – which is repressed in the formation and prescription of normative femininity. McQueen had first explored the nexus of fashion to abjection with ‘The Hunger’ collection in spring 1996. One of the designs featured a transparent plastic bodice encasing bloodied worms between its layers and resembling an image of internal organs, such that the worms (in their likeness to leeches) echoed the death drive and the fear of mortality. For Catherine Spooner, the sight of this horror is Gothic, embodying Kristeva’s abject in both its ambiguity and disregard of borders, which bears ‘the liminal state of the undead’ (Spooner 2015: 141–57). It evokes what Kristeva deems the most explicit mode and fear of abjection, the corpse. Moreover, the inert garment worn on a moving body manifested the aporia of lived existence  – a stark reminder of mortality against the backdrop of the fashion system, the phenomenon that constantly averts death in its continuous cycle of renewal. Spooner’s reading of the bodice and the way it has been styled (with slashed sleeves as a metaphor for transgression between inside and outside) is a useful springboard for reading his WOC collection since she connects the personal and the political through the female body and dress. Consequently, the ‘McQueen woman’ is society’s abject made flesh, who has been expelled from society for her inability to take up a symbolic position as a speaking subject. She is considered ‘unacceptable, unclean or anti-social’, not in the corporeal sense of the transparent bodice of ‘The Hunger’, but inasmuch as she is ‘unclean’ to the symbolic order and its linguistic boundaries (Kristeva 1981: 21). Her expulsion is the precondition for the cohesiveness of the powerful male subject and she threatens, therefore, the Lacanian notion of the ego, ‘hover[ing] at the border of the subject’s 16

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identity, threatening apparent unities and stabilities with disruption and possible dissolution’ (Gross 1990: 87). This state of being socially disruptive and abject is largely due to women’s reproductive role, which disavows the rim between the inside and outside of the body: ‘Pregnancy betrays any tenuous identity she may achieve as a subject and a woman’ (Gross 1990: 96 and 100). By contrast, McQueen’s designs seem to reclaim this sense of abjection, re-empowering female bodies and the looming debt that men owe to the phallic mother in the process. Women take flight In constructing his version of femininity and subverting the symbolic order, McQueen’s ‘abjectifying’ of women in the WOC is most evident in the leitmotif of hunting and the repeated use of pheasant feathers, fur and antlers. The pheasant feather dress evokes a patrimonial history in the slaughter of game enacted by absentee English landlords in Scotland and late-Victorian hunting costume (Faiers 2015: 133–4). However, McQueen uses the feathers in such a way as to problematize the binary of hunter (masculine) and prey (feminine). The feathers are used to construct elaborate headdresses, influenced by Blow’s love of them and McQueen’s affinity for falconry (Osmond 2011).7 These headdresses gave the illusion of birds living on the models’ heads, and mythological bird-woman figures like the Gamayun, the Alkonost, the Hary and the Sirin underscore our understanding of McQueen’s perspective. The Gamayun of Slavic folklore is a prophetic bird, a symbol of wisdom that spreads divine messages, and is similar to the Russian Sirin and Alkonost, which are too believed to be omniscient. It is also said that when they sing, men who hear them would forget everything on earth, follow them and die, as with the myth of the Siren and her deathly sea song. Therefore, the overwhelming power and beauty of these creatures combine with the Greek Harpy, thought to be an ugly, murderous human vulture that is a symbolic construction of the frightful castrating phallic mother. These mythological figures help us frame McQueen’s ‘creatures’ as being at one with nature and yet also as beings he is responsible for bringing into existence in the first instance. He previously alluded to such a creation myth in his Autumn–Winter 1997 collection ‘It’s a Jungle Out There’, when he assumed the role of the crazed scientist from H.G. Wells’s science fiction novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896). In the narrative, Wells explores the boundaries and moral tensions surrounding identity through the relationship of humans to non-humans, such that Moreau experiments with vivisection to create human-animal hybrids. For his part, McQueen’s 1997 runway culminated in the appearance of feral-like models, who wore animal skins and manes (Vogue 2015). But the other-worldly hybrid models appeared simultaneously monstruous and alluring, and in common with the bird-women of the WOC, also symbolized a threat to phallocratic male power. The zoomorphic associations in McQueen’s designs echo Cixous’s invocation of Medusa, the snake-haired phallic woman of Greek mythology, who poses a threat to men by turning them into stone with her gaze. She refers to Medusa in her essay about 17

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a ‘feminine practice of writing’ (1976: 883) and, significantly, she also connects l’écriture féminine to the act of taking flight, ‘Flying is a woman’s gesture  – flying in language and making it fly’ (887). In doing so, she reminds us that Medusa had wings as well, a portrayal initially found in the fifth-century BCE tragedy Prometheus Bound.8 Cixous reworked the play’s title for her experimental meditation on love and language, The Book of Promethea (1983), declaring, ‘Right now it is sometimes called “Promethea Unbound” sometimes “Promethea Booked” sometimes “Promethea Delivered”’ (1991: 63). In the fiction she alludes to avian symbolism once more, only this time she expresses a sense of ambivalence concerning female creativity and freedom: ‘Writing is miraculous and terrifying, like the flight of a bird who has no wings but flings itself out and only gets wings by flying’ (1991: 27). The winged creature’s flight into l’écriture féminine is thus tentative but formative, enabling women to undertake a courageous bursting forth into the unknown, that is to say, the semiotic. Medusa was, furthermore, a Gorgon, who Pindar (1997: 388–9) describes as having an animalistic mouth capable of making discordant sounds that must be silenced. In bringing the Medusa back into contemporary discourse from Greek mythology, Cixous consequently admits into speech that which has been denied by the phallogocentrism of Lacan’s model and that Judith Butler identifies as the terrifying phallic mother or ‘female heterosexual phallus’ (Osborne and Segal 1994: 37).9 And McQueen also rehabilitates the Medusa/Gorgon into contemporary society through the vehicle of fashion design, which has too often stifled the status of women by hypersexualizing or infantilizing them. Hence, his menacing bird-woman ‘flings itself ’ out of the symbolic order and onto the runway to represent an otherworldly female identity that contests patriarchal notions of femininity. As well as resorting to the use of feathers, we noted earlier that McQueen was prone to dressing his models in apparel that imitates the appearance of various species of animal and on this level his designs also double up as a form of camouflage. By implication, Margaret Whitford has pointed out that mimétisme (mimeticism), one of the terms Irigaray used in propounding how the strategy of feminine mimicry operates, is related to the biological concept of ‘protective colouring’ (1991: 72). Ping Xu expands on this analogy, invoking the terms ‘aggressive mimicry’ and ‘defensive mimicry’ (1995: 79), which denote how any organism adapts the characteristics of another to deceive its attacker(s) in order to survive predation.10 McQueen similarly appears sensitive to this kind of biological mimicry insofar as the WOC represented more than one version of the phallic woman. The avian headdresses take different forms – some wings are spread midflight or on the verge of flight, while others are folded and inert, covering or enclosing the models’ faces, ostensibly in subdued shyness (Figure 5). But in either case, whether going on the attack or defending herself/itself, his ‘woman-as-bird’ embodies the double sense of empowerment that Irigaray insists feminine mimicry entails in simultaneously confronting phallocratic dominance and resisting assimilation or subordination to it: ‘To play with mimesis is thus, for a woman, to try to recover the place of her exploitation

Figure 5  Alexander McQueen, ‘The Widows of Culloden’, Fall–Winter 2006–7. 18

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by discourse, without allowing herself to be simply reduced to it … It also means to “unveil” the fact that, if women are such good mimics, it is because they are not simply resorbed in this function’ (1985: 124). McQueen’s the WOC collection, therefore, contests any straightforward polarization of femininity as terrifying/aggressive or docile/defensive; he expands the multiplicity of female power to such a degree that femininity cannot simply be defined or contained by the narrow parameters of the symbolic order of speech through which it is silenced. In this way, he complicates any straightforward understanding of what liberated females look like or where they belong – even in mimicking passivity there lies a dormant power waiting to be set free. Or, to coin Irigaray’s phrase about the identity of women, ‘They also remain elsewhere’ (1985: 124). Making the chora visible It is in this light that Butler goes on to pose the question, ‘Why is it that when the woman is said to have the phallus she can only be the terrifying engulfing mother?’ (Osborne and Segal 1994: 37), and the WOC show opened with a silhouette that complicates this power dynamic. The model wears a headpiece of two large mallard wings framing a nest containing bejewelled eggs. In turn, the wings look like they belong to a bird of prey, connoting the power of the ‘McQueen woman’ as symbolically superior in the food chain. The nest externalizes the womb/chora, alluding to the idea of the phallic mother and the debt owed to her. Finally, the eggs, embellished with Swarovski crystals, hint at the sanctity of the maternal relationship with the unborn hatchlings. The nest is not an adjunct to the bird-woman’s body but is one with it. She embodies the maternal propensity for vocalization and physicalizes the maternal chora – this is her crowning glory (Figure 6). Echoing Kristeva, McQueen highlights the maternal identity of women and the mythical hybrid of woman-animal in his designs expresses the liminal position she occupies. As Elizabeth Gross contends: ‘The woman-mother finds that it is not her identity or value as a woman which maternity affirms, but her position as natural or as a hinge between nature and culture’ (Gross 1990: 96). Thus, the runway models wearing McQueen’s designs become physical representations of the metaphysical semiotic chora. Additionally, the externalization of the chora performs a confrontational disregard for corporeal borders. McQueen’s use of bird motifs troubles their association with hunting spoils such that he refutes the idea of woman as prey in a male-dominated sphere, nor does he portray her as a victim of her reproductive role. Instead, he re-appropriates the symbolism of the hunt by transforming his models into phallic women, unconfined or unrestricted in space and time. In this sense, his prophetic woman-as-winged-creature evokes la ritournelle, the concept that Deleuze deploys to symbolize the spatio-temporal vocalization of the refrain ‘Tralala’, which human beings sing or hum repeatedly, much

Figure 6  Alexander McQueen, ‘The Widows of Culloden’, Autumn/Winter 2006–7. 20

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like birds, as they traverse different territories in search of refuge or a domestic haven: ‘I hum … when I am at home. I also hum when … I am trying to get back to home … I look for my way and I give myself some courage by singing tralala’ (Deleuze 2011).11 Queerness and female relationships In expounding the psychosexual nexus between the poetic text and the work of a gay male author, therefore, we further want to suggest that McQueen engaged his female models in la ritournelle to stage his own journey back home to the redemptive space of the semiotic chora. Hence, the symbolic female identities enacted in his collections can be seen to intersect with the close relationships with women and men that McQueen had in his life and that involved considerable personal trauma. In 2000, he unofficially married George Forsythe, a documentary filmmaker, in Ibiza, but one year later their partnership ended. In 2009, Blow, with whom he had an ambivalent relationship, committed suicide. In 2010, his mother died, which he confessed was his biggest fear (he took his own life, aged forty, on 11 February 2010, the day before her funeral). Finally, both he and his sister, Janet, suffered sexual and physical abuse at the hands of her late husband (Alexander 2010; Jones 2010; Milligan 2015). By sublimating these emotionally complex personal relationships into fashion design, especially in the WOC, McQueen ostensibly revealed an autobiographical hand and worked through layers of anger, sexual tension and love. Look 47 in the collection exhibits these multifaceted attitudes and emotions: an offwhite, figure-hugging, lace gown with a mermaid silhouette and ruffled trail was worn with large matching resin antlers, draped with lace that veils the bride’s pale face in the manner of funerary sculpture (Figure 7).12 The meaning of the antlers operates on several symbolic levels. They convey the collection’s central theme of the heirloom since hunting is integral to McQueen’s Scottish ancestry while also symbolizing predatory triumph. They are, furthermore, reminiscent of Blow’s surrealist headpieces; she was photographed by Nick Knight wearing an almost identical one in black for Isabella Blow: Fashion Galore! (2013). And, finally, they continue the leitmotif of the fatally seductive mythical woman-creature, only this time in the form of the deer hybrid that appears in Native American folklore. The silhouette suggests a pair of dialectical ideas: death/rebirth and power/vulnerability. She is a morbid bride within whom resides a dormant and mysterious power, yet she is also a weak subject in the patriarchal institution of marriage, her hyper-feminine shape another indicator of her subjugation. But this suggests that there is also latent misogyny that is threatening to emerge here. While McQueen sought to re-present women’s strength and agency, he was nevertheless ensnared in his own phallogocentric power. Butler proposes that heterosexual identity is like drag in the sense that it is an imitation, performatively repeated in accord with social norms and yet ‘beset by an

Figure 7  Alexander McQueen, ‘The Widows of Culloden’, Autumn/Winter 2006–7. 22

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anxiety that it can never fully overcome’; that is to say, in trying to affirm a putative point of origin and semblance of propriety, heterosexuality is ‘haunted’ by its own abject – the homosexual Other (1993: 125). But, by the same token, in constructing a non-normative identity, gay people render heterosexuality their own abject. As a gay man, McQueen’s rejection of heterosexuality can be both seen in his romanticization of the menacing woman-mother and heard at the finale of the WOC, when all the models parade to Donna Summer’s 1978 gay disco anthem, ‘Last Dance’. Kristeva contends such a production of the self is always en procès, thus signifying that identity is simultaneously a matter of coming into being and being on trial: ‘Sexual difference – which is at once biological, psychological, and relative to reproduction – is translated by and translates to difference in the relationship of subjects to the symbolic contract which is the social contract: a difference, then, in the relationship to power, language, and meaning’ (1981: 21). McQueen’s attempt to become one with the phallic mother is, therefore, built on the abjection of his own heterosexuality, but in the process, his identity remains incomplete or unfulfilled. He is unable to occupy the same position as his mother, to satisfy a self-identification with her ‘as the reunion of a womanmother with the body of her mother’ (Kristeva 1980: 239), or to form a relationship of ‘secondary homo-sexuality’ with her in the way that a daughter could (Irigaray 1991: 44–5). Ultimately, he is not able to transcend the Freudian-Oedipal attachment to his mother. Unlike the daughter, he cannot ‘replace’ the mother by becoming like her, and it seems the only way he can purge this unpayable debt is to sublimate it into artistic creativity.13 Hence, McQueen’s practice of the poetic text is haunted by the (heterosexual) relationship with the maternal and his inability to merge with it, a lack he appears to fold into the double identity of the phallic mother and the bride, who is simultaneously virginal and pregnant with possibility, ‘a privileged space, living area … or dwelling’ (Kristeva 1980: 251). McQueen poeticizes a woman who is at once on the threshold of becoming one with her mother while casting a dark (fore)shadow over her that signifies the terror of the phallic mother. By implication, the abjection of symbolic patriarchal language and heterosexuality cannot be entirely repressed and they return in his work. Accordingly, l’écriture féminine as practised by a male producer is complicated by the idea of sexual difference but is not rendered entirely impossible by it either. Ethnicity, materiality and the poetic text There is a final layer of meaning about identity and the poetic text to consider in the WOC, for McQueen’s woman-mother, furthermore, personifies his imputed paternal Scottish heritage and demonstrates how his fashion design is imbricated with a political discourse on nationhood and ethnic cleansing. According to David Bingham (2014), McQueen was at least a seventh-generation East Ender on both sides of his family line.14 But in the collection he continued the patrimonial preoccupation of ‘Highland Rape’ (Autumn– Winter 1995), evoking the genealogy his mother had researched about the McQueen clan that traced her husband’s ancestry in the Isle of Skye. Whereas ‘Highland Rape’ refers to 24

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the violence the Hanoverian forces enacted on the Jacobite rebels in the 1746 Battle of Culloden, the WOC deals with the conflict’s aftermath, spotlighting the widows of the men lost in conflict (Osmond 2011; Wood 2015: 51–2). Ghislaine Wood has noted: The romantic construction of Highland Scotland that crystallized during the course of the nineteenth century, as the country swiftly industrialized, has provided a model for much later cultural production and with no greater impact than in the world of fashion. Tartans, tweeds, military doublets, kilts and belted plaids litter fashion’s imagery providing a familiar terrain. (2015: 51) But McQueen’s choice of fabric for the WOC became a strategic device to contest the preconceived notions of such romanticism and express strong feelings against the colonial power. He asserted, for instance, that the Highland Clearances of ca. 1750– 1860 were a form of genocide and refuted accusations that his designs for ‘Highland Rape’ were misogynistic, retaliating that all he wanted to do was to ‘make women look stronger’ (McQueen 2018).15 Siding with the overlooked female victims of the violence enabled him, furthermore, to interweave the political, sexual and autobiographical facets of his life into the warp and weft of both collections. McQueen worked tartan into the hyper-feminine silhouettes of the clothing. As an atypical way of appropriating the fabric, he begs the question of whether it and the women who wear it serve as vectors for the reclamation of political agency and the declaration of peace. Despite the undercurrent of death in the pale faces of the models and the hologram apparition of Kate Moss at the end of the runway show, McQueen claims that the WOC is more triumphant than ‘Highland Rape’ (Wood 2015: 51). Consequently, we suggest what the collection connotes in this instance is that the mass death of the male soldiers is quietly celebrated rather than mourned by their widows. This much is evident when we see material traces of ‘Highland Rape’ in the subsequent designs. The bold tartan fabric echoes the anti-romantic sentiment and violence but clashes with the fragility of the lace, tulle and embroidery he uses (Looks 24, 30, 33, 38, 40 and 42). In the common imagination, tartan evokes the androcentric sphere of the Scottish military. Yet, in intermingling it with conventionally feminine materials and silhouettes, McQueen resists its masculine connotations and speaks to the emergence of female power within a patriarchal system. Worn to highlight the curves of the female body, the combination of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ fabrics symbolizes how the symbolic order is not only haunted by the semiotic chora but is also indebted to it. At the same time, the use of plaid reinstates the female body into the male-dominated sphere of the military (Figure 8). In this light, the widows, rather than inviting sympathy, smirk self-knowingly, taunting phallogocentric power as they masquerade their femininity around the runway quadrangle to Celtic-inflected music by Michael Nyman.16 In the face of tragedy, they spin the death of men into the matrix of their own liberation and mirror the social custom for women to become more engaged as proactive producers in previously maledominated fields when men are away at war. 25

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Life, death, rebirth It is hardly surprising, then, that the culmination of the WOC show also transformed the traditional runway happy ending of the bridal dress that, on this occasion, was symbolized by the ghostly apparition of Kate Moss inside a glass pyramid at the centre of the quadrangle and was orchestrated with John Williams’s haunting theme music for the film Schindler’s List (1993), played by violinist Tasmin Little. Bill Sherman described the spectacle thus: ‘Transparent and evanescent, a mythical woman in white, she wafted in and drifted out like a visitor from another world, stirring the audience into a kind of reverie associated not with the glamour of the modern catwalk but rather with the great nineteenth-century ghost stories of Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens’ (2015: 243–5). Moss, as woman-creature, metamorphoses into an elusive revenant, a vision that is consistent with McQueen’s fascination with Victorian ideas about how death intersects with life and that in death, there would be rebirth. The epiphany of Moss as a hologram in a voluminous billowing dress lasts a few minutes only before she shapeshifts into a floating cynosure that, in turn, dissipates into firefly-like sparkles. The sight of this phantasmatic creature signifies the ephemerality of materials and styles in fashion’s continuous cycle of renewal in such a way that is redolent of Walter Benjamin’s analysis of ‘the secret theme of Grandville’s art’ (1999: 7). Thus, he refers to how the nineteenth-century French visual satirist Grandville represented fashion as ‘the sex-appeal of the inorganic’ that ‘In relation to the living … represents the right of the corpse’ (1999: 8).17 What Benjamin particularly seems to have had in mind is ‘Travels of a comet’, an illustration from the artist’s Un Autre Monde (Another World) of 1844, in which he depicted a fashionable woman in an evening dress with a train parading across a gaslit ballroom, as if both her body and the gown she wears are an evanescent coma and tail: ‘the mute impenetrable nebula of fashion, where the understanding cannot follow’ (1999: 64). By the same measure, although McQueen’s momentary incorporation of Moss into the WOC as an ethereal hologram seems to convey that female power is fragile and fugitive, at the climactic jouissance of the fashion runway show, he symbolizes her body not as something abject, but numinous, untouchable and eluding capture instead. As such, her apparition signifies la ritornelle of the ‘eternal … if almost incomprehensible’ semiotic space that Plato defines. It/she reminds us that, even in the hands of a male producer such as McQueen, what ultimately inhabits and illuminates the core of the poetic text is the woman’s body itself.

Conclusion: Squaring up to the phallic mother Fashion impacts bodies both directly and indirectly. We have argued in this chapter that not only does the body of the wearer matter, but as the question of authorship reveals, so too do the intentions and identity of the designer. The scope of fashion design qua poetic Figure 8  Alexander McQueen, ‘The Widows of Culloden’, Autumn/Winter 2006–7. 27

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text proffers, therefore, opportunities for the negotiation of female/feminine subjectivities as well as the boundaries of authorship in terms of gender, sex and sexuality. Chiuri’s and McQueen’s intersectional identities inform their design decisions, and reading them at the level of the poetic text also manifests how they transcend and transgress Lacan’s symbolic order and the hegemonic Law of the Father it foregrounds. As we argue, the praxis of l’écriture féminine nuances how we can approach the work of both producers and the trope of the semiotic chora is particularly instrumental in exploring how their fashion design engages, both positively and negatively, with the concept of the phallic mother. Chiuri’s appointment as creative director at Christian Dior overlaps with her maternal role in family life. As such, it bolsters the brand’s mythos of her as ‘materfamilias’ in spearheading the ‘Dio(R)evolution’ towards a new direction in feminism. According to Chiuri, she was inspired by observing her own daughter’s negotiations with contemporary gender and sexual politics. Her (re)dressing of a youthful Dior clientele thus reflects this intergenerational concern and her own reconsideration of what it means simultaneously to be feminist and feminine, maternal and professional. These are the intersectional facets of women’s identity that Chiuri attempts to reconcile in the role of creative director. Mobilizing Adichie’s essay, ‘We Should All Be Feminists’, which aligns the pleasures of female consumption with gender equality, strategically provided a platform for the inclusive feminism of an author who stands outside of the Eurocentric cultural canon and enabled a significant rebranding of Dior’s market agenda. Moreover, in moving beyond the material and tactile poetic text of the T-shirt to its dissemination through the rhizome of the digital hypertext, she enlisted fashion to engage with multifarious authors/spectators. To this end, the statement ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ and the T-shirt function as intersectional objects of l’écriture féminine. Chiuri’s intertextual approach to fashion design, therefore, inserts Dior into a global discourse on feminism and female subjectivities without disavowing, however, that the emancipatory potential of her form of l’écriture féminine is simultaneously motivated by the market imperatives of the fashion house. It is significant in this regard to note also that Tom Ford once referred to McQueen as ‘poet and commerce united’ (McQueen 2018). Yet, whereas Chiuri mobilized the modal statement ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ to denote a universal call to action, by contrast there is no pretence of gesturing towards such inclusivity in McQueen’s the WOC collection. Rather, our framing of this project in relation to the semiotic chora and clothing-as-poetic text entailed a biographical reckoning with his identity formation as a gay man as well as with the phallic mother-figure. McQueen’s personal, if occasionally vexed, relationships with the significant women and men in his life motivated the way he represented a liberated femininity, as embodied by the models he sent down the runway. His fashion designs, as we contend, sublimate the complex negotiations between the feminine and the maternal that operate on a societal level to reclaim the abject other/ Other. But his romanticization of the phallic mother is predicated also on a personal repudiation of heterosexuality, reminding us that sons, as much as daughters, are involved in the process of recuperating and reconciling with what they abject. At the same time, the use of tartan fabrics and the portrayal of women as if they are hunter28

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gatherers contest patriarchal notions of the maternal feminine while they intersect with his paternal Scottish ancestry. Such work makes it evident, therefore, that being a female producer is not a precondition to negotiate what the semiotic chora means or that it remains the exclusive domain of mothers and daughters. Instead, it underscores that what matters is the individual authorial subject’s particular relation to the maternal and how it is signified in the poetic text. The contestation and destabilization of normative conceptions of gender and sex trouble Cixous’s argument that ‘woman must write woman. And man, man’ (1976: 877). But it also reveals how such thinking can be adapted to a non-binary and intersectional consciousness. As she goes on to contend about a man, ‘it’s up to him to say where his masculinity and femininity are at: this will concern us once men have opened their eyes and seen themselves clearly’ (1976: 877). Kristeva’s recuperation of the semiotic chora, moreover, demonstrates, a different and more challenging conceptualization of the maternal is likewise necessary. At one end of the spectrum, the resurgence of the abortion-rights movement and the battle over the sanctity of the unborn infant’s life in countries like the United States and Poland have undermined women’s power to refuse pregnancy as being provisional and precarious. And at the other, as trans people undergo gender affirmation surgeries and male-identifying bodies are able to carry children – British journalist Freddy McConnell, for instance – it becomes increasingly evident that motherhood is not restricted to the female/feminine sphere of experience (a point that we return to in our analysis of cyborgs in Chapter 4).18 In a Western economy of postfeminism, queer identities and polymorphous sexualities we might ponder whether what constitutes being male/female or masculine/feminine is still a debate worth having. And yet, as both the practice and theory of fashion design demonstrate, challenging conventional norms of sex and gender identities and binaries is an ongoing project. For instance, since 2005 Brooklyn-based black designer Telfar Clemens has been producing a unisex range of clothing under the banner ‘Not for you – for everyone’, while Androgyny UK, founded by philosophy and media graduate Peter Bevan in 2016, retails gender-neutral streetwear, including T-shirts emblazoned with either ADGY or ANDROGYNY in block capitals. The future shaping of (patriarchal) sex and gender discourse will have to take into account the impact of such pluralism in human identities. As we expand our understanding and interpretation of l’écriture féminine, therefore, we must acknowledge the unsettling of dominant language and sex and gender binaries that it entails. Recent writing such as Mary Beard’s Women and Power (2017), Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls (2018) and the revival of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and her sequel to it, The Testaments (2019), pay testimony to a cultural project that returns voices to unheard female subjects. And it is on this level also, as work by fashion designers such as Chiuri and McQueen demonstrates, that l’écriture féminine is a potent space of ambivalence, enabling individuals at any age, female and male, straight and queer, to take flight from the hegemony of the Law of the Father into the semiotic chora. This underscores that the poetic text and vocality do not reside exclusively within the maternal body, rather that they can be dispersed across a multiplicity of intersectional identities and result in a concomitant multiplicity of creative expressions. 29

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Notes 1

This culture led to the surfacing of many allegations against highly regarded players in the fashion industry and legal action being taken against them. It includes photographers such as Terry Richardson, who has been accused of serial sexual misconduct against female models, and Mario Testino and Bruce Weber, both of whom stand accused of several counts of sexual exploitation against male models. As a result, Condé Nast dropped contracts with many of the accused and new regulations were imposed by other magazines. Yet major designers and editors continue to liaise with these producers, perpetuating a culture of denial and abuse of power within a deeply hierarchical fashion system. Even in 2021, allegations of sexual misconduct in the fashion industry continue, including those against the designer Alexander Wang, who has often targeted transfeminine models.

2 Thus, l’écriture féminine emerges out of a reworking of Lacan’s phallogocentric theory of identity formation via the ego and the id, which he inherits from Freud (Lacan 1993), and the dyadic subject/object that he elaborates in the mirror stage (Lacan 1977). It is in the mirror stage, he argues, that the infant assumes an image, and through it comes to understand a relationship between self and other, the latter usually referring to the mother, whom the infant initially thinks is its own reflection. 3

Dior Official (@dior), Instagram, 28 December 2020. https://www.instagram.com/dior/

4

The Instagram accounts for Savage X Fenty by Rihanna, Chiara Ferragni and Natalie Portman were also accessed on 28 December 2020.

5

Uppercase Symbolic Order and lowercase symbolic order are used interchangeably by various authors, as is the case here with Cixous and Clement. Lacan himself does not tend to deploy capital letters in his use of the term – see, for example, Écrits (2007) – and we follow him in this.

6

The Freudian notion of mother-daughter homosexuality proposes that the phallic mother is one with her child and, as the female-child enters the symbolic order, she rejects her mother (along with all women) because of her lack of the penis/phallus. The female child then becomes the phallic mother when she herself has children and her identity is thus reconnected to her mother’s body. To reconcile this penis-envy logic that confines the definition of femininity and female sexuality to a deficiency (of the phallus) without its own ‘specificity’, Irigaray suggests that ‘’secondary homosexuality’ differentiates a love for women-sisters from the archaic love of the mother’ (Irigaray [1977] 1985: 69; Irigaray 1991: 44).

7

After Isabella Blow’s death, McQueen would eulogize her through the symbol of a bird in his collection, ‘La Dame Bleue’ (Spring–Summer 2008).

8

The drama is often attributed to Aeschylus, but its specific author and date have been subject to much debate.

9

According to Pindar’s Pythian Ode (12), the reason why Perseus is tasked with decapitating Medusa is not because she alone poses a monstruous threat to men by turning them into stone with her gaze, but rather that she represents her mother Ceto’s power to do so. And nor is her slaughter unavenged, since her Gorgon sisters, Sthenno and Euralye, pursue Perseus until he is rescued by Athene (Pindar 1997: 388–9).

10 Xu’s definition of the two forms of mimicry is obtained from The Encyclopedia Americana, 19: 145 and New Encyclopedia Britannica 24: 109.

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Authoring Fashion, Intersecting Sex and Gender 11 La Ritournelle appeared as a concept initially in Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: Athlone Press, 1988), in which it is the subject of the eleventh plateau, which is entitled ‘1837: Of the Refrain’ (310–50). 12 The Look numbers cited in this chapter conform to those in the Vogue webpage for the WOC collection. 13 McQueen’s final collection, ‘Plato’s Atlantis’, was described, for instance, as a metaphor for the return to the womb (Osmond 2011). 14 In fact, his father Ronald was born in Stepney, East London in 1933; his grandfather, Samuel, in Whitechapel in 1907; and great grandfather, Alexander, in Spitalfields in 1875. Notwithstanding, he wore the familial McQueen tartan when he received his OBE in 2003 and, in honour of his Scottish ancestry, his remains were interred at Kilmuir, looking out to sea in the north of Skye. 15 He made a similar point in connection with ‘The Hunger’ (Spring–Summer 1996), protesting, ‘Critics who labelled me misogynist got it all wrong, they didn’t even realize most of the models were lesbian’ (Evans 2003: 145). 16 After McQueen died in 2010 the musical soundtrack was removed from all the collection videos. But thanks to Bryce M Tuckwell and PROJECT: Preservation Mc Queen, sound was restored to the video for the WOC and published on 7 May 2014. The soundtrack comprises three pieces, originally composed by Michael Nyman for The Piano (1993) – ‘To The Edge Of The Earth’, ‘A Wild And Distant Shore’, and ‘The Heart Asks Pleasure First/The Promise’ – along with John Williams’ theme for Schindler’s List, performed by violinist Tasmin Little, and Donna Summer, ‘Last Dance’, which brings the show to a close. See – https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=VCrx8l5YFMQ 17 J.J. Grandville (Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard), 1803–1847, was one of the most prolific graphic artists of the July Monarchy in France, working as a caricaturist, and book and periodical illustrator. Charles Baudelaire commented about the other worldliness of his work, ‘There are superficial people whom Grandville amuses; as for me, I find him terrifying’ (Hannoosh 1992: 158). 18 McConnell’s pregnancy is the focus of the film Seahorse (2019), directed by Jeanie Finlay. His application to be recorded as either father or parent of his son ‘Jack’, however, was turned down by the UK High Court and he was described as mother on the child’s birth certificate (Storey 2020).

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CHAPTER 2 WRITTEN ON THE BODY: FASHION, CLOTHING AND AGE

Introduction Two years after Maria Grazia Chiuri’s feminist intervention on the Dior runway, in 2018 American fashionista Ari Seth Cohen collaborated with French intergenerational stylist and designer Fanny Karst on an entirely different statement T-shirt, ‘Not Dead Yet’. This time the campaign, with its age-defying message, was inspired by British Rabbi Julia Neuberger’s polemical book Not Dead Yet: A Manifesto for Old Age (2008). Her argument is organized around ten points concerning how to change society’s ageist attitudes, from health and illness to retirement, and from leisure to the need for fashion chains to latch on to the power of the ‘grey pound’ (2008: 319). It is with this last point in mind that we explore here the somewhat awkward relationship the fashion industry has demonstrated towards the concept of age. With the advent of prêt-a-porter and the impact of teenage culture since the 1950s, fashion has predominantly celebrated the ideal of youthful beauty, especially in the case of women. Even today, the majority of designers and designer labels do not produce their apparel to be worn on ageing bodies – although they are willing to allow older, grey-haired models like Daphne Selfe, David Gant and Pam Lucas appear on the runway, since they also conform to the industry’s obsession with fit, ectomorphic bodies (Figures 9 and 13). Nor, with a few notable exceptions such as Marks & Spencer, do most high street clothing retailers cater specifically for men and women in their fifties and over. Yet, as historian and sociologist Julia Twigg contends, ‘Age is surely one of the key or “master” identities, along with gender, class, race and other contenders. We should not, therefore, be surprised to find it reflected in ideas about clothing’ (2012a: 1032). Across a wide range of research and publications, Twigg has illuminated the relationship of ageing to fashion and dress, especially in regard to the oral testimony of white women in the UK, who are fifty-five years old and over, and from different class and professional backgrounds (2004; 2007; 2010; 2012a; 2012b; 2013; Twigg and Majima 2013). Latterly, she has redressed the gender balance of such investigations, interviewing twenty-four British men over fifty-eight about their mainstream clothing preferences; likewise, they are from varied professional and class backgrounds but are also predominantly white and straight – five of them are gay and only one is BAME: Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (Twigg 2020: 110). Figure 9  Daphne Selfe and David Gant, 2019.

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Twigg also invokes the useful concept of ‘age ordering’ (2013: 25–30), which dictates appropriate, hierarchical or conventional ways of dressing as we grow older. It is, in turn, prone to ideological shifts in cultural gerontology, such as the longevity revolution and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) neoliberal policy for ‘active ageing’, which originated in the 1970s but has gained momentum in the past twenty years as statistics revealed people were living longer. A report by the WHO in 2012 projected that the number of people aged sixty-five or over would grow exponentially worldwide in the first half of the twenty-first century, ballooning to 1.5 billion in 2050, or 16 per cent of the global population, while the ONS (Office for National Statistics 2019) estimated that an average 16 per cent of males and females born in 2018 had a chance of surviving to the age of 100. Indeed, in 2008 the United Nations forecast that world life expectancy would increase from 66.5 years in 2005–10 to 75.1 years in 2045–50, while WHO figures for 2018 revealed that both men and women are generally living longer: in France their average age stood at that time at 82.9 years; in the UK it was 81.4 years; and in the USA it was 78.5 years. What such figures also underscore is, as people across the world incrementally live longer and with people that are eighty plus years old set to rise globally to 4 per cent by 2050 (Lutz, Sanderson and Scherbov 2008: 88), persistent stereotypical attitudes towards senescence that focus on retirement, disease and decay would also have to evolve in order to address more realistically the economic and productive potential of citizens who are over sixty years old. To this end, the WHO’s ‘active ageing’ framework is based on a two-pronged, complementary approach to what Alzheimer’s and ageism researcher Dr Robert Butler has coined the ‘longevity revolution’ (2008). In contrast to the discipline of geriatrics that, since its introduction in the 1840s, has dealt with old bodies as recessive, insofar as they fade into a form of medicalized self-exile through intrinsic frailty, physical and mental suffering (Leder 1990: 73), ‘active ageing’ is grounded in gerontological theory, pioneered by James Birren and the Gerontological Society of America (f.1945). First, it enlists ideas about social gerontology, whereby the complex ways in which ageing occurs is envisaged not just as a matter of physical and mental decay but is also embedded in institutional discourse as a matter of biopolitics, such as the legal right to work and official age of retirement (Foucault 2004: 243)1. And second, it embraces cultural gerontology concerns that emphasize how embodiment in age is related to factors such as lifestyle, gender, ethnicity and environment. As Lutz, Sanderson and Scherbov aptly describe it, ‘A 60 year old might be considered elderly in 2000, but not in 2100 … in the long-run, being old is more closely related to the number of years people have left to live than it is to the number of years that they have currently lived’ (2008: 92 and 94). Accordingly, we analyse here how the fashion system has responded in the past twenty years to the demographic impact of ageing populations and the longevity revolution, alongside the challenge posed by intersectional identities of gender, class, race and ethnicity. To this extent, we examine the role and impact of diverse cultural intermediaries in making older subjects visible as well as how they envision ‘active ageing’ and deconstruct ‘traditional age ordering’. These include British daily the Guardian’s ‘Fashion For All Ages’ (FFAA) feature that originated in 2009 and represents 34

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intergenerational clothing, as worn by male and female models from different age groups and ethnic backgrounds; both white and BAME models like Daphne Selfe, JoAni Johnson and Pam Lucas, who proudly put their grey hair on display; Ari Seth Cohen, responsible for launching the blog Advanced Style in 2008 that explores fashion as a matter of individual taste and customization for women aged fifty years and over in New York City; and French-born photographer Magali Nougarède, who, working outside the fashion system, symbolized alternative perspectives about the nexus of clothing and young and old bodies in Britain and France with her exhibition Crossing the Line, first shown in 2002. As we shall see, however, the idea of age being written on the body is, in all these instances of cultural gerontology, to do with how the identities of men and women over fifty years old are both formed and performatively reformed by how they look and act, by the things they wear and have to say.

‘Active ageing’, youthfulness and fashion In the past thirty years, many feminist critics and scholars, including Naomi Wolf (1991), Susan Bordo (1993) and Debra Gimlin (2002), have elucidated how women especially are subject to both overt and covert forms of intersectional ageism, grounded in the compulsion to maintain a youthful appearance – what Susan Sontag described as ‘the double standard of ageing’ (1979) and Jay Ginn and Sara Arber refer to as ‘gendered ageism’ (1996: 35). The majority of the forty-four straight and gay women, aged between fifty and seventy years old and residing in Canada, interviewed by Laura Hurd Clarke and Meredith Griffin, for example, attested that they felt social value was inextricably linked to the ideal of youthfulness, witness the following remark by a fifty-one-year-old single, straight professional: ‘Youth is more attractive … young people is (sic) where there’s fashion. Young people are where there’s fun. I guess it’s important for anybody who is not young to think they should either be young or they don’t count’ (Hurd Clarke and Griffin 2008: 660). In particular, several of the women they interviewed raised the paradox that once they had visibly reached middle age it was through signs of ageing they were forced to endure the stigma of being invisible: Nobody even sees me … that’s why I don’t like to go to very many events where people are in their thirties. I am invisible. I am not there. I get introduced to somebody but they’re looking at somebody across the room. It’s as though you’re invisible. You’re not there … You disappear off the map once you hit 45 or 48. (Hurd Clarke and Griffin 2008: 661 and 662) The intervention of Dove with its ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ has been a rare exception to the rule of invisibility insofar as it avoids the exclusive use of young models and uniform somatic ideals in favour of inclusivity in regard to age and ethnicity. The brand launched the campaign in 2004 after a global report it had commissioned on self-esteem found only 2 per cent of the 3,200 women from all age groups that they surveyed considered 35

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themselves to be beautiful (Millard 2009: 147). By and large, it has been positively received for providing a more reasonable gender script or semiotic resource that women of all types can relate or aspire to by inviting them to decide for themselves how they feel about ageing and beauty. Irene, a black resident of London, for instance, proclaimed in one advertisement, ‘Just because I am 96 doesn’t mean I am past it, us older people still have plenty to offer’. Given their cathexis on appearances and youth, fashion design and fashion promotion have clearly played an instrumental role in compounding ageist attitudes. Like any market, clothing retail is motivated by economic imperatives and, if it wants to exploit ageing consumers at all, it is the affluent ‘baby boom’ generation, or those born between 1945 and 1965, that it aims to attract. At the turn of the millennium, for instance, households in America occupied by people in the age group between fifty-five and sixty-four years old were spending 15 per cent more than the average household (Carrigan and Szmigin 2000: 219), and in 2014, a report on the silver economy by Bank of America Merrill Lynch revealed that householders aged fifty years and above were sitting on an average wealth of $765,000 in the United States and £541,000 (about $690,000) in the UK (2014: 39). But, as the Ready for Ageing Alliance also pointed out in 2015, not all baby boomers are ageing successfully. The Office for National Statistics in the UK, for instance, runs the national voluntary Living Costs and Food Survey, based on a sample of 5,500 private households. In 2010, 2,931 of them were occupied by inhabitants aged fifty years and over, and their mean weekly expenditure on clothing and footwear stood at a modest £18 (Hayes and Finney 2014: 99 and 101), with the highest amount being spent by affluent suburban homeowners aged between fifty and fifty-four years old and the lowest by those aged over eighty years (Hayes and Finney 2014: 103 and 108). Accordingly, Twigg (2013: 40) proposes the term Third Agers as a more accurate way of classifying successful and affluent ageing consumers who are in their mid-fifties to early seventies. Rebranding old age In appealing to the silver economy – however we may define its putative constituency – the fashion industry faces a perpetual dilemma: how to promote its products to ageing consumers without also alienating its core demographic market of men and women aged between twenty and forty-five years old. It is for this reason that few, if any, fashion houses and designers deliberately conceive of and produce clothing with an ageing population in mind. In fact, many of the fashion system’s powerful movers and shakers are Third Agers themselves, between fifty and seventy years old, including: Hedi Slimane (born 1968); Marc Jacobs (b.1963); Tom Ford (b.1961); John Galliano, currently creative director at Maison Margiela (b.1960); Carine Roitfeld, currently director of the agency CR Studio (b.1954); Donna Karan (b.1952); and Jean Paul Gaultier (b.1952). While the likes of Anna Wintour (born 1949), currently editor of American Vogue, Vivienne Westwood (b.1941), Ralph Lauren (b.1939) and Giorgio Armani (b.1934) are Fourth Agers in their seventies and eighties. But all of them are of an age to have taken part in (or at least been aware of) one of the rebellious teenage or youth cultures that emerged 36

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between the 1950s and the 1980s, and they have transported this consciousness into their own ageing process, unwilling to abandon entirely the iconoclastic identity politics that formed their initial relationship to fashion and the body. As writer Jenni Diski recalled, membership of the post-war mod youth culture – she was born in London in 1947 – seemed to confer one with the status of eternal youth: The irony of ‘I hope I die before I get old’ was that we didn’t believe for a second that we could become the old as we knew them. And we weren’t just young, but young in a way no previous generation had been young. We used ‘young’ and ‘old’ as time-free categories. ‘Young’ meant new and different, able to see what the old couldn’t (certain visionaries excepted): we had reinvented the terms to mean us and them. They, the old, would die out: we would change the world and remain forever ourselves, meaning forever young. (Diski 2014) This sense of uniqueness and temporal continuity is evident in the way many designer labels and retailers deploy ageing hipsters and latter day trendsetters in promoting the right look or cool air of timeless detachment for their merchandise, even if fashion designers themselves eschew producing a range aimed exclusively at the older market. Thus between 2014 and 2016 Hedi Slimane’s relaunch of YSL was based on pop music heritage and featured several women over sixty years old, including Marianne Faithfull (b.1946) and Jane Birkin (b.1946); while in 2015, American author Joan Didion was photographed at age eighty by Juergen Teller in publicity for Celine, and Selfridges in London dedicated all thirteen of its Oxford Street windows to the work of ‘Bright Old Things’, including Molly Parkin (b.1932), artist and former fashion editor of Nova. But even high street retailers such as Marks & Spencer and George at Asda, both of which have successfully developed a strong niche market with women aged forty-five years and older, target different consumers in terms of lifestyle rather than chronological age (Twigg 2013: 122–4). In 2007, George Davies introduced the Moda Brand for Asda to appeal to older female consumers and it has garnered between 15 and 20 per cent of clothing sales for the company. Davies had previously developed the Per Una brand for M&S in 2000, which became popular with female consumers over forty, even though it was originally targeted at a younger clientele. This was followed by Portfolio in 2008, which was specifically aimed at the older female market but was phased out two years later after receiving mixed press reviews. Between 2001 and 2019, Classic was the M&S range most clearly focused on women over fifty-five years old in terms of design and cut, which, in its reliance on pastel shades and neck embroidery, Twigg described as conforming to the ‘old lady style of pretty femininity’ (Twigg 2013: 123). In marked contrast, aged sixty-two years old, ex-fashion model Twiggy launched her iconoclastic M&S clothing and beauty range in 2012. The clothing collection for autumn 2017 included ‘hero pieces’ such as a leather biker jacket and a figure-hugging longline shirt. Echoing Twiggy’s own style ethos, ‘Don’t get hung up on age, it’s about attitude’, all of the garments in her seasonal collections are available in sizes 8 to 22 (Marks and Spencer 37

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2020). The promotion of her collection pinpoints that on the one hand fashion pays endless aesthetic homage to youth, while on the other it is parlous for it to overlook both the mature designer and consumer. Even so, the tyranny of looking young while growing old underpinning many of the initiatives mentioned above is that they are a form of celebrity endorsement as much as they are concerned with the power of the silver economy. After all, Twiggy, Faithfull and Birkin are, by any yardstick, successful agers. Likewise, having reached fifty years old, singer Jennifer Lopez had the jungle-green dress, which plunged to her navel and she had worn in 1999 to the Grammys, remodelled by Donatella Versace to appear on the runway for Versace in Milan in September 2019, while Helena Christensen modelled Balmain outfits at Paris Fashion Week in February 2020, having just turned fifty-one years old. As Jess Cartner-Morley (2020) argues, therefore, in attaining visibility, ‘The modern rebranding of 50 is really all about the visual element: the smooth skin, taut abs, being able to wear the same revealing dress you wore two decades earlier’. In this sense, ‘active ageing’ is a process that transcends the concept of prototypical ‘age ordering’, which regards the different stages of life as distinct and thus reinforces dress as ageappropriate in regard to class, gender and race (Twigg 2013: 25; 52–5). The reality of ‘dressing one’s age’ There also exists the danger that ‘active ageing’ of this kind will result in a new form of ageism since it masks a fundamental shortcoming of the longevity revolution that tends to assume everyone ages on the same level and has the same economic and health needs; indeed, that to resign oneself to a life of indolent retirement and ageing somehow demonstrates moral failure. But in England, for example, some 37 per cent of male pensioners and 14 per cent of females still work full-time – that is to say, thirty hours or more a week (Hokema and Scherger 2016: 98). In reality, many of those with the least material resources are often compelled to work as long as possible into their retirement years just to make ends meet, while those who are better off can choose to continue working for enjoyment and non-material rewards, such as social stimulation or to keep fit and active. Hence, Nilufur Kormaz Yaylagul and Terence Seedsman contend: ‘While virtually all nations are now experiencing growth in their respective numbers of older people, it is worthwhile remembering that diversity rather than sameness is the reality of ageing which makes matching at any level problematic’ (2012: 489).2 A less idealized reckoning with ‘age ordering’ and ‘active ageing’, and their impact on self-identity in everyday life is preferred by Jenni Diski in her diary for the London Review of Books, written when she also had just entered her fifties (Diski 1998). Posing the question, ‘How is one supposed to be 50?’, she speaks about being warned by ‘the young’ not to look ‘Sixties’ when she wore collars turned up and relates a failed attempt to enter Burstons Jackets and Gowns, a store in Kentish Town, north London, that catered for archetypal older women and ‘grannies’ with its ‘permanent window display of shapeless pleated skirts, floral frocks, cardigans and fully fashioned jackets in 100 per cent polyester and crimplene and nylon’. Crimplene is a brand of polyester, developed by 38

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ICI in England after the Second World War, that had sag- and crease-resistant properties and that is also summarized by Twigg as a fabric that is ‘inextricably associated with elderly women in care homes’ (2013:13). Diski attests: It was my intention to go in and try on some of these clothes, to see if I would be transformed into somebody appropriately ‘50’, but I couldn’t get through the door. What if it worked, what if ‘50’ and me converged as I put on the clothes? And what if it didn’t work? By which I mean, what if wearing the clothes made no difference to the image I thought I was seeing in the mirror, because the image I have of myself is entirely subjective? In a similar vein, Frida Furman’s ethnographic study of women who attended a beauty salon in New York City conveys the sense of double objectification that older women experience about their mirror image in regard to age and gender. Thus, they see themselves intersectionally as ‘woman and as old woman’ (1997: 109). The mask of ageing The anxiety that both Diski and Furman raise here concerning how we are supposed to look and dress appropriate to our biological age versus how we actually feel about our identity was also reiterated by some of the men whom Twigg interviewed (2020: 119) and it evinces the concept of the mask of ageing, as accounted for by Mike Featherstone and Mike Hepworth in a seminal article, first published in 1988. They deal with the idea that old age is worn like a mask that obscures the essential or timeless identity of the individual behind it and, hence, it entails negotiating between the subjective experience of growing old and how old one looks objectively in the eyes of the world (Featherstone and Hepworth 1991: 378–9). The mask of ageing involves the perception of outward appearances and the internal feelings one has about those appearances – of ‘young minds trapped behind old faces’ – which is to say, how you perceive yourself to look on the outside is filtered through the comments made by others about your body image: ‘Our perception of our own bodies is mediated by the direct and tacit judgments of others in interactions and our own reflexive judgments of their view, compounded by what we think we see in the mirror’ (Featherstone and Hepworth 2005: 356). The mask of ageing implies that we perceive our own external appearance as a letdown, much as Lacan argued in ‘The Mirror Stage’ (1949) that the perfect maternal figure we internalize as infants leads us to experience a material lack in our own body. Hence, we encounter le corps morcelé – the body in pieces – especially when we also begin to compare it with the idealized bodies that we see portrayed in art, the media and fashion. The ‘Mirror Stage’, then, sets into train the conflict of experiencing one’s identity simultaneously as a matter of being self and desiring to be other: ‘We have only to understand the mirror stage as an identification … namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image’ (Lacan 1977: 72).3 When it comes to fashion and clothing, young or younger-looking models have dominated promotions that are aimed at older people (Carrigan and Szmigin 2000; 39

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Gantz et al 1980; Sawchuk 1995) and the stereotyping of the latter in negative or sexless terms across the mass media generally has compounded the concept of the mask of ageing. Cross-comparative research by Amy Cuddy, Michael Norton and Susan Fiske, for example, based on the attitudes of college students from America, Europe, Israel, Japan and South Korea to elderly people, reinforced a predominant and pan-cultural stereotype of them as being ‘sweet and feeble’ (2005: 273). Whether male or female, black or white, it is as if age capsizes every other aspect of their identities and they are homogenized as simply being old (Hazan 1994: 58–9). As a result of being exposed to such images of persistent stereotyping, therefore, many social scientists have maintained people aged fifty years and over internalize them, and subsequently develop a sense of inadequacy and low self-esteem as part of their own personality and identity (Bradley and Longino 2001; Cooley 1922; Featherstone and Hepworth 2005). And yet, things do not have to be this way. For, as Sander Gilman has proposed, while ‘everyone creates stereotypes’ they do not have to remain immutable: ‘As any image is shifted, all stereotypes shift. Thus, stereotypes are inherently protean rather than rigid’ (Gilman 1985: 17). The editor of British Vogue once remarked in an interview with Twigg that she found photographers were reluctant to work with older women and that readers of the magazine did not regard them as ‘exemplars of fashion and beauty’ (2013: 109).4 It is encouraging, then, that with an average readership between thirty-nine and fortyfour years old respectively for its print and online editions (Smith 2020), British Vogue readjusted its one-dimensional perspective on the physical reality of being an older woman for its July 2020 issue. Rather than representing a fashion model on the front page, it featured a photograph by Nick Knight of acclaimed actor Dame Judi Dench, who by virtue of being eighty-five years old at the time became the oldest woman to appear on its cover.5 While Dench is another successful ager and, professionally, she defies the stereotypical expectation of what getting old involves, nonetheless the photograph of her has not been digitally enhanced to erase the crow’s feet around her eyes and the wrinkles on her cheeks, and nor does she disguise the fact that her trademark pixie haircut has turned silver. Hence, the Vogue cover stands in marked contrast to those in 1948 and 1949 by Cecil Beaton portraying the youthful and glamorous character Mrs Exeter, who was described as ‘approaching sixty’ (Twigg 2013: 114), and the first ‘Ageless Style’ issue of July 2007. The latter represented seven models of various ages, including Yasmin LeBon and Marie Helvin, who were then forty-two and fifty-three years old respectively. Much like Mrs Exeter, however, they do not display any visible signs of ageing. Knight was also responsible for shooting an advertising campaign for Levi’s, conceived by the agency Bartle, Bogle and Hegarty and launched in autumn 1996, which made it one of the first brands to invert and contest the stereotypical ageism of the fashion industry. Styled by Simon Foxton, the advertisements featured colour photographs of white female as well as black male subjects from Colorado, all over sixty years in age and from different class backgrounds, such as Alonzo, a black cowboy aged eighty-six, and Josephine, a teacher, aged seventy-nine, with shoulder length silver hair. Counterintuitively, the aim of the ‘Oldies’ publicity was to make Levi’s hip again with the core sixteen to twenty-four years old market by reminding it of the brand’s heritage. But the 40

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fact that older people also wear jeans suggests that the campaign would have resonated demographically with them as well. Men 2000, for instance, a report by market analysts Mintel, had recorded that 51 per cent of men bought a pair of jeans in 1993, with the biggest increase amongst the forty-five to fifty-four years old age group (Mintel 1993; Men’s Wear 1994: 4). As Knight explained, his warts and all approach intended to transcend the fashion industry’s aversion to ageing by making the models ‘look sexy and heroic, so you don’t just look at these people and say: “Oh, look at that old person”’ (Plewka 1996: 40). But it was to take roughly another fifteen years before the visibility of older models became more common in fashion promotion and publishing in a positive way that could ‘not only empower older people to achieve a better ageing process’ but ‘can also persuade the rest of us to throw away negative age stereotypes’ (Featherstone and Hepworth 1995: 30).

‘Fashion For All Ages’ and the new old model army On 8 August 2009, British newspaper the Guardian, whose average daily print circulation is around 126,000 copies (Statista 2020), launched its FFAA feature in its Weekend section on Saturdays. Its ethos is to represent intergenerational clothing as worn by male and female models from a diverse demographic of age groups and both white and BAME backgrounds. The analysis of it that follows is based on nearly eleven years’ worth of material, from its inception until 28 March 2020, after which time it began to taper off, following the impact of lockdown and social distancing measures implemented by the UK government to contain the spread of Covid-19.6 From the outset, David Newby has remained the chief photographer for the feature, working alongside a team of eight different stylists: Penny Chan (2018–19); Simon Chilvers (2010–12); Arcadia Crockett (2011); Priscilla Kwateng (2009–15); Helen Seamons (2014–20); Bemi Shaw (2018); Lucy Trott (2013); and Melanie Wilkinson (2012–20). Almost every week the fashion team would pick clothes that represented a current fashion trend, organized according to a particular type of garment, fabric, cut, colour and season, or a set theme such as activewear and party outfits (Table 1). It scarcely touched on topical events, but on 2 April 2016 commemorated Queen Elizabeth II’s ninetieth birthday by paying homage to the influence of her style of dress since the 1940s (Figure 10). In general, the models in FFAA wear items of clothing in the photographer’s studio against a plain backdrop and the key aim of the stylists is to demonstrate how they could be worn irrespective of age barriers or ideas of age-appropriate dress. Feelings and anxieties about appearance and fashion were one of nine topics probed by Richard Ward and Caroline Holland (2011) for the two-year Research on Age Discrimination project they conducted for Help the Aged, which elicited 153 separate accounts from male and female correspondents aged sixty years and over. It revealed that the majority of women involved in the project were concerned with the idea of ‘if I look old, I will be treated old’ (Ward and Holland 2011: 296); this attitude is also evident in medical discourse such that age discrimination by the National Health Service in England could be preventing 41

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Table 1  Guardian (Weekend) ‘Fashion For All Ages’ – Sample of Weekly Themes for 2016 and 2019 Female (F); Male (M) 2016

2019

F = 39; M = 9

F = 28; M = 7

02.01 – F, knitted dresses

12.01 – F, corduroy

12.01 – F, activewear

19.01 – M, knits

16.01 – F, tailored trousers

26.01 – F, high necked

23.01 – M, anoraks

02.02 – F, floral

30.01 – F, white shirts

09.02 – F, blue

06.02 – F, parkas

16.02 – F, jeans

13.02 – F, suede

23.02 – M, utility

20.02 – F, sporty

08.03 – F, bright colours

27.02 – M, bomber jackets

30.03 – F, cargo pants

04.03 – F, monochrome

14.04 – F, polka dot

10.03 – F, stripes

27.04 – F, tie-dye

26.03 – F, pink

04.05 – F, beige

02.04 – F, Queen’s style

11.05 – F, trimmed

16.04 – F, slip dresses

18.05 – M, tie-dye

30.04 – M, denim shirts

01.06 – F, suits

07.05 – F, embroidery

15.06 – F, dresses

14.05 – F, spring jackets

22.06 – F, tank tops

21.05 – F, folk blouses

13.07 – F, linen

28.05 – F, gold & embroidered

20.07 – M, shorts

04.06 – M, shorts

27.07 – F, tropical prints

11.06 – F, bare shoulders

03.08 – F, white

18.06 – F, pyjama tops

10.08 – F, jumpsuits

25.06 – F, rainbow

24.08 – F, floral

02.07 – F, florals

31.08 – M, summer gear

09.07 – M, pink

07.09 – F, wrap skirts

16.07 – F, summer dresses

19.10 – F, winter coats

26.07 – F, blue

02.11 – F, cardigans

30.07 – F, oversized

07.12 – M, partywear

09.12 – F, sparkly

14.12 – F, pink

06.08 – F, ruffles

16.12 – F, winter dresses

42

Written on the Body: Fashion, Clothing and Age 13.08 – F, wide-legged trousers

28.12 – F, party skirts

03.19 – F, white

30.12 – F & M, party outfits

03.09 – F, white 10.09 – F, suits 17.09 – F, slogan Ts 24.09 – M, coats 08.10 – F, jumpsuits 15.10 – F, beige 25.10 – F, coats 29.10 – F, frilled knitwear 05.11 – F, velvet 12.11 – M, pinstripes 26.11 – F& M, party outfits 17.12 – M, copper & brown 23.12 – F, party dresses

Figure 10  Valerie Paine, ‘FFAA’, 2016. Photo by David Newby. 43

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older people from accessing life-saving surgery (RCS 2014).7 Given the concerns that many older consumers may have about visibility and dressing appropriately, FFAA acts, therefore, as an invaluable semiotic resource or mirror image to test out the possibilities of how things could look on them, to coordinate a particular look, and whether they would feel comfortable wearing them before they decide to buy. Furthermore, it is one of the few fashion editorials to challenge the resistance that many older men have towards shopping for clothes and their reluctance to step outside of long held or traditional norms of male dress (Twigg 2020: 109–10 and 116). As Twigg also found, not all the men in her study were indifferent to the idea of being fashionable; those with a background in the creative industries were especially interested in looking stylish, while some stated that they did not think about their age when they chose items of clothing they liked (Twigg 2020: 111–13). And the men in their late fifties and sixties she interviewed generally greeted the idea of elasticated waists with derision: ‘I mean you really have lost the plot as you start going to elastics’ (Twigg 2020: 118). Strategically, FFAA did not dwell on ranges designated for an ageing market or Crimplene dresses from stores such as Burstons, Kentish Town. Rather, its senior male and female models were dressed in the same kind of clothes worn by the younger ones. In this way, Pam Lucas, who is in her seventies, would be seen wearing anything from a Filippa K jacket at £320 (25 February 2012) and a River Island bikini top at £16 (24 May 2014), to a knee-length skirt from Zara at £25.99 (2 November 2018) and a cashmere jumper by Chiti at £295 (4 January 2020), while Graeme Cheshire, who is in his fifties, donned Grenson boots costing £275 one week (1 January 2020) and M&S trousers at £19.50 in another (7 December 2019). And for a feature styled by Bemi Shaw on 11 August 2018, BAME women who were not professional models, like retired teacher Lynne Richards, donned denim jeans and jackets. The Guardian’s readership is solidly middle class – in 2019 two-thirds of its readers were in social status groups ABC1 (Statista 2020). As the cost of the various garments cited above indicates, however, FFAA does aim to be inclusive when it comes to income, always including merchandise from designer labels alongside high street retailers; thus H&M jeans costing £19.99 were displayed with a Missoni tweed jacket at £640 (8 October 2013), and a khaki jacket from M&S at £89 was worn with a silk shirt from Acne at £190 (23 January 2010). Whereas none of the men in Ward and Holland’s study touched on appearances in their interviews or diaries, several of the Guardian’s male models were invited by Simon Chilvers to express their thoughts on video about what items of clothing they preferred for the shoots on 24 September 2011 and 15 October 2011. Accordingly, Rob Knighton picked out a ribbed jumper by French Connection at £125 and a pair of navy trousers by Banana Republic at £99.50, since he usually wears ‘classic stuff ’, while Giovanni chose the tweed trousers by Toast costing £195 that Rob had worn, as they were ‘Something he would wear apart from a photo shoot’ (Chilvers 2011). In fact, it is jeans that are one of the most frequent items to appear in the features concerning menswear, which appeared once every four weeks on average, and thus FFAA did much to contest the reckoning with the ‘epidermic self-awareness’ of getting older that Umberto Eco argues makes wearing jeans fraught with anxiety for corpulent men and those past their prime 44

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(Eco 1986: 194). This sense of dressing ‘too young’ was echoed by the contempt that Frank, one of the respondents in Twigg’s survey, expressed about the trend for wearing tight-legged jeans: ‘I think it’s detestable. No, I couldn’t put up with that … it doesn’t look right, does it?’ (2020: 114). But, while the Guardian became instrumental in deconstructing the norms of ageappropriate dress, so too is it intersectional when it comes to the treatment of identity in its representation of both white and BAME male and female subjects of all generations. In respect of older subjects, the Guardian feature has represented forty-one models aged fifty years and over – nineteen white and ten BAME females and eight white and four BAME males (Annex 18) – including Daphne Selfe (Figure 9), who appeared three times in 2011 (12 and 19 June, and 2 July). Born in 1928, Selfe started her fashion career in 1949 with British Vogue and is one of the longest serving fashion models in the world, along with American Carmen dell’Orifice, who was born in 1932 and began modelling for Harpers Bazaar in the 1950s. Selfe is currently signed up with the agency Models 1 and runs her own online modelling course. In 1997, she appeared on the London Fashion Week runway for accessories retailer Red or Dead and in 2007 appeared in her first advertising campaign for Dolce & Gabbana (Selfe 2016). In 2016 she appeared on the runway of the first Fifty Plus Fashion show at London Fashion Week, sponsored by JD Williams, the womenswear retailer of size 10–32 clothing, and she also featured in Strong Women, the exhibition sponsored by Smythson of work by Alistair Guy, a fashion photographer for UK Vogue and i.D. Guy shot on analogue film using uncompromising natural light, and many of the subjects were photographed in their homes or at places that held a personal significance to them. In turn, the older male and female models who appear in FFAA are represented by iconoclastic agencies that promote the concept of style as timeless: Pam Lucas (Figure 13), Giovanni and Winston Garvey (who is also a bodybuilder and, aged eighty-three, the oldest of the male models featured) are employed by Ugly, established in 1969; thirteen of the females, including Sylviane and Valerie Paine (Figure 10), are listed in the retro woman and classic woman categories of Mrs Robinson, founded in 2013; Rob Knighton and David Evans are affiliated to Next; and Liskulla Ljungkvist and David Gant (Figure 9), alongside Selfe, are signed to Models 1, founded in 1968. Although Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wissinger (2012) do not address old age in their anthology about the dynamics of fashion modelling, as a form of flexible employment for people aged fifty and above, it is a career that overlaps with the neoliberal ideology to reform pension provision such that individuals, rather than the state, will shoulder the financial burden of living longer. Across the European Union, for instance, average pensions for men are 40 per cent higher than those of women, even though the latter rely on them more in order to survive (Hokema and Scherger 2016: 94) and their life expectancy is, in turn, typically three years longer than their male counterparts (Foster 2018: 127). But by 2010 the default retirement age of sixty-five had been abolished for the majority of workers in the UK, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Foster 2018: 125), while the extension of working lives and flexible employment were coterminously being promoted in Europe and the UK (European Commission 2009; DWP 2006: 139). By 45

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the same token, modelling reinforces the health benefits of ‘active ageing’ as a means to maintain physical and mental well-being by staying in the workplace as long as possible – provided, that is, like willowy Lucas (she is 5’10” tall with a 25 inch waist) and Gant (standing at 6’1” with a 38 inch chest), you conform to the prevalent somatic ideal of the fashion industry for being fit, slim and tall, and possess a look that is photogenically malleable (Entwistle and Wissinger 2012: 16–17). Going grey Yet the majority of older models appearing in FFAA also have grey or silver hair (Annex 1) and, in common with Dior’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri (Figures 2 and 3), and UK Vogue’s deputy editor Sarah Harris, they significantly confront and contest one of the most persistent fears that ageing entails – something that in 2020 also became a badge of honour for actors, singers and celebrities like Jane Fonda, Kelis, Sharon Osborne and Helen Mirren. The trend for women to proudly espouse grey goes against the grain of traditional gender stereotyping, whereby it is men’s virile allure that is undiminished as they reach their fifties and their hair loses its colour. Instead of getting old, men are deemed to mature into silver foxes, a trope that has gained currency to sum up handsome and rugged older males such as regular FFAA models Graeme Cheshire and Hugo Woddis (Figure 11), and international supermodel Yaron Fink, who started his career in 1989 with Next For Men and twenty years later was appearing as the daddy figure in homoerotic publicity for Dolce & Gabbana, photographed by Steven Klein. In contrast, women who permit grey hair are commonly held to become haggard crones, dismissed for being past their prime and endlessly compelled to maintain their looks. When British beauty writer Sali Hughes decided to stop covering over her grey hair at the age of fortysix, for instance, she was advised ‘it would be a bad move’, even though it was her allergy to PPD and PTD in hair dyes that forced her decision (Hughes 2021). Negative attitudes such as this concerning the appearance of grey hair are recounted by Ward and Holland in their ethnographic study, where the majority of the women consulted regarded it as the stereotypical signifier of looking like a witch. Hence, one of them relates, ‘I’d had an occasion about six years ago when my hair was grey and fairly long and I was out doing a teaching day on supply and young eight-year-old boys who saw me for the first time fell on the floor rolling with laughter and shouting, “she’s a witch, she’s a witch”’ (Ward and Holland 2011: 300). By extension, Laura Hurd Clarke and Alexandra Korotchenko in their study about attitudes to dyeing hair record how the majority of the thirty-six women aged between seventy-one and ninety-four years old they interviewed in Canada were dismissive of grey hair, describing it as a ‘non-color’ since, counter-intuitively, it was the most visible part of ageing that rendered them invisible to others (2010: 1016). But half of them, in common with the sample in Furman (1997), approved of white hair, which they regarded as ‘very attractive’ and ‘very striking’ (1997: 1015).

Figure 11  Hugo Woddis, ‘FFAA’, 2018. Photo by David Newby. 46

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Race and reversing convention Whether to let one’s hair turn grey or not clearly divides public opinion, but it is also a socio-cultural or political intervention when it comes to gender and ethnic identities. This much is demonstrated in the interviews Julie Winterich conducted with thirty American women aged between forty-six and seventy-one years old, where lesbians and women of colour – in contrast to their middle-class, straight, white counterparts – avowed their acceptance of grey hair as a means to contest the oppressiveness of dominant beauty standards in the West (2007: 63). It is precisely this act of defiance that has been embraced by several female models from ethnic and dual heritage backgrounds, who are also over fifty years old and refuse to dye their hair. One such, black American JoAni Johnson (Figure 12), appeared in her first New York Fashion Week in 2017 at the age of sixty-five, proudly showing off the flowing silver locks that had started to lose their colour in her thirties and that she embraces stoically, avowing, ‘Some of us don’t even get an opportunity to age’. Since being ‘discovered’ in 2016 by a photographer as she and her husband were taking one of their weekend walks on the streets of Manhattan, she has become one of the most ubiquitous of older dual heritage models, strutting the runway for Ozwald Boateng and Rihanna’s Fenty Line in spring 2019, Hilfiger’s TOMMYNOW in autumn 2019, as well as featuring in ads for the American fashion label Pyer Moss. Having previously worked as a fashion-marketing professional for Warren Hirsh, representing the likes of Gloria Vanderbilt, Calvin Klein and Fiorucci, Johnson is currently a certified tea blender and views modelling as a kind of hobby. But she is well aware of the power of the fashion image and has harnessed this to an ongoing interest in black identity politics, such as the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and class propounded by the radical black feminist lawyer, Florynce Rae Kennedy that she initially witnessed growing up in Harlem, New York during the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s (Hicklin 2019; Randolph 2015: 157–8). Like Johnson, Anglo-Indian model Pam Lucas, who was born in 1948, came to the fashion industry somewhat late in life (Figure 13). She got her first modelling job by accident in 1999, when she was trying to secure employment for her son with the agency Ugly. She has since appeared on the runway for Victoria Beckham in September 2019 and has appeared on 216 occasions in FFAA – more than any of the models listed in Annex 1. Describing herself as ‘not pretty in the conventional sense of the word’ and determined to do ‘what the hell I like’ (Cawley 2019), similar to Johnson she also wears her long grey hair fearlessly, letting it fall past her broad shoulders in fashion shoots and on the runway. Independent-minded older models like Selfe, Johnson and Lucas are indicative, therefore, of the millennial ‘multi-stage life’ propounded by business scholars Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott. As they argue, this is a matter of reversing the conventional idea that ‘living longer means being old longer’ into ‘living longer means being young longer’ (2017: 11) and will entail a shift in the structuring and perception

Figure 12  JoAni Johnson, TOMMYNOW, Fall 2019 runway, NYC. 48

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of time as well as identity. Thus, the three-stage view of life inherited from the twentieth century – first, education, followed by a career, and finally, retirement – will be replaced by a flexible redesign of life, or ‘a multi-stage life with a variety of careers, with breaks and transitions’ in which ‘“Age” is not “stage” any longer, and these new stages will be increasingly age-agnostic’ (2017: 4 and 10).9 Moreover, the desire to appear authentic expressed by the likes of Johnson and Lucas is instrumental in helping us appreciate the ways that ageing intersects with gender, race and ethnic identities, and is more than just a matter of old people wanting to look like ‘youth with gray hair’ (Lin, Hummert and Harwood 2004: 261). As we have already discussed, older women – whether white or non-white – often experience being treated as if they are invisible due to the double jeopardy of their sex and age. But this imbrication of identities becomes more complicated still when we factor in the colour of someone’s skin. Sweta Rajan-Rankin argues white people may only become ‘othered’ when they reach deep old age’, whereas black people can be racialized as Other at any point in their life cycle since the colour of their skin is always visible and, thereby, they are screened as alien or inferior through the hegemonic gaze of white society (2018: 34–5). Hence, as they grow old, BAME subjects become doubly disenfranchised by racism and ageism, a process of marginalization that, in turn, is exacerbated for women of colour in regard to their sex and gender identities. As Rajan-Rankin attests, ‘Visible and invisible differences are complicated by the interplay between age, gender, race, class and (dis)ability; and in most cases, these interplays are often over-simplified by focusing on some aspects of difference eliding others. Age and race are both worn on the skin’ (2018: 36). It is by virtue of their visibility in magazines and on the runway as women of colour over sixty years old who choose to celebrate their age by not obscuring their grey hair, therefore, that Johnson and Lucas contest not only ageism and the norms of beauty associated with mainstream fashion but also put the focus on the non-white bodies and faces that it has for too long kept out of sight. It is not for nothing, after all, staff of colour were forced to resign from US Vogue in light of the racial discrimination and inequities they faced in the workplace from its British editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour. As Shelby Ivey Christie messaged on Twitter: ‘My time at Vogue, at Condé Nast, was the most challenging + miserable time of my career – The bullying + testing from white counterparts, the completely thankless work, the terrible pay + racism was exhausting’ (Helmore 2020). Of course, visibility is not necessarily the same as having direct political influence and fashion models on their own cannot be expected to eradicate structural and institutional racism. But in the context of the international reckoning with white privilege pioneered by the Black Lives Matter movement since 2013 and stoked by a white police officer in Minneapolis killing George Floyd on 25 May 2020, their visibility is, at least, of strategic and equal value in enabling non-white women and men to recognize themselves positively for who and what they are as it is for white people to appreciate the decolonization of culture and society from racist thinking is long overdue.

Figure 13  Pam Lucas, ‘FFAA’, 2019. Photo by David Newby. 50

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‘States of truth and fiction’: Ari Seth Cohen and Magali Nougarède As we have just seen with FFAA, cutting edge photographers and stylists have played a large role in authoring a ‘production of belief ’ in the field of fashion about inventive ‘ageordering’ and how it relates to intersectional and intergenerational identities (Bourdieu 1980: 264–65); this runs counter to the elitist myth expressed by one magazine editor that it is difficult for them to produce innovative work with older models (Twigg 2013: 109). We conclude our analysis of fashion and ageing, therefore, with case studies of two such cultural intermediaries, each of whom takes a microanalytic rather than a holistic approach to cultural gerontology, one that foregrounds the subjectively embodied experiences of age and the memories and stories that clothes can evince as ‘states of truth and fiction’ (Nougarède and Jobling 2006). Stylist and photographer Ari Seth Cohen works within the fashion system and his main focus has been on the personal dress preferences of women aged fifty and older living in New York City. By contrast, photographer Magali Nougarède has no direct links to the world of fashion but in the late-1990s began to explore the narrative potential of the clothing worn by young and old subjects alike in England and France. They both address the act of ageing as it relates to individual women and men in the everyday world, and, in the process, their contribution to the field of fashion and dress history exemplifies how ‘ageing is simultaneously a collective condition and an individualized subjective experience’ (Hepworth 2000: 1). Advanced Style Cohen, based in New York City and Los Angeles, has developed a lifelong interest in clothing, style and age under the influence of his grandmothers Bluma and Helen (she was fond of wearing Escada suits), and he exploits it to encourage the fashion industry to embrace older models and to promote the idea that an interest in clothes matters at any age. To this end, in 2008 he founded the blog Advanced Style and has produced two key publications (2012 and 2016) and a film, directed by Lina Plioplyte (2014), under the same name. In 2018 he also started to use his blog as a form of ethnography to explore the relationship between clothing, age and the body for men as well as women in Mexico City, and collaborated with Fanny Karst for the T-shirt campaign ‘Not Dead Yet’. The film, which we concentrate on here, showcases seven stylish female denizens of New York City from diverse class, ethnic and professional backgrounds, whom he encountered on the street and persuaded to participate in the project (Figure 14): Joyce Carpati, a retired widow living in Manhattan who was eighty years old in 2013; Lynn Dell Cohen, married proprietor of Off Broadway Boutique, Manhattan, who was seventy-nine; Zelda Kaplan, style icon, single and deceased at age ninety-five – she had a seizure while attending the front row of New York Fashion Week in February 2013 and failed to regain consciousness; Jacquie ‘Tajah’ Murdock, a retired New York University administrative assistant, aged eighty-one, single and living in NYU sheltered housing; Debra Rapoport, an artist and milliner, who was sixty-seven and partnered; Ilona Royce 52

Written on the Body: Fashion, Clothing and Age

Figure 14  Left to Right: Joyce Carpati, Ilona Royce Smithkin, Lina Plioplyte, Deborah Rappaport, Tziporah Salmon, Jacquie Tajah Murdoch, Ari Seth Cohen and Lynn Dell.

Smithkin, a Polish-born artist, teacher and nightclub performer, aged ninety-three and single; and Tsiporah Salamon, a substitute art teacher and fashion store assistant, who cycled everywhere to show off her outfits and was sixty-two years old and single. When Cohen initially approached them, almost all seven women were somewhat sceptical about his project and not willing to participate in it – Joyce ‘took a while to convince’, while Jacquie warned him, ‘I am a professional – I could sue you if you use my image without my permission’ (Sauers 2014). Now visually impaired, Jacquie is the only Afro-American subject to have made the film’s final cut (although on camera we do see Cohen make an invitation to another woman of colour). She was born to Jamaican immigrants in Harlem and, aged seventeen, became one of the original Apollo Theatre dancers. Both she and Tsiporah were shot by Steven Meisel for a Lanvin publicity campaign in 2012 and, alongside Debra and Ilona, live a more alternative lifestyle. Thus, what they wear is improvised from an existing wardrobe, donations from sponsors (Jacquie was wearing a Courrèges jacket when Cohen first approached her), thrift store buys and self-creativity: Debra refers to her sense of dress as an act of assembly or building, often recycling found materials, while Ilona fashions even curling false eyelashes from her own hennaed hair. By contrast, the most affluent of his subjects are Joyce, a collector of couture clothing and Chanel handbags, who trained as an opera singer in Milan after the Second World War and has worked for the Hearst Corporation under Helen Gurley Brown as an ad sales manager for Good Housekeeping and Cosmopolitan; Lynn, who lives with her blind husband Sandy, employs a maid, and by 2013 had been running her own clothing business for forty-two years; and Zelda, who lived on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, designed her own clothes, collected Ashanti kente cloths and loved to dance. In both books and on film Cohen takes the opportunity to mobilize older adult story work

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as a means ‘to share their memories and talk about their life experiences’ (McKeown et al. 2006: 238), allowing each of the women to vocalize their personal and singular relationship to dress and dressing. Notwithstanding their disparate backgrounds and levels of income, they all share(d) an intense interest in developing an independent creative style of their own, seeing age as no barrier (the following quotations are taken from the film dialogue): ‘I consider myself high fashion … I’ve always loved my own unique style’ (Jacqui); ‘I never wanted to look young, I wanted to look great’ (Joyce); ‘Money has nothing to do with style’ (Lynn); ‘As one becomes older, one learns to accept oneself ’ (Zelda). Debra, Ilona and Tsiporah, meantime, demonstrate a more idiosyncratic approach to dress: ‘Style is not about attitude, it’s about healing’ (Debra); ‘There is no time limit to anything. When you look good, you look good’ (Ilona); ‘My art is dressing. I do a portrait with clothing’ (Tsiporah). These self-assured statements defy the lament of Simone de Beauvoir in Old Age that we all must ‘Die early or grow old: there is no alternative’ (1977: 315). Rather, they coincide with Luce Irigaray’s interest in redemptive time or kairos (that we explore also in Chapter 4, concerning cyborg identities), which she elaborated in an essay called ‘How Old Are You?’ in 1988. As she argues, the question ‘How old are you?’ is not even worth asking if all you want to find out is a woman’s age in terms of calendar years. Instead, ageing should be regarded as a process of a spiritual becoming rather than a matter of accumulating repeated days and years that in urban and capitalist societies reduce everything to the same experience: ‘I am getting older and/or less relevant.’ For Irigaray, the key moments or factors of female existence – especially virginity and maternity  – have been regulated by men and co-opted to patriarchal ends, and thus should be reclaimed, if women are to feel a proper sense of liberation: ‘Assisted by the seasons, we might bring about, every year a new becoming, as a continuation of, but different from that of the previous year’ (1993: 114). The seven women in Cohen’s project certainly mobilize fashion and dress as an individualistic form of cyclical renewal and, as a microcosm of older stylish females from baby boomers (Debra and Tsiporah) to Fourth Agers born in the interwar years (Ilona, Jacqui, Joyce, Lynn and Zelda), they moreover resist the normative expectations of age ordering and disavow any friction between exterior appearances and interior perceptions that the mask of ageing entails. On camera, Debra declared she still felt like she did at eighteen, while Lynn mused ‘What’s eighty?’ Instead, they confidently present their personal style as a source of inspiration for other women of a similar age. But Cohen’s vision of ageing and fashionability is not without some cultural gerontology compromises either. Emanating from the streets, since they are the social spaces where he prefers to make an initial encounter with women he regards as having a highly developed and individual taste in clothing, what he ends up producing is a more handson form of street style that is not entirely as spontaneous as it appears on the surface. Regardless of their class, gender and ethnicity, the women he focuses on are successful agers insofar as they all lead lifestyles that are not only singular but also conducive to producing a unique sense of dress and dressing. Although it is only Jacquie, Joyce, Lynn and Zelda who, by virtue of their professional backgrounds or wealth, have associations 54

Written on the Body: Fashion, Clothing and Age

with fashion’s elite, in the final analysis all seven of them share an informed investment or cultural capital in how to achieve just the right look. It is in this sense, as Pierre Bourdieu maintains, that their ‘habitus’, the unconscious yet embodied practices of everyday life, is transformed into a common set of distinct class- or group-based tastes and values – a ‘bodily hexis’ – which, in this case, centres on what they wear and how to appear fashionably distinct (Bourdieu 1977: 93-4). Thus, Cohen’s female subjects are slim and in shape, just as the models in the Guardian’s FFAA are. But, unlike the aim of the latter’s stylists to make dress inclusive, Cohen never represents women wearing high street clothing. To this extent, Advanced Style is doubly curated: Cohen selects the older fashionable women that fit his ideal of what he expects them to be or look like – ‘I don’t really show the negative aspects of ageing’ (Sauers 2014) – and, coincidentally, he invites them to strike a pose when he is photographing them on the street, as if they are models on a fashion shoot. Such a hands-on approach stands, therefore, in marked contrast to Brent Luvaas’s hands-off representation of the dress tastes of youth culture rather than being a direct counterpart to it. In producing his own fashion blog, Luvaas adopts what he calls style radar, which is a kind of autonomous and affective ‘force’ that enables the blogger to choose who is worth photographing on the spot rather than working with predetermined values about them or directing how they should appear in front of the camera (2016: 125). But so too is Cohen’s approach to style and age a far cry from the photographs produced by Magali Nougarède, which afford us an alternative insight about the relationship between clothing and the ageing body in ways that, for her older subjects at least, have little or nothing to do with being fashionable. Crossing the Line Born in Mantes-la-Jolie, to the west of Paris in the Ile-de-France region, Nougarède studied at the University of Brighton and currently teaches photography at the University of South Wales, Cardiff. In the late-1990s she started to elaborate a series of portraits of residents of towns on the south coast of England, principally Eastbourne, Hastings and Hove, and Dieppe on the Côte d’Albâtre, Normandy. In 2000 such work evolved into two distinct projects: an exhibition and book, Toeing the Line, sponsored by Photoworks, Brighton that focused on young and old female subjects in Eastbourne; and Crossing the Line, a series of twenty photographs of young and old women and men, which was shown in London in 2002 and formed the nucleus of exhibitions in New York City in 2004, and at the Gardner Arts Centre, Sussex University in 2006, sponsored once more by Photoworks and the Ffotogallery, Cardiff. Each of the images in Crossing the Line is posed and colour-saturated, achieved by using artificial flash in daylight conditions, and Nougarède relies on traditional negative to positive printing (she never manipulates her photographs digitally). Moreover, she works with shallow depth and close-up, cutting into the body of her sitters; only six of the photographs are portraits, while in the remaining fourteen people’s heads are truncated by the picture’s edge and she focuses exclusively on the subject’s torso and the garments s/he wears. 55

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In turn, the body of work is split equally between millennial males and females belonging to Generation Y, a market classification that refers to those born between 1980 and 2000 (Furuki 1999: 11), and Fourth Agers, men and women born between the two world wars – although none of her subjects are identified by name and age, and nor are the images specifically dated or locatable to England or France. Nougarède’s approach to age and clothing is intersectional, insofar as she enables us to evaluate the similarities and differences about being male and female, and young and old by comparing the ‘bodily hexis’ of both genders and age groups. The clothing of her young and old subjects alike, for example, is often made of synthetic fabrics (Figures 15 and 16). But counter to the cross-generational styling of FFAA, the respective groups she represents also conform to the stereotypical ideas and polar opposites of ‘age ordering’. Hence, Generation Y displays a predilection for polyester leisure wear by contemporary sports brands like Nike, whereas some of the garments, like the pink and baby blue cardigans, worn by the older female subjects appear to be made from Crimplene, highlighting its negative associations with ‘elderly women in care homes’ and as ‘the fibre to dread’ (Twigg 2013: 12). Although Nougarède focuses on clothing in the images she produces, this is not to argue that they are fashion photographs, much as images with similar formal characteristics by British photo-documentarian Martin Parr are not straightforwardly fashion images. The clothing worn by the Fourth Generation in Crossing the Line is far from being the height of fashion; more often than not it is generically traditional in nature, and, unlike fashion spreads in magazines, we are not provided with any details of cost or place of purchase. These are, then, the prototypical garments preferred by men and women in their seventies and eighties living on the south coast of England and north coast of France, and their provenance remains unstated. We can only speculate if the garments they wear are from the likes of Marks & Spencer or Asda, or are recently

Figures 15–16  Magali Nougarède. Crossing the Line, 2002.

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or long-time bought, first- or second-hand, and on the surface at least, fashionability is connoted as the province of the young (Figures 16 and 18). However, in her reliance on the close-up and body cropping, many of Nougarède’s images resemble fashion photography in the sense of what Roland Barthes calls ‘la raison de la mode’  – ‘the reason/right of fashion’. This is one of three constituent categories that he maintains is the concern of the rhetoric of fashion (by which he means the editorial as well as the images found in periodicals such as Vogue). Thus, the ‘reason/right of fashion’ is self-reflexive, dwelling on the texture and details of garments such that: ‘“nothing” can signify “everything” … one detail is enough to transform what is outside meaning into meaning’ (Barthes 1990: 243). The meaning that Barthes is alluding to here is the way that the smallest thing can convert what is unfashionable into fashion and vice versa, without us even having to rely on words to press the point. Fashion stylist Anne Hamlyn reiterates the same idea, contending: ‘Fabric is able to signify something without that something ever being fully spoken’ (2003: 24). Accordingly, Nougarède simultaneously draws attention to cloth and clothing, sometimes to the extent that her emphasis on the pattern or folds of fabric tends towards abstraction (Figure 16). By implication, it is as if cloth and skin are indivisible and her subjects symbolically carry the weight of age on their bodies, such that the garments and fabrics they wear are essentially intertwined with the weft and warp of human identity. Thus, the way she focuses on the haptic and sensual materiality of clothing, emphasizing its closeness to the body of the person wearing it, corresponds to Clare Pajaczkowska’s trenchant observation that fabric is like an interstitial membrane, simultaneously able to conceal and reveal the identity of the wearer: As cloth in clothing is the most tactile of surfaces, always in contact with skin and body, it carries the contradictory meanings of being an external surface turned outward towards the gaze of the viewer … Textiles are culturally situated on the threshold between the functional and the symbolic … they offer the cultural analyst a privileged access to means of exploring ‘such stuff as dreams are made of ’. (2005: 242 and 246) In several of Nougarède’s pictures of older women she zooms in particularly on their hands, age-spotted and gnarled from years of hard work and arthritis (Figure 17). At first glance it is tempting to view this kind of imagery in terms of the moral imperative for ‘age ordering’ and its impact on self-identity, whereby ‘the erotic evaporates, to be replaced by the untidy and the derelict’ (Twigg 2007: 295). However, it is the sitter’s hands that not only bear the marks of such lived experience and underscore what ageing means depends on the class and lifestyle of individuals, but also connote the haptic relationship between bodies and clothes, as when they tentatively pat down fabric or come to rest against the folds of a woollen coat. In making visible senescent subjects that tend to be socially marginalized as well as overlooked culturally (at least in the

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Figure 17  Magali Nougarède. Crossing the Line, 2002.

West), warts and all close-ups of wrinkled, blue-veined skin touching ageing fabric such as these have much in common with the Japanese sensibility of wabi-sabi. Contrary to Kristeva’s contention, therefore, that the ageing body is quintessentially abject since it evinces the fear of mortality, existing ‘at the border of my condition as a living being’ (1982: 3), wabi-sabi celebrates phenomena that are past their prime and reifies oldness as a form of aesthetic pleasure, attained through the tactile qualities of imperfect and decaying surfaces (Saito 2008: 174). More particularly, Nougarède’s predilection for Fourth Age subjects emanates from a nostalgic impulse and desire to commemorate a generation that in its seventies or older was inevitably in both physical and demographic decline by 2000. At the time she was photographing them, men and women aged sixty-five and over constituted 17 per cent of the population of Hastings (ONS 2003), while in Dieppe they totalled a mere 170, less than 1 per cent of the town’s entire population (INSEE 1999). Furthermore, 97 per cent of people residing in Hastings were white in 2001 (ONS 2003). Hence, there are no visible signs of race in any of the photographs in Crossing the Line, although in six of them we are kept guessing about the ethnicity of the sitter since the colour of their skin is masked by clothing (Figures 16, 18 and 19). But the depiction of racial tension 58

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or difference was not Nougarède’s express aim. Rather, her desire was to represent a generation that historically experienced something she personally did not, the Second World War, and she commemorates such an act of generational distance in her work once more by focusing on the ‘reason/right of fashion’, the details of what people wear. In conversation, Nougarède herself has commented on the ideological divide that certain clothing and body gestures make manifest and how she views her approach to what people wear as ‘detective work’, a search for the specific signifiers that connote the ‘habitus’ of their sitters, much as Cohen achieved with the images in Advanced Style (Nougarède and Jobling 2006). The Nike swoosh is an obvious example of how her young subjects cling to the symbols of global corporate fashion, while a portrait of a young woman, whose head is cropped by the picture’s edge, homes in on the white rugby-style shirt she is wearing, its top half emblazoned with an appliqué version of the Union Jack in red – tellingly suggestive of English (faux)nationalism and the cross of St George instead of British patriotism. By contrast, the accessories worn by the older subjects convey a sense of personality and individuality in a more subtle or restrained way, such as the barely detectable Royal Marine Badge that one man has pinned to his jacket lapel, which acts as a symbol of continuity, alluding to both his wartime and postwar national identities (Figure 18).

Figure 18  Magali Nougarède. Crossing the Line, 2002. 59

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By extension, Nougarède has avowed she chiefly intended her photographs to hover between the ‘states of truth and fiction’ (Nougarède and Jobling 2006) and it is this concept that certain critics have also emphasized in describing them, raising the idea that her work was somehow an act of storytelling. For instance, Jay Merrick, reviewing the first showing of Crossing the Line in London commented that, ‘Their ability to engage and provoke narrative where there is none to speak of has already turned these photographs into something special  – great fiction’ (2002), while art critic Marcia Vetrocq in her review of Nougarède’s work, held at Rosenberg + Kaufman Fine Art, New York City in 2004, mused about a photograph of an elderly man and woman wearing camel coats: ‘The minimally implied narrative – a daily constitutional? Waiting for a ferry? – suggests a lifetime’s habit’ (2004: 170). These are relevant points concerning the work, but they are also obliquely tantalizing ones and we are left to ask – as we probably should – what type of narrative is going on here? And what unspoken habits about everyday life, age and clothing are being intimated? Hence, we want to propose that the intertextual nature of Nougarède’s work operates as a kind of ‘ekphrasis in reverse’, whereby visual representations recall verbal ones, involving what Françoise Meltzer has coined as a free exchange and transference between visual and verbal art (1987: 21). It is in this regard that the close-up aesthetic of embodied clothing in her photographs appears to conjure up the memories symbolized in other texts. For instance, the photograph of a woman wearing a navy-blue jacket and pleated skirt, taken from behind so as to reveal the white pet hairs clinging to it (Figure 19), brings to mind the following stanza from Ted Hughes’s poem, ‘The Blue Flannel Suit’: ‘The strange dummy stiffness, the misery/Of your flannel suit, its straitjacket, ugly/Half-approximation to your idea/Of the proprieties you hoped to ease into/And your horror in it’ (Hughes 1998:67). And her image of a woman in a blue raincoat taken from behind so that we can see the discomfort in her body and the tension of her clenched fists (Figure 20), has much in common

Figures 19–20  Magali Nougarède. Crossing the Line, 2002. 60

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with how Sean O’Brien connotes the imbrication of clothing, memories, and bodies in ‘Cousin Coat’: You are my secret coat But you don’t talk historical bespoke You must be worn, be intimate as skin And though I never lived what you invoke At birth I was already buttoned in Your clammy itch became my atmosphere An air made half of anger, half of fear. (Duffy 2004: 110)

Conclusion: From idiotic methods to the realities of time and place Paula Rabinowitz, in her analysis of the photographic close-up, contends ‘Partiality is the province of the lens … wholly visible bodies are often those furthest from lived experience’ (Rabinowitz 1994: 209), and it is with this thought in mind we might also ask – of what specific use are Nougarède’s elliptical photographs for historians of fashion and dress or cultural gerontologists? She does not provide any metadata concerning the images: the subjects are not identified by name or professional status, nor is their actual age disclosed and we are given only the scantest details about the garments they wear – a navy blue jacket, blue and pink cardies, a bright tie. Unlike Christina Buse and Julia Twigg, who used what they call ‘wardrobe interviews’ (2016: 1115) to probe how dress can be a catalyst for the memories of people with dementia, Nougarède did not interrogate her sitters about the personal feelings and stories their clothes evoked, although she did facilitate a spontaneous dialogue with them, often lasting thirty minutes, to help put them at ease (Nougarède and Jobling 2006). Nonetheless, she did not record them and not once, therefore, are the images accompanied by a snippet from these conversations. It is the photographs that are left to speak for themselves – their meaning depends very much on economy of form and detail, what she leaves out as much what she includes – and it is the close-up bodies, textiles and garments that constitute the photographic text in its entirety (an aesthetic that, coincidentally, Gucci (2020) has also deployed for its online record of runway shows). Thus, it would be beside the point to regard Nougarède as a sociologist with a camera. Rather, her creative treatment of the visual and the sensory aspects of clothing aligns itself to the ‘idiotic methods’ that Rajan Rankin propounds must inform a new approach to cultural gerontology (2018: 37). It is in this respect Nougarède’s work is different from but of equal importance to the likes of Levi’s advertisements, FFAA, and Cohen’s Advanced Style, both in revealing how age is written on the body and in illuminating how becoming old is a matter of physical as well as metaphysical experiences. In representing the nexus of clothing to human skin and the way this can symbolize memories and stories, her photographic method invites us, therefore, to contemplate how the history of individuals and the history of the clothes they wear are inevitably intertwined. 61

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By the same measure, Crossing the Line is indicative of how attitudes towards ageing are relative to and intersect with the time and place in which they are both produced and reproduced. Work such as this demonstrates that it is not just affluent and active agers, or those who manage to hold on to their looks and figures, that matter in forming a fuller appreciation of the relationship between growing old and dress and dressing. As Yaylagul and Seedsman posit: There can be no ‘single description’ of ageing as it is ultimately a personal and private experience arising from a series of ongoing life events and circumstances resulting from countless interactions with the external social world that includes engagement with places, people, spaces and the vast array of symbolic meanings specific to both time and cultural context. (2012: 263) The Covid-19 pandemic that erupted globally in early 2020, for instance, has highlighted the inequity and vulnerability of being old in ways that neither the WHO nor any of the producers, stylists and models we have discussed in this chapter could possibly have imagined. Its disproportionate effect on the elderly across the world, with people over sixty years old at higher risk of infection and death from the virus, will have an impact, therefore, on social policy concerning active ageing for years to come. According to the WHO, 95 per cent of deaths in Europe by April 2020 had occurred in this age group (Kluge 2020), while by June 2020 almost one-third of Covid-19 fatalities in the UK were attributed to care homes (ONS 2020). Simultaneously, a research report for Public Health England found that BAME subjects in the UK were twice as likely to die if they contracted Coronavirus (PHE 2020), and research into the economic impact of the pandemic in the UK revealed that 27 per cent of them (in comparison to 10 per cent of white people) were finding it difficult to make financial ends meet (ONS 2020a).10 This is the gerontological legacy that the fashion system will also have to adapt to economically and culturally in the future, and it will be interesting to observe whether it consolidates the visibility and acceptability of older people instigated in the last fifteen years or so. Thus, having turned fifty herself in 2020, supermodel Naomi Campbell, who was the first black model to appear on the cover of the British and French editions of Vogue in December 1987 and September 1988 respectively, has the potential to also join the projected global ranks of 1.5 billion Fourth Agers in the middle of the twenty-first century. In the process, she will be able to reflect on what it feels like to be female, black and old in ways that could either overlap with or diverge from the experiences of Joani Johnson and Jacquie Murdock that we have addressed in this chapter. In the meantime, she has expressed intersectional solidarity with the trans fashion community, declaring at the 2014 GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, founded in 1985) Media Awards in Los Angeles: ‘I encourage even more diversity in the fashion world, and that includes welcoming trans models to the runways. The truth is LGBT culture and fashion go hand in hand’ (Tsjeng 2014). Hence, it is to this timely debate that we turn our attention in the next chapter, focusing on six non-binary models, currently working in Europe and America. 62

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Annex 1  (compiled by the authors)   Guardian, ‘Fashion For All Ages’, 8 August 2009–28 March 2020   41 Male and Females Models aged 50 and above Name of Model *denotes model has silver or grey hair B denotes model is BAME

Agency

Total Appearances

Date(s) and subtotal of appearances

Adnana *B

Mrs Robinson

3

2010

Alex *

BMA

13

2013 (12); 2012 (1)

Allistair *B

Arendse

1

2019

Buffy *

Mrs Robinson

11

2016 (8); 2015 (3)

Carla

Storm

4

2013

Cherie Hulbert-Thomas (salon owner) *

1

2018

Daphne Selfe *

Models 1

3

2011

David Evans *

Next

2

2015

David Gant*

Models 1

19

2019 (1); 2018 (1); 2017 (4) 2016 (2); 2015 (6); 2014 (3) 2012 (1); 2011 (1)

Denise B

Mrs Robinson

8

2019

Dill*

Select

2

2017

Giovanni*

Ugly

14

2016 (3); 2015 (1); 2014 (3) 2013 (2); 2012 (3); 2011 (2)

Gloria*B

Close Models

6

2010 (2); 2009 (4)

Graeme Cheshire*

Select

3

2020 (1); 2019 (1); 2018 (1)

Hannah*

Models 1

2

2011

Hugo Woddis*

The Squad

7

2019 (3); 2018 (1); 2012 (3)

Jamie*

Milk

1

2020

Jean*

Mrs Robinson

8

2014

Jennifer Croxton*

Ugly

4

2011

Juliana Formicola*

Ugly

3

2015 (1); 2014 (2)

Kimberley Watson*

Mrs Robinson

3

2019

Laine

Mrs Robinson)

4

2019

Leonardo*

Storm

8

2012 (4); 2011 (1) 2010 (2); 2009 (1)

17 14

2015 (9); 2014 (4); 2013 (4) 2012

Lisskulla Ljungkvist* Models 1 (2013–15) Bookings (2012)

63

Fashion, Identity, Image Name of Model *denotes model has silver or grey hair B denotes model is BAME

Agency

Total Appearances

Date(s) and subtotal of appearances

Liza

Close

3

2012

Lou*

Mrs Robinson

4

2016

1

2018

Lynne Richards (retired teacher) *B Michele*

Storm (2013–17) Close (2010–12)

23 28

2017 (2); 2016 (8); 2015 (5) 2014 (4); 2013 (4) 2012 (5); 2011 (17); 2010 (6)

Osman*B

Broadcasting

1

2015

Pam Lucas*B

Ugly

216

2020 (4); 2019 (11); 2018 (14) 2017 (18); 2016 (18); 2015 (25 2014 (34); 2013 (28); 2012 (31) 2011 (24); 2010 (4); 2009 (5)

Pauline*

BMA Models

3

2013

Peter Chan *B

-

2

2019; 2018

Rob Knighton*

Next

25

2019 (2); 2018 (3); 2017 (5) 2016 (3); 2015 (6); 2013 (2); 2011(4)

Roz*

Mrs Robinson

8

2020 (4); 2019 (4)

Sahara*B

Mrs Robinson

4

2019

Sam*

Mrs Robinson

7

2018 (3); 2017 (4)

Stefanie*

Mrs Robinson

4

2016

Sylviane*

Mrs Robinson

69

2019 (4); 2018 (11); 2017 (12) 2016 (12); 2015 (15); 2014 (15)

Valerie Paine*

Mrs Robinson (2016–18)

18

2018 (4); 2017 (4); 2016 (10)

Close (2009–12)

29

2012 (4); 2011(7); 2010 (10)2009 (8)

Premier Models

1

2010

19

2020 (1); 2019 (6); 2018 (4) 2017 (6); 2016 (2)

Vera* Winston Garvey*B Ugly

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Notes 1

Foucault argues that the concept of biopolitics emerged at the end of the eighteenth century as a matter of controlling and measuring things such as birth and death rates, and what he refers to as endemic illnesses: ‘Death was no longer something that swooped down on life – as in an epidemic. Death was now something permanent, something that slips into life, perpetually gnaws at it, diminishes it and weakens it’ (2004: 244). See also our discussion of biopolitics and cyborgs in Chapter 4.

2

Their statement echoes research by Feldman et al (2008) concerning the impact of the built environment on physical activity for older adults from different ethnic backgrounds in Melbourne, Australia, which pinpointed that the experience of ageing is culturally relative, with heterogeneity the norm.

3

We are using other with a small o here since, in Lacanian terms, it denotes the specular relation to an Imaginary rival he assesses in ‘The Mirror Stage’, in contrast to the Other (capital O) that he raises in his discussion of the Symbolic Order (Lacan 1997: 23).

4

Twigg does not mention the editor’s name but she is probably referring to Alexandra Shulman, who was at the helm of British Vogue between 2002 and 2017.

5

Actor Meryl Streep appeared on the cover of American Vogue in 2011, aged sixty-two, and model Lauren Hutton on the cover of Vogue Italia in 2017, aged seventy-three.

6

The feature re-appeared as a party season one-off, ‘Satin, sparklers and a good coat’, in the Guardian on 5 December 2020. The models included Winston Garvey, Rob Knight and Pam Lucas.

7

RCS (2014) analysed surgery rates for six common procedures, including breast extension and hernia repair, across England’s 211 Clinical Commissioning Groups. The research found a decline of more than 25 per cent in at least three of these procedures for patients aged over sixty-five and over seventy-five.

8

In the interest of age sensitivity, only those models whose date of birth is known have been included in Annex 1.

9

Whilst there has been an increase in people working past the age of sixty-five in the UK, this largely relates to employees being retained in their current jobs rather than undertaking new ones (Foster 2018: 125–6). This is also applicable to self-employed individuals, where an increase in those aged sixty-five to sixty-nine years in the workplace is due to the long-term self-employed remaining in their jobs longer (Philipson et al 2016, cited by Foster 2018: 123). As Foster argues, ‘It may be easier for self-employed workers to work beyond 65 as they are not as confined by organisational rules regarding retirement, have a greater ability to work flexibly, and can return to work, having left, without having to convince an employer to rehire them’ (2018: 126).

10 The PHE Report was dogged by controversy. Initially, black surgeon, Professor Kevin Fenton had been appointed to lead the enquiry, but he was replaced by epidemiologist Professor John Newton. And, when it was published on 2 June 2020, any reference to structural racism had been redacted. Beyond the Data: Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on BAME Groups, a separate 69-page report published on 16 June 2020 and based on stakeholder engagement with 4,000 BAME subjects, addressed this oversight.

65

CHAPTER 3 (UN)GENDERING THE RUNWAY

Introduction In the late 1970s, Teri Toye became one of the first openly transgender models to appear on the runway, modelling fashions by iconoclastic designer, photographer and stylist, Stephen Sprouse. At the time, Toye was in the process of publicly acknowledging her transgender identity, an act of identity rebellion that led her to socialize with artists such as Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and musicians like Debbie Harry. By the same measure, however, she was an anomaly among transgender people living in the United States during the repressive era of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and it wasn’t until the twenty-first century that non-binary fashion models became not only more visible but also high profile in the industry. In particular, as Brandon Griggs contends, it was 2015 that proved to be a watershed for transgender issues in the mainstream imaginary (Griggs 2015). In that year, popular culture witnessed several key celebrity moments for the transgender community, such as Caitlyn Jenner publicly acknowledging her transgender identity and Laverne Cox winning an Emmy award for her work as executive director on the television show Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word. Likewise, fashion saw a major shift in identity politics: Selfridges launched their Agender pop-up store; Andreja Pejić (Figure 22) became the first transgender woman to land a major beauty campaign (So 2018); and high-profile H&M-owned brand &Other Stories employed an all-transgender cast and crew for a major advertising campaign. Despite the affirmation of transgender identity in popular media, however, hate crimes against transgender people – especially women of colour – have flourished. According to the Anti-Violence Project’s 2013 report, in the United States 72 per cent of all anti-LGBTQ homicide victims were transgender women with 90 per cent of those being women of colour (Urquart and Molloy 2015), while in the UK there were 1,651 anti-trans hate crimes recorded in 2018 (Hattenstone 2019; Tanis 2016: 373–7). Today, the political climate surrounding transgender subjects is still contentious, their bodies a battleground for tensions between the political right and left, with legal and systemic changes implemented yearly. Against all political odds, and at the same time as it was empowering older models, the fashion industry developed a contemporary space of resistance to enable transgender and non-binary models to prevail. In 2018, American non-binary model Oslo Grace, who Figure 21  Tracey Norman, 2019.

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held an important place on both the men’s and women’s boards at BMG Agency, walked the runway for Moschino, Gucci and Balenciaga in shows that broke the traditional binary system of separating men’s and women’s runway presentations (Figure 40), while Teddy Quinlivan (Figure 24), after publicly announcing her transgender identity at the pinnacle of her career, continued to walk high-fashion runway shows including Louis Vuitton and Dries Van Noten. On the Fall/Winter 2019 runway, Finn Buchanan became the first male transgender model to appear in Celine’s menswear show, but also wore couture dresses from Margiela and Schiaparelli in Paris couture week runway shows the same season. Meanwhile, transgender exclusive agencies continue to emerge and traditional agencies are signing a greater number of transgender and non-binary models, redefining how runway shows are cast. As more transgender and gender non-conforming (GNC) models are being signed at major agencies, and important fashion publications and brands continue to place focus on gender non-binary clothing and models, we must consider what this means for transgender subjects and whether such visibility is helpful in creating an acceptance around what was previously considered an unintelligible body. For instance, Paul Preciado writes that, when thinking about gendered subjectivities – especially those that are transgender or gender non-conforming – we must bring into question the way we think of gender as personal subjectivity: ‘The question is not: What am I? What gender or what sexuality? But rather: How does it work? How can we interfere in its functioning? And, more importantly: How could it work in another way?’ (2015). This, then, is the central issue that we elaborate in this chapter. It begins with a brief historical outline of transgender and gender non-conforming figures in fashion since the 1960s, such as April Ashley, Teri Toye and Connie Fleming, tracking the slow development of their acceptance within different parts of society. Subsequently, we compare and build on their professional experiences by focusing on those of six transgender and gender non-conforming models from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds between 2018 and 2019. They are as follows, alongside their preferred pronouns: Oslo Grace (United States) – He/Him Alana Jessica (United States) – She/Her Meme Meng (Taiwan/Paris) – He/Him Richie Moo (Puerto Rico/New York) – They/Them Ceval Omar (Norway/London/New York) – She/Her Rostok Smirnov (Ukraine/Paris) – They/Them Through a discursive analysis of first-hand interviews with the six models, we investigate how they both contribute to and experience the increased representation of transgender and non-binary identities in fashion. Since they all work within the North American and European fashion system and are represented by agencies such as BMG and Trans

Figure 22  Andrea Pejic. 68

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Models, we mobilize Michel Foucault’s spatial dynamic of the heterotopia to frame their intersectional experiences of modelling. If, as he argues, heterotopia are safe sites reserved for individuals in a state of crisis, or those whose behaviours contest the norms of society, we mine their interviews to assess whether fashion is a haven of freedom for them, or whether it accommodates (exploits, even) non-binary subjects to capitalize its own sense of political correctness. In other words, we enquire if an increased representation of transgender subjects and genderless collections within mainstream Western fashion create acceptance and understanding of non-binary and intersectional identities on a broader social scale. Finally, and by extension, all six models reiterate the idea of being authentic in their interviews and, in so doing, they evince the transitivity that takes place between the individual’s conception of the real self in private and how it coincides with their social interactions and performances in the public domain. Thus, we analyse their quest for authenticity in terms of what Philip Vannini and Alexis Franzese (2008) refer to as a motivating force, such that it enables and inspires them to participate in the heterotopia of fashion in the first place.

Forerunners of transgender and non-binary identities in fashion Although acceptance of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals in mainstream media seems like a relatively new phenomenon, there are important accounts of gender non-conformists throughout history that have challenged the gender binary and laid the groundwork for current acceptance of non-binary identities. What has been most palatable throughout history is the androgynous body, one that is not determinedly masculine or feminine. The androgynous body does not necessarily work against the sex/gender dichotomy or refer to a dissociation with the sex one was born. Androgyny is, nonetheless, a challenging performance of gender and has been reflected through the many changing fashion trends throughout time. While androgynous movements in fashion cannot be credited exclusively for transgender acceptance in the twenty-first century, they undoubtedly aided in paving the way, helping society to come to terms with a breakdown of the pervasive gender binary. Patrick Mauriès has traced the variation of non-binary bodies all the way back to the second century CE, where classical medicine asserted that every part of the male anatomy was also present in the female. The body was seen as less fixed within a rigid biological account of what male and female were understood to be, and a form of gender fluidity was normalized. Since then, various incarnations of this discourse have dominated, unifying the sexes into a rather androgynous body referred to as the “one-sexed body” (Mauriès 2017: 16). However, the understanding of gender fluidity in contemporary times is much different from the way it was understood in the past, as Mauriès contests: ‘While mobility within the one-sexed body was a social, political and cultural phenomenon, nowadays it derives its authority primarily from psychological truth, subjective authenticity and unprecedented demands for society’s acceptance … it is relative and cultural’ (Mauriès 2017: 17). 70

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In the seventeenth century, Queen Christina of Sweden provided an early display of gender non-conformity. Anointed Queen in 1644, Christina contentiously refused to marry, posing a problem for royal succession. In 1650, to solve the issue, she insisted on being crowned King of Sweden, rather than Queen, allowing her complete political autonomy and the ability to refuse the marital obligation of a queen (Kuntz 2013: 147). Although her declaration as King appeared purely political, Christina furthered her assertion of autonomy by fashioning herself in typically masculine ways (Kuntz 2013: 148). She wore a man’s wig and shoes, employed a masculine tone of voice and bodily gestures, and rode her horse as only a man would in this time (Kuntz 2013: 143–4). However, Christina eventually became frustrated with the continued expectations to adhere to queenly rather than kingly duties, resulting in her abdicating and moving to Rome in a public conversion to Roman Catholicism, largely funded by the Pope (Kuntz 2013: 155). Here, she was given the Catholic name Maria Alexandra Christina, and was regularly referred to as ‘The Royal Virgin’ (Kuntz 2017: 155–7). Her continual links to the Virgin Mary through paintings and engravings reaffirmed her femininity through a sense of purity, highlighting the gendered complexities embedded in Christina’s identity. While Christina’s identity resulted in confusion and speculation around her sex and sexuality, the controversial Queen’s gender play was for the most part accepted during her reign. In the century that followed, dressing in the fashions of the opposite gender was seen as ‘disobedient of biblical strictures’ and considered to be a ‘crime of falsity’ punishable by law (Mauriès 2017: 17). Nevertheless, one particularly renowned gender-bending figure emerged: Le Chevalier d’Éon persisted in switching gender roles, successfully living as both male and female throughout his life. D’Éon represents an interesting case of early gender fluidity that aligns more with transgender than androgyny. Although his gender bending was mostly attributed to his work as a spy for the French King, Louis XV, Mauriès points out that his life-long continuation of such practices, presenting as a woman until his death, perhaps indicates a greater intrinsic desire to cross gendered lines than has been acknowledged in other historical texts (2017: 66). The life of le Chevalier d’Éon preceded an era when gender ambiguity and androgyny were acceptable. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, androgyny was manifested as a transitory state, a moment of delicacy, softness and ambiguity that could be found in young men and young women alike (Mauriès 2017: 82). The 1910s saw the rise of new styles that moved from the feminized male to the masculinized female. In France, alongside la garçonne – the tomboyish young women made in Coco Chanel’s image – the masculinized female ‘Amazons’ began to incorporate male garments into female dress, despite the fact that the laws forbidding women to wear men’s clothing persisted in France until 1946 (Mauriès 2017: 85). Considered arbiters of taste, those who participated in gender-bending forms of dress were part of a particular class: only those included in the elite and aristocratic artistic community were deemed palatable in clothing of the opposite gender. German actor Marlene Dietrich was one of these elite artists who explored gender fluidity both on-and off-screen in the 1930s. Dietrich famously flipped between masculine tuxedos and ultra-feminine gowns, destabilizing traditional understandings of masculine and feminine dress as well as codes of butch 71

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and femme identities within the sphere of lesbian identity markers (Kennison 2002: 148). While Dietrich’s gender play through clothing was celebrated on screen, her nonnormative dressing in everyday life was not nearly as accepted. Dietrich became known for both her feminine and masculine dressing that so heavily played with gendered expectations; she appeared nearly parodic (Kennison 2002: 149). The duality of Dietrich’s appearance became a form of drag performance, ‘for the public when she wore men’s clothing and for her when she did not’ (Kennison 2002: 149). Although Dietrich pushed the boundaries and received backlash in the press for her masculine displays, such a parodic form of camp performance in many of her films highlighted her femininity by drawing attention to the fact that she was not, in fact, male. Dietrich’s performances provided inspiration for future gender performances including drag queens and female performers such as Madonna and Lady Gaga, indicating the importance and endurance of early media representation of non-binary gender play. Gender bending and androgyny since the 1960s It was not until the 1960s that gender bending and androgynous fashion moved beyond the ‘unique forms of individual expression’ that were reserved for this accepted and acceptable elite. The 1960s was a moment when fashion became ‘simultaneously a trend, a template and a shared orientation’ (Mauriès 2017: 116). There developed a sense of uniformity in experimental fashion that resulted in quick shifts in trends. This era also toyed briefly with unisex fashion. However, while the unisex clothing of this era attempted to blur the lines of gender, it simultaneously called attention to the differences in male and female bodily structures when they dressed in the same garment: the curves of the female form were highlighted, while the hardness of the male body was on display (Chrisman-Campbell 2015). For women, traditional markers of gender accompanied the unisex clothes for women, such as makeup, jewellery and feminine hairstyles, negating the genderless nature of the movement. An important figure in the gender-bending fashion moments of the 1960s and 1970s was clothing designer Rudi Gernreich, whose controversial garments sought to move past traditional gendered confines and reconsider what liberation meant for both men and women. Gernreich was one of the most prominent designers during the 1960s Youthquake, alongside Mary Quant, Paco Rabanne and André Courrèges (Archer 2016: 42). What was most striking were his boundary-pushing garments of the 1970s that drew attention to the way the body was materialized through clothing. Often grouped under the umbrella of futurist fashion, Gernreich designed unisex garments that focused on the natural form of the human body. While Gernreich’s garments can be read as queering fashion’s relationship to the body and emphasizing the possibility of fashion in the future (Archer 2016: 45), his collections also served to highlight sexual difference and draw attention to gender and sexuality by exposing natural curvatures and, more famously, exposing breasts and genitals to challenge markers of liberation. Nevertheless, Gernreich’s clothing demonstrated early considerations on fashion and sexual difference, providing a framework for future designers to ponder the limits of challenging gender binarism through clothing. 72

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With the influence of the Youthquake, London’s various subcultural movements and rock music icons of the time, the 1960s saw androgyny take over fashion. Designers such as Michael Fish (also known as Mr. Fish) and Kansai Yamamoto challenged norms by creating binary-challenging garments for rock stars like Mick Jagger and David Bowie. Most notably, Mr Fish designed a white bodice with ribbons and a skirt for Jagger, which he wore with slim white trousers in a 1969 performance in London’s Hyde Park (Mauriès 2017: 116). The rock icons of this era embodied androgyny through the way they dressed and put it on display in their music and performances. Bowie was particularly adept at questioning gender throughout the 1970s. Mauriès argues that Bowie anticipated the label of non-binary through his fluid identities such that his ‘sexual non-identity [was] fluid and ever-changing’ (2017: 116), moving between different performative figures, from the ultra-effeminate ‘Man Who Sold the World’, clad in long Michael Fish-designed dresses, to ‘Ziggy Stardust’ in genderless Kansai Yamamoto garments. Jagger, too, took his androgynous identity further playing the role of gender-bending rock star recluse Turner in the 1970 film Performance, clad in mascara and lipstick, and sporting a soft bob. Although the Peacock Revolution and the gender bending dress of musicians in this era were revolutionary for men’s fashion, gay men were still forced to live in fear of violence or arrest due to their sexuality (Chrisman-Campbell 2015). Furthermore, transgender people did not benefit from such a shift in trends and continued to experience societal abjection through their relegation to the streets and illegal queer spaces such as the infamous Stonewall Inn in New York City. While the 1970s was renowned for men pushing the limits of gender and enacting feminine or genderless presentation, the 1980s saw a shift in the way fashion played with the female body. The introduction of power dressing put women in more masculinized dress, beginning with Claude Montana’s ultra-sexy suits and dresses that featured rigid materials and broad shoulders. Meanwhile, Japanese designers such as Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo introduced all-back figure-hiding collections that signalled a questioning of the female form. While women were being celebrated for beauty and power through the figure of the supermodel, important androgynous figures such as pop musician Boy George and model Grace Jones continued to push further these nonnormative ideas of gender through fashion. In the 1990s androgyny was related to the grunge movement. Musicians like Kurt Cobain occasionally donned gowns and dresses, while grunge girls wore baggy jeans, combat boots and oversized flannel shirts (Chrisman-Campbell 2015). Although nineties fashion is often remembered for its androgynous grunge looks, this kind of clothing was largely manifested in the subcultural realm where it became associated with the hypersexualization of both men and women. While there are many moments of challenges to the gender binary throughout the twentieth century, they transpired through art and music as ephemeral variations of defiance against established expectations. These moments did not signify that gender resistance was freely accepted by society as a whole: even into the late twentieth century, acceptable gender play was still limited to a particular caste of artists and intellectuals, those who could afford garments by the designers that pushed the boundaries of gender 73

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performance. The forms of gender play in the twentieth century still tended to work within the gender binary – men in makeup and effeminate dress, women in masculine forms – that only seemed to relate their new-found power to masculinity. These moments did not necessarily signify an acceptance of non-normative bodies, but instead celebrated the way the elite could share gender practices. While most LGBTQIA+ individuals were forced to hide their identities and live on the margins of society until the desultory rise of gay liberation in the 1970s, elite artists and celebrities were celebrated for temporary gender play. It was not until the 2010s that the popularity of genderless or agender fashion began to blur the lines between what was male, what was female and what was truly in-between.

The advent of transgendered models Androgynous fashion saw waves of popularity throughout the twentieth century, yet transgenderism was relatively invisible in mainstream media until the 2010s. However, many transgender models who were not openly identifying as such were also to be found in the pages of fashion magazines, advertisements and major campaigns, tacitly trying to succeed within an industry founded on exclusivity and gender binarism. Model April Ashley is known to be one of the first people to undergo sexual reassignment surgery in 1960 when she travelled from Britain to Morocco for the risky procedure that had barely been proven successful. Post-surgery, Ashley worked her way into one of the top agencies in London at the time by falsely claiming she had worked in Paris for the top designers of the era (Fallowell and Ashley 1982). While many of Ashley’s friends and fellow models knew of her transgender identity, it was unknown to the press, and therefore it allowed her to continue to thrive in a modelling career for a year following her surgery. Ashley appeared on the pages of Vogue as one of their top lingerie models until she was outed in 1961, when a friend sold her story to the British tabloid newspaper Sunday People. Despite some of the most celebrated pop culture figures of the time being applauded for their gender non-conformity, Ashley’s jobs were immediately cancelled and, although she recounts her agents as being sympathetic to her identity, they knew her lack of work made keeping her on the roster futile – her career as a model was over (Fallowell and Ashley 1982). In the 1980s, Tracey Norman was another model experiencing great success who faced a similar fate to April Ashley (Figure 21). Often referred to as the first black transgender model, Norman embarked on a fashion career when her conventional feminine beauty and physique led to her being scouted for her first job: a shoot for Italian Vogue with famed fashion photographer Irving Penn. Penn saw potential in Norman and called her into the agency Zoli, which represented top models Pat Cleaveland and Veruschka von Lehndorff (Yuan and Wong 2015). Rumour and speculation that Norman was transgender floated around the industry, but she nevertheless continued to book jobs. Norman remained aware of her vulnerability as a ‘stealth trans woman’1 and heeded warnings from friends who knew of her status. With excellent representation and little questioning, Norman 74

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was quickly booked for major campaigns and editorials. Most notably, she posed for six years as the face of ‘Dark Auburn’, one of Clairol’s Born Beautiful hair dyes, created after her own hair colour (Yuan and Wong 2015). But in 1980 she was outed during a shoot for the African-American women’s magazine Essence, when one of the assistants told the editor-in-chief that Norman was transgender. From that moment onward, she stopped getting booked and was dropped by her agency, which cited her size as the issue. After two years of unemployment, Norman was booked for a job in Paris in the Balenciaga showroom, as the bookers in Europe were unaware of her transgender identity (Yuan and Wong 2015). She left Paris after the Balenciaga job, attempting to find work in Milan and New York, but the public knowledge of her transgender identity prevented her from further success. In a 2015 interview, Norman pointed out the hypocrisy of the fashion industry rejecting transgender women at the time, explaining that an industry founded on illusion need not bother with a preoccupation on sex, gender and race (Yuan and Wong 2015). Her rejection from the industry, the way people would refer to her as ‘him’ or describe her as ‘a boy’ made her feel as though she ceased to exist. Like many other transgender women of colour in the 1980s, she eventually found her place in the drag ball scene at the end of her fashion career and would not return to modelling until 2016, when she was once again featured in a Clairol campaign titled ‘Nice n’ Easy Color as Real as You Are’ (Bryant 2016). Sixteen years after her public outing, the shift towards acceptance and visibility of transgender people in fashion provided Norman re-entry into the industry. Around the same time as Norman’s success, Caroline ‘Tula’ Cosey would not only play the sought-after role of a Bond girl but would also pose in numerous spreads for Playboy. Model Lauren Foster’s career was also on the rise, when in 1980 she landed a sixpage spread in Vogue Mexico. Both Foster and Cosey experienced career-ending public outings in the press. They were separately accused of deceit and forced to withdraw from their careers (LogoTV 2017). After a hiatus of many decades, both models experienced success later in life: Foster as the ‘model friend’ on The Real Housewives of Miami and Cosey as the author of an autobiography focusing on her tragic story. Cosey and Foster both eventually modelled again in Candy magazine in 2016 and 2017, respectively.

The abject trans-model The harsh experiences endured by Ashley, Norman, Foster and Cosey are indicative of the adverse treatment meted out to trans models by an industry deeply entrenched in gender binarism. Moreover, the way these women were excluded from thriving careers underscores Kristeva’s theory of abjection that, as we saw in Chapter 1, she relates to identity formation through psychosexual development and the moment wherein the individual begins to recognize the difference between the self and (m)other: ‘to each ego its object, to each superego its abject’ (1982: 2). Thus, the abject signifies a reckoning with the phallic power of the symbolic order. Through resisting abjection, the individual disavows that they are the object that instils disgust. The concept of the other/Other is central to 75

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abjection2– it is that which is feared, excluded and marginalized for fear of deviance and difference: ‘It lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated. It beseeches, worries and fascinates desire, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced. Apprehensive, desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects’ (Kristeva 1982: 1). The abject does not respect borders, positions and rules – it threatens our understanding of reality and social propriety; it is liminal and ambiguous. The tragedy of the ambiguous, Kristeva argues, lies in the lack of demarcation, signifying that the abject has no space of its own except for the threshold of being self and other/Other, subject and object: ‘Where then lies the border, the initial phantasmatic limit that establishes the clean and proper self of the speaking and/or social being? Between man and woman? Or between mother and child?’ (Kristeva 1982: 85). The ambiguous becomes the abject when the phantasmic limits of differentiation – what is pure and what is not – cannot be established. But what demarcates the pure from the impure? Or man from woman? And human from animal? Through abjection, a preoccupation with markers of difference is brought to the fore, and through a process of either rejecting or sanitizing what is other/Other, social order can be restored. Upon discovering the transgender identities of Ashley, Norman, Foster and Cosey, many industry players felt duped or disgusted by bodies they failed to recognize as normative or intelligible, despite the positive reception and increasing success in the models’ careers. When confronted with the transgender body that threatened the normative social order of the prevalent modelling industry, those with the power to control such order historically chose to cast the models as abject rather than create space for them to continue to thrive.

Between abjection and acceptance Although it was precarious for transgender people to be open about their identity during the second half of the twentieth century, there were two influential individuals – Connie Fleming and Teri Toye  – who chose not to conceal their identities and still found opportunities to work as fashion models. Out at a young age, Connie Fleming, also known as Connie Girl, was known for her performances at nightclubs and AIDS fundraisers (Feldman 2017). Fleming was frustrated as she felt that she was not being taken seriously as a transgender woman and was always categorized as a drag queen, despite this not being how she self-identified. Through her work in nightclubs, Fleming was introduced to the transgender entertainer International Chrysis, a muse of Salvador Dali. Chrysis acted as a mentor to Fleming and helped her find her way into fashion modelling. She quickly began working with important fashion figures including Steven Meisel and Way Bandy, walked in Thierry Mugler’s Winter 1989/1990 runway show at Paris Fashion Week, and was featured in a George Michael music video (Feldman 2017). Despite her early successes, Fleming faced a significant amount of criticism from the press and encountered many people who would refuse to work with her because of her gender identity. After five seasons on the runway, the emergence of drag queen RuPaul Charles and the success of his music and performances meant Fleming would once again struggle to be taken seriously as a woman and as a model, categorized as a 76

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cross-dresser/transvestite rather than transgender. Fleming was forced to take a step back from modelling, returning to the New York club scene and gaining notoriety as a door girl, one of the few safe jobs transwomen of colour could do at the time (Feldman 2017). Teri Toye was the muse of designer, photographer and stylist Stephen Sprouse in the late 1970s. Toye was described as thin and elegant, more feminine than many girls in the scene at the time, despite the fact that she was in the middle of her transition during her most memorable work with the designer (Glasscock 2018). Sprouse was known for breaking the boundaries of fashion and represented change in the industry (Morrisoe 2018). His runway shows, campaigns and photographs heavily featured Toye, and the use of an openly transgender model who was in the process of her transition only enhanced this message of rebellion and change. However, unlike other transgender models who were outed before and after her, she was thin, white and ultra-feminine. Toye’s social affiliations made her a part of a rebellious art movement that extended beyond the world of fashion: socializing within the 1970s art and music scene, and a social circle that included Debbie Harry, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol made her experience an anomaly among transgender people living in the conservative era of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Her whiteness and femininity alongside a defiant social circle provided a safe space to transition and led her to be celebrated in her career. In the 1990s, fashion shifted away from the hypersexuality of the 1980s and moved towards androgyny. During this decade, many drag queens like RuPaul were seen on the runway, but it was rare to hear of openly transgender models walking in runway shows. Gender identity on the runway was left unacknowledged and unchallenged for much of the 1990s and early 2000s, as hyper-femininity and hypersexuality took over. It was not until the 2010s that transgender and gender non-conforming models became visible in a more positive way. Two transgender models in particular made a strong impact on the gendered nature of fashion modelling at this time: Lea T and Andreja Pejić. Lea T’s breakout moment came when she was cast by Ricardo Tisci, for whom she was an assistant, in a 2010 Givenchy ad campaign (Tsjeng 2015). While she was conventionally beautiful with the ideal features for a high fashion model, Tisci cited the challenges she was facing in her home life as the main reason for casting her: like many transwomen, Lea T felt her only option for survival was sex work after her family rejected her gender identity (Tsjeng 2015). Her first casting by Tisci provided options outside of sex work, and she has since been featured in numerous high fashion and beauty campaigns. Andreja Pejić was discovered in Australia at seventeen years old and was favoured for her androgynous looks long before she transitioned from male to female. Hence, Pejić was put on the cover of French Vogue wearing womenswear and closed Jean Paul Gaultier’s 2011 couture show in a sheer wedding gown, a homage to earlier displays of gender bending that had brought Gaultier recognition in the fashion world (Mauriès 2017: 152). Pejić and Lea T both experienced backlash in the media, with many journalists and critics chalking their successes up to a trend of using androgynous and transgender people in fashion media. Such transphobic sentiments suggested the early 2010s were not yet ready for models that challenged gender norms or clothing that could blur the confines of the gender binary. Pejić cited her reason for not coming out sooner as the 77

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result of a desire to establish a solid modelling career, capitalizing on a predilection for androgynous models when she was scouted (Zuckerman 2014). It seems her decision was timely, as it would be four years before transgender models faced greater normalization in the industry. Neither of them faced the shortening of careers that their transgender predecessors did, signalling a possible shift in the reception of non-binary identities in fashion and, perhaps also, in society at large, as their images became commonplace in fashion media. Both have experienced continued success, making waves in the fashion and beauty industries and paving the way for openly transgender models to follow. Their persistence and success paved the way for a further pair of influential models to emerge in different capacities: Hari Nef and Teddy Quinlivan (Figures 23 and 24).

Figure 23  Hari Nef, 2019. 78

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Initially cast in the Autumn-Winter 2014 Hood by Air runway show by founder and designer Shayne Oliver, Nef became the first transgender woman to be signed to IMG models, the agency representing the likes of supermodels Gisele Bundchen and Kate Moss (Bernard 2015). Nef has had a lucrative modelling career, becoming the face of Gucci’s Bloom fragrance and numerous other beauty campaigns, and was seen on a range of magazine covers from Elle to Interview, in just a few years. Although she was well into the process of transitioning when her modelling career began, she used this as a platform for activism and remained open about her transgender experience. Her career has since shifted from modelling to acting, first taking on the role of a transwoman in the television series Transparent. Nef eventually moved beyond the confines of transgender roles and played many roles as cisgender female characters. In the same year of Nef ’s first major casting, Teddy Quinlivan, who was not open about her transgender identity, was discovered by Nicolas Ghesquière, artistic director of Louis Vuitton. It was not until two years later, having amassed a strong portfolio of work, that Quinlivan came out publicly as transgender, citing the political climate towards transgender people in the United States under the Trump presidency as motivating her decision (Martin 2017). Since then, she has continued to be cast in major shows, campaigns and editorials that are similar to those she appeared in before coming out. She has also started to use her platform for activism, as changes to existing policies giving rights to transgender people were being rescinded in the United States, and major fashion labels such as Victoria’s Secret have expressed transphobic sentiments.

‘Come into the (trans)garden’: The heterotopia of fashion Tracking a history of acceptance towards transgender and GNC models elucidates one of the key principles of Foucault’s concept of the heterotopia.3 Foucault describes heterotopia as real spaces within other spaces, which act as a zone where differences that are otherwise unacceptable become accepted. He explains that a society can make an existing heterotopia function in different ways as the history of society itself unfolds. Shifts in meaning and uses for the heterotopia can occur alongside societal developments, altering the original function of the heterotopic space (Foucault 1986: 25). The fashion industry was once excluded of transgender bodies: contracts were terminated and jobs cancelled with successful models whose transgender identities came to public light. Now, the representation of transgender and GNC models on the runways of the major fashion cities are on the rise, and more models already in the industry are recognizing it as a safe space to come out as transgender or non-binary. In this sense, then, the heterotopia of fashion is akin to the space of dreams that is the garden, which Foucault cites as the oldest example of heterotopia: ‘The garden has been a sort of happy, universalizing heterotopia since the beginnings of antiquity’ (1986: 25). The garden relates also to another principle of Foucault’s theory insofar as heterotopias can appear to be open systems with latent exclusionary principles: one 79

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can be a visitor in transit within these spaces yet remain uninvited and impermanent (1986: 26). Compared to the success of contemporary transgender models such as Pejić, Nef and Quinlivan, transgender models of the past faced a system that was open only to those who were cisgender. For models like Tracey Norman and April Ashley, entry was possible due to their ability to present themselves within the hegemonic norms of femininity, mimicking the correct cis-gender ‘gestures’ to gain access into the exclusive heterotopic space of fashion modelling. However, they fell within the category of the uninvited or the provisional and were immediately expelled from the ‘garden’ of fashion once exposed as transgender. The shift in understanding and acceptance of gender beyond the binary has contributed to the penetrability of the heterotopia of fashion modelling, allowing space for openly transgender models to enter. Although the industry still awaits a great deal of development to improve on the level of penetrability for other intersections of identities, these improvements alone prove that some work is being done to alter preconceptions. Getting noticed and getting booked: Career development and personal ties While bookers and agents may have an eye for the latest and upcoming trends, models still require a foundation of social networks in order to become noticed and booked for runway shows and campaigns. Mears (2011) and Entwistle and Slater (2012) all express the importance of networks for models, explaining that models will not experience success in the industry without the assistance of a booker and important clients to provide a network that will help link models to consumers of fashion. While this has been true for many breakout models including interview respondent Oslo Grace, who is represented by IMG in New York, the community of transgender and non-binary models appears to rely more greatly on social rather than professional networks for their entry into the industry. Interview respondent Rostok Smirnov worked with a number of agencies in Russia, Ukraine and Paris prior to gaining headway as a professional model. However, they found minimal work with these agencies that were unsure of how to promote them without the gender binary to guide their look. It was through personal connections rather than agency contracts that Smirnov was able to book a number of jobs on the main fashion week schedule. After a period of such attempts, they were signed to the Parisbased agency The Claw. Although The Claw has been known for pushing boundaries of tradition and diversity with the models they represent, the agency was finding little work for Smirnov, while they were continuing to use their own personal connections to seek out and book their own shows and campaigns. As with most modelling agencies, Smirnov was contractually obligated to pay the agency a percentage of their own earnings despite the fact that their own personal ties got them the jobs. They gave up on agencies for a number of seasons, preferring to focus on these personal connections to find work. Figure 24  Teddy Quinlivan, 2019. 81

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During this period of freelancing, they landed numerous high-profile runway shows and, as a result, were signed with the agency Bananas Models: I didn’t have an agency for a long time. Even in Paris, I just kind of came there as like, a freelance model … Like I was in Paris eight times and I met lots of people who were doing castings. They would recommend me for other castings, so I did the Margiela show … For Margiela, one of my friends recommended me to the casting agent, and the guy was a casting agent within an agency. They said would you like to do the show? And they said, but we have to do a contract [with the agency]. And that’s how I started [with the agency]! After establishing themselves in the industry independently, Smirnov was able to find an agency to fit their needs and look, while the agency signing them had greater trust that they would be able to book major jobs based on their previous experiences. Smirnov believes that their existing work with major brands was the greatest catalyst to receiving a contract: ‘Margiela asked me to work with them, and they just noticed that I can have a big job. That’s probably the most important thing for them. If they see that you’re working, they’re happy for that.’ If they had not capitalized on their personal connections during their time as a freelance model, it is unlikely that they would have ended up being signed with Bananas. Their experience of booking shows like Margiela and Vetements through their own personal connections proved to the agency that they had potential as a model and would be a valuable addition to the agency. Since being signed to Bananas, Smirnov has been cast in a number of coveted runway shows and campaigns, including Mugler’s Pre-Fall 2019 lookbook and a Gucci special for Numéro Femme magazine. At New Pandemics, an LGBTQIA+ focused agency, many of the models met the founder Cory Chandler through previous work for queer publications such as GayLetter or through social media platforms such as Instagram (Eckhardt 2018). However, after those initial models were cast, the majority of the models to follow were discovered through close personal connections. For example, Mary V Benoit was put in touch with the agency through her partner, transgender model and activist Chella Man who was already signed with New Pandemics. Nali, too, was recommended by their partner, Dylan, while Mecca Mozelle was suggested to the agency by her cousin Rahm Bowen (Eckhardt 2019). Although many of the original New Pandemics models have moved on to other more traditional agencies or left modelling altogether, these personal connections helped build the agency in its formative years while also leading the models to management that attends to each of their unique needs, helping them navigate jobs that elevate their queer identities in a meaningful way. Even for established models like Hari Nef, careers can begin to thrive through close personal connections. Although Nef was the first transwoman to be signed with IMG models, her career was elevated in 2014 when her friend Shayne Oliver, founder of Hood By Air, cast her in his New York Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2015 runway show (Nef 2014). Although Nef was privileged to have many connections to the world of art and fashion through her studies at Columbia University, her participation in drag and music 82

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culture, and her presence within the underground club scene, she was not recognized as a fashion model until after being cast on the TV series Transparent. Even then, her casting for the show was the result of a personal connection to the showrunner’s sister (Perticari 2018). Her contract with IMG came over a year after her first runway show with Hood by Air, with many runway shows and campaigns in-between, demonstrating that even successful models like Nef have to participate in multiple forms of labour and put to work their own social capital for their transgender identity to be validated in fashion modelling. Binary expectations vs the transgender model: The ‘look’ of success Many transgender and GNC models have gained more success through personal networks rather than professional ones. This indicates that bookers and agents, although part of the important, taste-making fashion industry, are nevertheless behind on picking up on these models who are now facing more and more success (in direct contrast to the agencies that are willing to contract older models, as addressed in Chapter 2). This is not to say that all transgender and non-binary models have the same difficulties entering the industry. In fact, some of the models interviewed were scouted by agencies in conventional ways, including online through social media and street casting. However, many of these models did not define themselves as transgender or non-binary when they were scouted, but instead came out during their career development or after they had already reached a measure of success. Openly transgender and non-binary models are required to partake in greater labour to build their careers, utilizing personal connections to find a way into the industry, and once in they must continue to prove themselves through freelance work. Only after the models have booked jobs or made personal connections through family and friends will agents recognize them as worthy of booking, signing and promoting. Past research by Mears has indicated that bookers and agents seek out ‘raw bodily capital’ to be sold to clients (Mears 2011: 8). This refers to those ‘new faces’ that can be moulded into a particular marketable image; however, transgender and non-binary models must work on their image marketability before even being considered. Previous ethnographic research of models and modelling agencies concluded that the construction of the look of a model is strongly connected to the model’s success (Entwistle and Slater 2012; Mears 2011; Wissinger 2015). Although bookers select models for development based on their raw and often idiosyncratic beauty, there is a logic imposed in order to develop a particular image that is both physical and cultural. Mears, Entwistle and Slater draw attention to the fact that models are used for their total look: not only the way they photograph, but also the individual qualities they project in an image, which can be changed and manipulated by stylists, photographers and other industry players (Entwistle and Slater 2012: 16). Entwistle and Slater describe the model ‘look’ as a commodification of the model’s embodied self, managed by agents and delivered to clients for future projects. Management of the look includes physical aspects such as weight control and hair styling as well as marketing tactics, such as deciding 83

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what photos should be included in a model’s portfolio (Entwistle and Slater 2012: 2425). The development and maintenance of the look extend into the social worlds of the model, requiring them to always project this look, even when off duty: whether at social events or posting on social media, the models must always be cognizant that the way they present themselves is aligned with the image they wish to project to prospective clients (Entwistle and Slater 2012: 27). With the rapidity of change in the fashion industry, the models constantly experience a destabilization of their look, and must continuously work upon it to ensure they remain relevant and marketable (Entwistle and Slater 2012: 17). This constant destabilization and reformulation of the individual look of a model raises the question of what this means for the transgender and gender non-conforming model that must consciously work to have their identity realized and normalized in everyday life.

The authentic self Throughout the interviews we conducted for this chapter, each respondent addressed the idea of authenticity and the complexities the modelling industry posed for each individual’s search for authenticity. Although each respondent referred to authenticity as being something they were striving for in their participation in the industry, what this actually meant to them and how each person sought to achieve it were distinctive. The concept of authenticity is one that is widely debated within the field of sociology, and many theorists have sought to clarify the concept through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Viannini and Franzese 2008: 1623). Mead (1934) argued that the subjective and impulsive side of the self, known as ‘the I’, coexists with the otheroriented or objective side of the self – ‘the me’ (Viannini and Franzese 2008: 1622). This allows the individual to think of themselves as both object and subject, considering their self-presentation and, thus, their authenticity. Goffman (1959) advanced this theory by suggesting that an individual performs a version of the self to an audience in a way that is believable and elicits approval (Vannini and Franzese 2008: 1623). While these performances may or may not be believed by the performer, or even be reflective of their own sense of self, they do take into account the social interaction that influences the way an individual enacts authenticity. A factor underpinning many theories on authenticity is that an individual’s identity is based on self-conception and personal values  – the feeling that one’s private and public life reflects their real self (Vannini and Franzese 2008: 1624). This sort of negotiation of identities is how most respondents referred to the construction of their self and their goals and desires within the modelling industry. Therein arises a tension between the individual and society, as personal values and selfdisplay may not synchronize: ‘Desires for authenticity may influence attitudinal views, beliefs and goals, and behavioural choices. The view of impression management as a “necessary evil” to negotiate the interactions of the social world implies a true self that needs to be submerged via social interaction’ (Viannini and Franzese 2008: 1628). Such tensions were discussed at length by the six interview respondents as they came to 84

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understand the expectations of the industry, how to become a successful model and what this meant for their personal value and individual growth. The quest for authenticity can also provide a motivating force, as illustrated by respondents in discussing why they are inspired to continue to participate in the industry. Many transgender and GNC models must spend a significant amount of time developing their own look and proving themselves to be marketable before being signed by an agency and affirmed by the industry. However, for those who are signed when they are identifying as cisgender, coming out as transgender or non-binary during their career can present an opportunity to develop their transgender or GNC identity alongside a successful career. In doing so, a certain level of power is given to the agents in establishing a model’s look to resist or conform to the hegemonic standards of masculinity and femininity and to continue to be successful. For interview respondent Oslo Grace, success came after coming out as transgender non-binary to BMG, his agency at the time. He explained, ‘I was still figuring myself out at that point. My knowingness of myself and gender has grown alongside my modeling career.’ This created a space to allow the agencies to assist in moulding his look to match this new identification, while continuing to gain traction in his modelling career: ‘We had to have meetings where we clearly decided an image to go for, what jobs I would or would not do, and how they would market me.’ Through these meetings, the agents decided that an emphasis on androgyny would be beneficial to Grace through his movement into publicly confirming his non-binary identity. This proved to be a productive tactic, as his breakout moments came when he walked both Gucci and Jeremy Scott’s Autumn/Winter 2018–19 runway shows that highlighted androgyny through the casting of models like him. BMG would also suggest that Grace should not take any jobs that would present him as too feminine, while at the same time highlighting Oslo’s ability to present himself as either gender. He was placed on the men’s and women’s boards at BMG and remains on both at his current agency IMG.4 Although the way Grace was represented on each board at BMG certainly highlighted his androgynous look, there were distinct differences in the way he was marketed on the men’s boards versus the women’s. The most striking difference was the variation in his measurements between the two boards. On the women’s board, his height was listed at 6 feet (183 cm), while on the men’s he was listed as 6’1” (185 cm). His shoe size on the men’s board was listed as a US 10, while on the women’s board was listed as US 9, despite the standard conversion from male to female sizing indicating that a man’s size 10 would be a woman’s size 8. Most notably, his waist size on the women’s site was listed as 25 inches and on the men’s site as 28 inches. While it is quite common for agencies to distort measurements in order to better market the models, doing so for the same model on two separate boards highlights something pervasive when it comes to gender: although Grace and other non-binary models have expressed a positive reception to their nonbinary identities, changing the numbers to fit a hegemonic ideal of the ‘male’ or ‘female’ body indicates that signing gender non-conforming models at top agencies like BMG or IMG does not necessarily signal a challenge to antiquated notions of gender, but instead serves as an opportunity to capitalize on these fluid bodies by relegating them to not one, 85

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but both categories of intelligible gender. Rather than creating a new space for gender non-conformity where potential clients may choose how to work with the genderless models presented, the agencies uphold the cultural belief that the only intelligible bodies are those that can be materialized to fit the constructed understanding of male and female. This was further emphasized by the differences in Grace’s portfolios for each board. On his women’s profile, there were a number of photos that represented the idea of him as androgynous: skinny jeans, a white ribbed tank top, classic white Converse sneakers and a haircut that could be likened to either a men’s grown-out buzz cut or a women’s short pixie cut. On his slim model body, none of these garments signify something normatively masculine or feminine  – his body appeared almost agender. Another showed a natural-looking Grace in a classic white T-shirt, too baggy to show breasts or hips, and black jeans, seated casually with legs apart as if to signify either a young man taking up space or a resistant woman, posed in a way that may be considered impolite. This image was placed alongside one of him holding a sleeping baby dragon in a sparkly dress cut off on one side to expose half a bare chest. The photo heightened the sense of uncertainty surrounding his gender – is he a flat-chested female with a breast exposed, a symbol of abundance and fertility in homage to women in Renaissance paintings? Or is he a man in a dress, resisting codes of masculine attire? These photos that represent an androgynous Oslo Grace are mixed with a majority of images of him in feminine attire. In one, he wears a colourful dress with a studded collar and pockets, long dangling diamond earrings, and a green and red Gucci purse slung across his chest by a gold chain. His makeup, while quite natural, is soft and feminine, his short hair swept gently to the side. In another, he wears a short velvet skirt and a matching jacket piped with pearls, accessorized with bows and rhinestones. These images indicate Grace’s ability to present himself within the traditional and contemporary notions of femininity – soft and demure in velvets and diamonds, or with a youthful edge in sneakers and bright colours. Grace’s images on the BMG men’s fashion board focused less on a mix between androgyny and traditional forms of masculinity, and instead highlighted the latter. In two of the images, he is dressed in cowboy attire – a wide-brimmed white cowboy hat, black and white cowboy boots, a large Western-style silver belt buckle and a bandana around his neck. He represents the virile Western film star, chiselled and brooding, a hypermasculine figure in film and popular culture. In another photograph, he is posed in front of an image of Elvis Presley, a symbol of male hypersexuality in the 1950s and 1960s. His look directly imitates that of the image behind him, with hair coiffed similar to Presley’s. In another, he represents a new facet of popular culture: clad in a baggy black T-shirt, a chain and a backwards black baseball cap, he appears as a young male pop star like Justin Bieber or Zayn Malik. In each image, Grace’s poses and expressions are less demure and more masculinized, his facial features defined like that of a traditional male model. Many of the photos featured in Grace’s men’s portfolio are shot by the fashion photographer Alasdair McLellan, who is known for his previous projects that exhibit masculinity through fashion photography. McLellan is highly regarded for his work 86

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in men’s fashion publications including Arena Homme + and Fantastic Man as well as popular publications such as Vogue, i-D and Self Service. McLellan has also published three books focusing on male subjectivity in England. Like many other influential fashion photographers such as Nick Knight and Bruce Weber, McLellan’s work not only reproduces many of the dominant tropes of masculinity, but also co-opts the way that fashion photography since 1980 has subverted gender norms, flirting with the idea of in-betweenness in identity. By utilizing McLellan’s work in his portfolio, Grace becomes embedded not only in the expectations of masculinity in everyday life, but also in the expected production of masculine stereotypes in fashion photography. The representation and success of a non-binary model like Oslo Grace indicate that acceptance is growing for transgender and GNC models. But there also remains a necessity to adhere to the gender binary in order to be successful. While Grace identified as GNC during the developmental years of his modelling career, he was still required to prove to potential clients his versatility within each of these gendered categories. BMG does not necessarily deserve to be strongly commended for signing a gender nonbinary model if they play only to an anachronistic structure of gender for economic gain. Instead, it must be recognized that agencies like this have the power to market non-binary models in whichever way may be most coveted and most profitable in the moment. It is, however, worthwhile to highlight that since leaving BMG to move to the agency IMG, Grace’s portfolio on the men’s and women’s boards has been identical and does not feature his measurements at all. Fitting in/not fitting in The experiences of Smirnov were quite different from those of Grace, as they were openly GNC from the onset of their modelling career. Online and in everyday life, Smirnov tends to dress in highly feminine clothing, often drawing attention to their non-normative femininity by showing off their flat chest underneath lingerie or blurring out their genitalia on Instagram posts (Figures 25 and 26). However, such gendered ambiguity does not translate to their representation in the modelling agency. Since our interview in late 2018, Smirnov has been posted on the ‘New Faces’ board at their allmale agency Bananas Models that began representing them in September of the same year. On the board, they are presented barefaced, their long brown hair parted down the centre and tucked behind their ears as if to highlight their structured jawline and hint of sideburn (Figures 27 and 28). Smirnov is topless and the casual poses seem to draw attention to the perceived maleness of their body. The agency’s site does not feature any of their jobs other than the Margiela runway, for which the agency did all the casting. Unlike Grace, the way Bananas Models would develop and tailor Smirnov’s look was not discussed. Perhaps this masculine presentation of the model by their all-male agency is because the jobs they have been featured in have presented them in a feminine way. Most notably, Smirnov modelled for the Mugler Pre-Fall 2019 collection, an important role for a new face model. Although the presentation showed both men’s and women’s clothing, they were styled in an outfit that was distinctly womenswear: a long black wool coat, 87

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Figure 25–26  Rostok Smirnov, Instagram screenshot, 2021.

tailored at the waist with a lavender turtleneck peeking out the top, ultra-skinny stirrup pants in cobalt blue-layered atop green flared pants and snake-print high heels. These images are not featured in Smirnov’s portfolio for Bananas, presumably for its more feminized look that presents them outside of the agency’s typically all-male casting. It seems that Bananas is working to accentuate Smirnov’s masculine side, which is rarely featured on their own personal social media where they instead play with femininity. Bananas is a male models’ agency and therefore does not have the opportunity to show GNC models like Smirnov on two differently gendered boards. Instead, Bananas tailors their look to match others on their board, ensuring they remain intelligible within the current expectations of what a male model should look like. Although many of their models appear androgynous or even effeminate, the maleness of each of Bananas’ models is emphasized. Smirnov has expressed that they place little importance on the binary structure of gender in their own everyday life. Therefore, in the development of their self as a model, it may not be as important to take particular jobs that present them as masculine, feminine or somewhere in between. For them, modelling is not a way to reinforce a particular gendered or genderless identity. They speak frankly of the field as a profession, 88

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Figures 27–28  Rostok Smirnov, Banana Models Polaroids. and remain aspirational and persistent, despite the difficulties they have faced through the development of their career. Unfortunately, gender display has long posed a problem in developing their career in both Ukraine and Paris: I didn’t really fit into any of these ideas [of masculinity and femininity], and I probably have many opportunities to get work somewhere else like Paris. But to go to Paris I had to have a mother agency. But mother agencies didn’t want me because I’m not commercial enough, because I was never talking about my gender. I didn’t identify myself. Smirnov explained that, prior to being signed by Bananas, they found agencies would push them to be more masculine by developing muscles and changing their gait, adhering to a more commercial look that would perhaps lead to more jobs. Much like the experiences of models discussed by Mears, they were instructed to develop their look beyond the workplace and instructed to spend time with some high-profile European models in order to enhance their social image off the runway and gain attention through street-style photographs and socialization. This made them feel as though the development of their identity was inauthentic and that their career would not progress: ‘There are two ways: either you’re very commercial and have a very cool look, or you are friends with them and they are pushing you everywhere. [The agencies] don’t understand. They said be more masculine, walk more masculine! What are you doing! That was a hard period of time.’ Although their representation with Bananas is still new and their portfolio tailored towards a more masculine image, their representation at the agency has been positive in allowing them to take jobs that explicitly play to gender 89

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non-conformity or to femininity. As a result, Smirnov has found a way to be successful in their modelling career while remaining authentically gender non-conforming both at work and in everyday life. Smirnov and Grace both embody the Foucauldian idea of assujetissement  – subjection – which refers to the dual process of passive subordination as well as the act of becoming or ‘being made’ a subject according to a system of power, such as fashion modeling (Foucault 1991: 60). On this level, the models are passive in that the way they are both represented is imposed upon them through agencies that work within the hegemonic structures of gender, perpetuating a stereotypical construction of gender norms on bodies that prefer to exist in gender nonconformity. And yet, their ambiguous bodies pose a problem for agencies that work strictly within the gender binary and must work towards establishing the models as separately masculine or feminine, rather than gender non-conforming. In order to fit into the industry, their identities become sanitized to re-establish the boundaries of masculinity and femininity and display a level of palatability and marketability within fashion media. At the same time, the models are active subjects in that their presence in the media as people who are openly GNC forces a space for their bodies to start to become intelligible by those who may not have seen GNC models represented in popular media before. Self-representation and identity freedom Experiences like that of Grace and Smirnov can display both the positive and negative self-development enacted in agency representation. But discovering the aesthetic labour that goes into developing a model’s look within the agency indicates that more positive and authentic experiences can arise out of freelance modelling work. Without an agency, transgender and GNC models have the freedom to project whatever look they want within their portfolios, on social media and in everyday life. Interview respondent Richie Moo (Figure 29) explained that as a freelance model, having control of their own bookings and jobs has been positive, but they ultimately sought representation by an agency one day. Moo had difficulty finding an agency that affirmed their non-binary identity in a meaningful way. They explained that their expectations were high and preferred not to settle for something that felt in-authentic or be cast in jobs that felt like tokenism. Furthermore, the expectations within the modelling industry have left Moo feeling invalidated: The expectations that many of the bookers, agents, and designers in the industry have is a bit fanciful for what is the reality of us as human beings. They have made me feel that my femininity must be equivalent to my physique and if not, I am not validated as perfect. In my opinion, gender identity is not validated by what you are wearing or how you wear your hair. One day I can be wearing a sweater, jeans with sneakers and the next day a dress or a mini skirt and this should not define my gender at any level. I do not need to be ‘passable’ to embrace my uniqueness

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Figure 29  Richie Moo, 2021. and confidence, I never take it personally because I believe if someone does not believe in me there will be more opportunities where many will. For Moo, the experience of freelance modelling was challenging to their gender identity and the prospects of finding an agency were oftentimes disheartening. However, such experiences have encouraged them to work harder and build stronger representation within the modelling industry for their self and for the transgender community. They eventually found good representation at the agency We Speak NYC. They continue to work as a model and are cast quite frequently for alternative runway shows and campaigns in New York. While freelance modelling for them meant a feeling of control over their identity and presentation, representation with We Speak has been a positive shift in finding even more work that represents their personality and beliefs. Another difficulty of self-representation within the modelling industry can be the navigation of jobs that may be suitable. Mears explains that without an agency, freelance models face a greater level of unpredictability and aesthetic labour, as they face selfmanagement without guidance (Mears 2011: 76–7). This can pose a problem in finding jobs that work not only for the model’s individual look, but also for an affirmation of their identity in a positive way. Interview respondent Meme Meng (Figure 30) described an experience wherein he attended a casting for a contemporary fashion brand that has

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been celebrated for pushing the boundaries of gender and creating clothing that does not conform to hegemonic expectations. However, his experience behind the scenes at the casting exposed this as being merely a façade: I went to a casting for this brand that is pretty good with androgynous fashion, and a lot of people send me this brand, saying Meme, you would really look good in this brand. This is a brand made for you! So, I went to the casting, did the first round, everything was okay. Final result: I didn’t get in. And there’s no bitterness involved, but if you really look at the runway photos, what ended up chosen was a designer’s idea of men in women’s clothes. So that became really problematic in how I felt for that brand because it was like, you’re taking the androgynous identity, the whole idea of being androgynous, but then you’re using models that don’t represent the clothes you’re selling. Because if you put the actual customers in your clothes, it would have sold the brand in the wrong way. It would have become too androgynous, too transgender, maybe in their head could have become too outcast. But isn’t that what they were going for? Stories like this indicate that, although agencies can be problematic in terms of gender development, they can also be helpful in deciphering which companies will provide positive representation for the image and identity the model is looking to project. For better or for worse, agencies understand the inner workings of brands and publications; in order to gain success for themselves, they must send their models to castings that are more likely to have a positive outcome. Meng’s experience also highlights the lack of authenticity, or some level of disingenuousness, within fashion, as it upholds a sense of tokenism by an industry that once avoided but now celebrates non-binary gender identities.

Other models: Intersectionality and wider diversity in the fashion industry Even within the increasing diverse industry of fashion modelling, there still remains little room for representation of that which falls outside of largely accepted categories of intelligibility: transgender models who are plus-size, disabled or non-white still remain underrepresented on runways, reproducing the pre-existing power structures within a new category of intelligibility. In an interview with Refinery29, model Ceval Omar, who also participated in first-hand interviews for this chapter (Figure 31), described her frustration with these structures that inform what is considered the norm: ‘At the end of the day, no one is a label, and no one is just one single thing. We are all made up of so many different things; as different as our fingerprints. Instead of nurturing our individuality, the system feels it’s easier to categorize us and give us labels. And we buy

Figure 30  Meme Meng, 2019. 92

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into it’ (Peoples 2018). These comments evince Butler’s theory of norms of intelligibility, whereby for a norm to be challenged it must be enacted in ‘the daily social rituals of bodily life’ (Butler 2004: 48). By only representing transgender models that conform to existing standards of beauty within the modelling industry, the standard remains unchallenged and reproduced through an embodiment of idealizations. Omar explained that, although she admired models like Naomi Campbell and Iman when she was young, she did not dream of entering the industry, as she felt it excluded black, plus-size transgender women: I kind of check off everything that isn’t “normal” in the fashion world, and I hardly see anyone like me to identify or feel at home with … because I’m so different and there’s not a place for models like me, I’m going to have to carve my own path within the structure of where models belong in regards to labels. (Peoples 2018) While she has already experienced success with her re-entry into the modelling industry after being signed to three international agencies in late 2018, she also expressed that there is not a great deal of competition with other models: ‘The way [other models] interact with me is in a way that is non-threatening. They know I would never take anything away from them, because they know we would never get the same jobs.’ Here, the intersections of her identity – the way her blackness and her size interact with her transgender identity – held her back from the pursuit of her dreams early on. However, her response indicates that, while such intersections may not be widely represented in the fashion industry, she faces perhaps less competition than other models that casting agents may reject for their intelligibility. While this may be positive for Omar, whose intersections make her unique in the industry, her minimal amount of competition points to two important issues: that models with multiple intersections of difference are not being signed with agencies, and that there are few jobs looking for models like her. In a profile on the top transgender models of 2018, Leyna Bloom described similar sentiments to Omar, explaining that she faced greater issues with racism than with transphobia since she began working as a model (Peoples 2018). She further noted that while transgender models of colour may get cast in shows and campaigns, they are explicitly receiving less pay than other models, reinforcing the systemic issues of poverty, violence and exploitation transgender women of colour continue to face. Interview respondent Alana Jessica, a transgender plus-size model, expressed she too feels that there are fewer jobs for plus-size transgender women, and has received greater backlash for her weight than any other categories of her identity. Model and activist Munroe Bergdorf has spoken more generally about the way other women construct narratives surrounding transgender models, suggesting that cisgender women feel transgender women pose a threat to them (Thorpe 2019). Such narratives, Bergdorf explains, create

Figure 31  Ceval Omar, 2018. 94

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a hostile and unsafe environment for trans-models on sets, rather than a heterotopia, deepening a power structure that allows cisgender women to define who may and may not experience success. The experiences and emotions of these models reveal the liminality of the abject plus-size transgender model: not so excluded that they are able to find space or community in such exclusion, but too different to be included in the centre. The constructed threat of the transgender woman in fashion media results in the transgender model remaining on the periphery; these models may experience superficial acceptance through minimal integration into the industry, and the threat of their being different prevents a complete sense of belonging. Although representation of transgender models may be increasing, the diversity within such a marginalized category illustrates that the industry has not yet reached a full acceptance of intersectional diverse bodies. Interview respondent Meme Meng expressed his experience as an Asian GNC model and an avid consumer of fashion as being out of line with true representation of the world’s population. While he has grown tired of the traditional ideals of beauty and portrayals of gender and race, he expressed that the choices in minority models today seem to still push a stereotypical category of what is acceptably different: You’re casting all these people to redefine gender, but you’re still creating a new category about labels, which is not something I really want to see. I think the biggest change right now is to cast not just an Asian girl, a white girl, and a black girl that feels like the same story – this is not the planet, and this is not what you should recreate. If you really want to push the boundaries, it’s to create a story where it doesn’t feel like one singular story, but multiple people, multiple stories, because that’s a truer reflection of our world. It comes down to our gender, but it comes down to everything else, too. Experiences like these highlight the necessity for brands, bookers and casting directors to maintain an intersectional perspective when working towards a more genuinely inclusive industry. Furthermore, these statistical analyses and personal accounts of industry experiences indicate that, although better representation is on the rise, there is still a great deal of work to be done before the industry can claim inclusivity. Kristeva suggests that the only way to bring the marginalized Other into the fold is through confrontation: ‘Discourse will seem tenable only if it ceaselessly confronts that otherness, a burden both repellent and repelled, a deep well of memory that is unapproachable and intimate: the abject’ (Kristeva 1986: 6). It is only by affirming the abject bodies of trans-models on runways and in fashion media that a greater understanding and normalization will allow previously abject bodies greater space and visibility in mainstream fashion.

Tokenism versus activism In a 2016 article for Lenny Letter Hari Nef expressed a major facet of becoming a transgender celebrity was as a token for gender diversity within the fashion industry. 96

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When she was signed to IMG, the president of the agency expressed that he had not signed transgender models he met with in the past because they did not want to be known as a transgender model, but instead as simply a model like all the others on the IMG board. Nef was different: she wanted to be visibly transgender and use an IMG contract as a powerful platform for trans-visibility. She was the first transgender woman to be signed to them, insisting she wanted all the jobs that displayed her ‘transness’. Since being signed, she has had backlash from others and reminders that she may not have had the same success in her career had it not come at a moment when transgender was appearing as fashionable. This sense of participating in the worthy cause of visibility comes at an interesting time for the fashion industry, which has often been regarded as complicit, or even ‘actively turning a blind eye’ to sexual abuse allegations that have arisen alongside the #MeToo movement (Hall 2018). Perhaps a deluge of acceptance towards the transgender and gender non-conforming body in the fashion industry acts as an alibi that the fashion industry has woken up to political correctness. Over the past two years, the influence of the vocality and visibility of these models has paved the way for many to follow in their footsteps. Now, models who define themselves outside of the gender binary are being cast in campaigns, editorials and runways. In a 2015 interview with transgender artist, actor and producer of the TV series Transparent Zackary Drucker, Nef spoke to this changing moment for trans-people in fashion and media (Pham 2015). Throughout this interview it became clear that there is an awareness of the tokenism that may be present in casting transgender models at a moment of increased political tension around transgender bodies. Nevertheless, it seems that many high-profile models like Nef and Quinlivan understand that, despite the possibility of tokenism, their openness and visibility are crucial to future generations of trans-people. The sense of ephemerality surrounding non-binary identities in fashion once again highlights the opening and closing of the heterotopia of fashion. While transgender and GNC models may now be experiencing increased acceptance and access to the fashion system, it appears that they are acutely aware of their acceptance being related to the trend cycles of fashion. Nef saw this increased acceptance as an important moment for her career, but she also understood the frustration coming from others, especially other transgender people who were perhaps not experiencing the same levels of recognition as her: ‘I understand that I’m so lucky and participating in a cultural moment, but I’m literally being handed this stuff, probably earlier than I should be, because I’m trans’ (Pham 2015). She has also expressed frustration with conflating transgender visibility with a ‘transgender moment’ when she feels it is simply a minor recognition, an inclusion of a small number of transgender and non-binary subjects within the fashion imaginary. Furthermore, she highlights the fact that putting transgender people in the media does not equate to a concern for the systemic issues transgender subjects face in everyday life. Frustrations similar to those of Nef arose in many of the interviews conducted for this chapter. There was a strong sentiment of scepticism as to whether or not inclusion was only happening for capitalistic gain. During the development of her modelling career in New York, Alana Jessica explicitly stated that she felt she and other transgender models 97

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were being cast only for their trans-identity at a moment when transgender was a widely discussed topic in media and popular culture: I feel like there are so many castings for trans talent but at the same time, many of them tend to lean on the side of spectacularization. What I mean is that a lot of brands are tokenizing trans people because they’re starting to realize that we’re worth something in this industry. So, at the same time that there are a lot of opportunities, many of them are thinly veiled publicity stunts where companies are using our community to gain traction. Moo also expressed a discomfort with companies gaining financial benefit for the inclusion of a mediatized version of transgender and GNC identities in fashion. They felt that such overcasting for the sake of diversity and economic gain was not a genuine attention to non-binary identities. The paradox of tokenism versus activism is an issue the majority of the respondents we interviewed stated that they faced during the development of their career as a transgender or GNC model. As socio-political issues surrounding transgender identities gain more recognition around the globe, those with visibility have begun to feel pressure to become hyper-visible. Omar explained that drawing so much attention to her transgender identity can sometimes feel dehumanizing, but also expressed an understanding of the importance of it at this particular moment: ‘It’s really sad in the sense that we are living human beings … but at the same time, we sort of have to [teach people] so that the next generation of transgender women and men can have an easier life. Like, it’s so sad that the life expectancy of a black transwoman in America is thirtyfive.’ This feeling of responsibility seemed to eclipse the sense of tokenism for her, since she was willing to work hard to help normalize her identity for others who may not otherwise understand it: I think it’s something great, but at the same time I’m not naïve, and I’m aware that trans models are being kind of used as a prop, I guess to show how diverse you are. But at the same time, it’s doing a really good thing, because the more you kind of see us, the more normalized it is. All of the models we interviewed expressed an understanding of this duality and scepticism towards the industry for their inclusion. At the forefront of this duality was a desire to be understood or accepted as transgender or non-binary, but not to be defined as such. While Smirnov did not want to be identified with any sort of relationship to gender, Grace, Jessica and Omar all explained that they wanted to be looked at and treated the same as any other model, transgender or cisgender. For example, on set, Jessica explained that she felt most transgender models wanted ‘to just show up and get into hair and makeup like the other girls’. Meng expressed a similar sentiment: ‘I think that’s what I want to see more: neither rejecting nor having us be a part of it because of the way we look, but to have us just because we’re us.’ 98

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For Grace, being present in the modelling industry in the same capacity as cisgender models was of great importance in his career. He not only wanted his transgender nonbinary identity to be recognized and his pronouns to be respected, but also wanted to be hired for his excellence in his profession: I think it’s important for me to be respected as a non-binary person so that I and other GNC kids don’t get misgendered, but I don’t want it to be the only reason people hire me. I want to be a great technical and charismatic high fashion model first and foremost, infiltrating the cis binary world. If I change people’s perceptions along the way? Great! But it’s only one part of me. By comparison, Omar not only wanted to be experienced in the same way as other models, but also did not want her transgender identity to take precedence over the other intersections of her identity: At the end of the day, I’m a human being, and then I’m a woman, and then my work, then my gender. If I see you on the street I’m not going to say ‘Hi, I’m a trans woman.’ That is not my place, and that is not yours either! If I was going to be spoken about, I would like it to be Ceval the model, and not Ceval the transmodel, because that takes away my humanity in a sense… you don’t say Kate Moss, the cisgender hetero model. Moo also expressed that they would not take on jobs that represented them only as industry tokens. Instead, they sought representation that would show that transgender and GNC models can represent an important facet of the industry. Activism was a main reason why they continued to model and to refuse contracts that made them feel they were being pressurized to present themselves in a way that appeared tokenizing or inauthentic: I do not do this for a cisgender contract or to be used and seen as another token in the industry. I want to represent all those individuals who know they do not have to validate their gender identity to be part of this world. I want to be the voice for equality, inclusivity and acceptance of others. I’m not here to create or be part of a hierarchy but to open a road to which the gender binary is something of the past, and we are the future. This issue of tokenism is precisely why the author of the 2017 article in Candy titled ‘-Almost- A Confession by an Anonymous Model’ chose not to reveal her transgender identity, even at a time of widening acceptance towards transgender and non-binary people in the industry. The anonymous model explained working as a model was the first time she felt affirmed as a woman. Although she had not experienced violence or rejection by those who knew she was transgender, she feared rejection would come when she revealed this publicly. As with Nef and the models we interviewed, she was concerned that others would believe she only received castings because she was transgender and her 99

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previous work would be positioned as deceitful towards major brands. This anonymous model highlights the effect that hypervisibility and tokenism can have on the affirmation of one’s gender identity: rather than supporting the trans-identity, it can create a greater divide from the normalcy of life as a cisgender model and conflate success with an empty attempt at diversity. Although scepticism towards the industry was an undertone in all of the interviews, there was also a collective sense of positivity and optimism for the future of new gender identities in fashion. Meng explained that moments of hypervisibility for transgender and non-binary models, such as the Gucci Autumn/Winter 2018 runway show that featured Oslo Grace, were important in helping to increase intelligibility around a non-binary body for those who view mainstream fashion media. By representing transgender, nonbinary and androgynous models on a hypervisible runway show, identities that challenge the gender binary were brought into the fantasy and desirability the fashion industry have always represented, addressing the implicit demand for fashion to reflect lived reality more accurately. For Meng, representation in a major show like this translated to a greater understanding for a wide variety of consumers of fashion media: Now a little kid like me in middle school on Style.com, now Vogue Runway, can look and be like, wait … that little, tiny image to that kid in middle school right now will roll and roll and become something bigger. Because now they live in a world where Gucci did this. I think that’s really beautiful. Most of the models interviewed echoed a similar sentiment, expressing that the lack of visibility of non-binary gender identities in fashion media in their youth prevented them from understanding and developing their gender identity at a younger age. Both Moo and Omar described an inability to put into words the way they felt about their gender when they were children and feel that current access to non-binary identities is helping to shift this for future transgender and non-binary children. Omar explained that having the ability to identify others who are transgender or non-binary in the media will help a new generation come to terms with their own identities or that of those around them in a more positive way: When I was growing up … I didn’t have the language to say what I was feeling and what I was going through. So, the fact that we live in this time where the language is there for you, you just need to go and research it. But the more and more we’re kind of in front of you, the more there are so many girls and boys who can see themselves in us and kind of understand – oh all these things I’m feeling, someone else feels them. Then you don’t feel alone again. Seeing more of us normalizes us. People are mostly afraid of what they don’t know. Grace explained that although equality is on the rise, there is still work to be done, not only for transgender and GNC models, but for all intersections of diversity. They believe that even small steps for visibility can create meaningful change in terms of 100

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representation. Alana expressed similar optimism, but felt it was important to recognize that, although visible representation may be new, the transgender identity is not: I think that the increased commitment to diverse casting in the fashion industry has contributed to the creation of a beautiful, inclusive, and inspiring initiative. One thing that’s important to keep in mind, however, is something that’s central to trans people’s core message: we’ve always been here. We’ve been working in fashion, both in front of and behind the lens, and we will continue to do so.

Conclusion: Between tokenism and authenticity In this chapter we have explored how the increased representation of transgender and GNC models in fashion media is experienced professionally and in everyday life by those it involves. At the same time, we interrogated whether the industry is providing a heterotopic space for the development of transgender identities in fashion or is simply recasting transgender bodies through hegemonic norms of gender and intelligibility. Historical analyses and first-hand interviews highlight the complexities that arise when developing a career as a transgender or non-binary model. Many facets of these complexities are embedded in the fashion industry as a heterotopia of deviance for transgender and gender non-conforming models, opening up a space for success through difference. A historical analysis of changing attitudes towards non-binary models in the industry reveals the opening and closing dynamic of the heterotopia, which is currently experiencing a moment of increased penetrability by bodies that were previously considered too deviant for acceptability. Despite this moment of heightened acceptance, models must still maintain the proper gestures and levels of intelligibility to experience success and, as a result, are often required to tailor their look to binary norms. Furthermore, there is a sense of anxiety around whether their transgender or GNC identities are simply a passing trend, something that may not be acceptable forever. Should the system become closed off to their binary-resistant identities, many models fear they will once again face abjection from an industry that once supported them. Transgender and LGTBQIA+ focused agencies are opening in major fashion centres and top-tier agencies are signing openly transgender and GNC models. Yet these models must develop strong personal connections to the industry and enact greater levels of aesthetic labour before they can be validated within these new spaces. This can be a difficult experience but many models have expressed a paradoxical sense of excitement and appreciation for the fashion industry in major fashion cities, where they finally find a community to experience their gender. The models also face a complex relationship between a feeling of industry tokenism and a responsibility towards activism amidst the contentious political climate concerning transgender subjects. While most respondents expressed a desire to be authentic, validated and normalized in the industry, rather than being continuously called out for their differences, their general attitude is ultimately one of hope. There is a sense 101

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of understanding that their increased visibility may help to normalize the transgender and GNC identities beyond fashion and give a future generation of non-binary people a community to look to for inspiration. While fashion does not have the responsibility to include all intersections of difference, the respondents we interviewed conveyed the positive experience they had in viewing bodies and identities similar to their own in an industry founded on portraying and creating desirability. Through this, they found a justification for the allure of the transgender and GNC body among traditional tropes of beauty. Many of the respondents wanted to fit into fashion in a way that was successful both intrinsically and extrinsically, but each respondent expressed sentiments of disruption and resistance, a desire to answer Preciado’s question, ‘How could it work in another way?’ (2015) The shift in the fashion industry’s acceptance of the transgender and non-binary body ultimately proves exciting and positive for those who have otherwise faced rejection and a lack of representation. However, this does not indicate that the acceptance of transness is ubiquitous across society. In 2018, the second term of Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi led to an increase in sanctions against transgender Egyptians and reduced protections from sexual- and gender-based violence (Human Rights Watch 2019), and US President Donald Trump urged federal agencies to stop protecting transgender rights (WHO 2018a). Gender-critical TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists), moreover, believe that transwomen should be regarded as men for all practical purposes (Urquart and Molloy 2015). To this extent, famous and highly regarded feminist figures including Germaine Greer and JK Rowling, who have expressed personal views about non-cisgender women, have likewise been labelled transphobic insofar as they argue that female transsexuals should not be straightforwardly included within the category of ‘woman’ or ‘female’ (Ennis 2019; Gayle 2015). Yet, in common with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2021), their point is not that transgender females do not have the right to assert the self-identity that they prefer or to exist freely. Rather more the concern of Greer and Rowling is how to account for diversity in female identities and experiences. As Adichie puts it, ‘the larger point … was to say that we should be able to acknowledge difference while being fully inclusive, that in fact the whole premise of inclusiveness is difference’ (2021).5 On the political world stage, this existential perspective also led the World Health Organization in 2018 to re-categorize health related to gender-identity as ‘conditions related to sexual heath’, instead of ‘mental and behavioral disorders’, thereby removing the stigma of transgender identities as mental illness (WHO 2018b).6 And in January 2021, President of the United States, Joe Biden, not only appointed paediatrician Dr Rachel Levine as health secretary in his Democrat administration, the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the US Senate, but also rescinded Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the US military. By the same token, the fashion industry has continued to normalize transgender and non-binary identities in both mainstream and luxury fashion through runway shows, high-profile campaigns and editorial photoshoots. It remains, therefore, a symbol of a possible future of inclusion and acceptance. It is clear that inclusion and representation in fashion make a difference in the validation of 102

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transgender and GNC identities. Yet without the political rights and protections, and widespread public affirmation, transgender people still face a high risk of violence and exclusion in everyday life.

Notes 1

Also known as passing, this term refers to a transperson being perceived in social settings in accordance with the gender identity they express, such that they do or may not openly identify as transgender. In this situation, Norman, who was assigned ‘male’ at birth, was being socially perceived as a cisgender woman. See Pfeffer (2016: 1129).

2

We are signalling here the duality of othering, using both other with a small ‘o’ since, in Lacanian terms, it denotes the specular relation to an Imaginary rival he assesses in ‘The Mirror Stage’, and the Other (capital O) that he raises in his discussion of the symbolic order (Lacan 1977: 23).

3

Heterotopias are different from utopias in that utopias are imagined spaces, while heterotopias are tangible spaces that exist within a portion of a society.

4

At most agencies, models are categorized into different divisions, often based on their gender as well as their experience and size. The term comes from the practice of posting models’ composite cards with photographs and measurements on a pin board for easy access; however, this is now mostly accessed online. Most agencies will have a men’s and a women’s board and, within these gendered divisions, a ‘new faces’ board for newer models. Many agencies are increasingly providing plus-size or curve divisions, commercial divisions and more.

5

Ngozi’s online essay ‘It Is Obscene’ (2021) contains a riposte and clarification to ‘What Is Feminism?’, an interview she gave to Cathy Newman on the UK’s Channel 4, 11 March 2017, where she stated: ‘When people talk about “Are trans women women?”, my feeling is trans women are women … But, if you’ve lived in the world as a man with the privileges that the world accords to men and then change gender, it’s difficult for me to accept that then we can equate your experience with the experience of a woman who has lived from the beginning as a woman and who has not been accorded those privileges that men are’ (https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=KP1C7VXUfZQ). In December 2019 and January 2020, Essex University in the UK disinvited feminist Professors Rosa Freedman and Jo Phoenix respectively from publicly addressing gender-critical views. But barrister Akua Reindorf found that the University’s treatment of them was unlawful, and Professor Anthony Forster issued an open apology to both of them on behalf of the University (University of Essex, Essex Blogs, 17 May 2021). The circulation of gender-critical views also led Nancy Kelley, chief executive of Stonewall, to liken such beliefs to antisemitism in an online interview with Jessica Parker for BBC News on 28 May 2021.

6

This definition informs the litigation launched in January 2021 by the UK High Court that allowed the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, which leads the national Gender Identity and Development Service (GIDS), to appeal against a decision that barred it from referring under-16s for puberty-blocking treatment. GIDS had experienced an exponential increase for treatment from 77 children in 2009 to 2,590 in 2018–19. An initial High Court decision in December 2020 was made in favour of Keira Bell and children under sixteen years old, who were ruled unlikely to be mature enough to give informed consent to be prescribed such treatment: ‘It is doubtful that a child aged fourteen or fifteen could understand and weigh the long-term risks and consequences of the administration of puberty blockers’ (Topping 2021).

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Figure 32  Andrea Giacobbe, ‘Simplex Concordia’, 1996.

CHAPTER 4 LOVING THE ALIEN: FASHION AND CYBORG IDENTITIES

Introduction In the previous three chapters we have explored what it means to be human as a matter of fluidity and intersectionality in identity boundaries and how the fashion industry has attempted to deal with the challenge and messiness that ensue when those who have been marginalized demand to speak and be heard. In this final chapter we extend our analysis of the dynamic human as ‘a hero of liberty’ (Reed 2016), turning attention to recent depictions and debates concerning hybrid and posthuman identities. Here we assess how they intersect with and contest the long-accepted norm of humanity, with its Cartesian thinking subject at the centre of all things, and how, in turn, posthumans in a variety of forms have been represented in fashion design by Alessandro Michele and fashion photography by Andrea Giacobbe. As we shall see, this is not a question of either being human first or becoming posthuman (however we may define it) after, but rather one that leads us to understand the simultaneous reciprocity and coexistence between states of both being and becoming: ‘Instead of a temporal, “coming-after” stage of humanity, posthumanism might be more usefully seen as a concept that draws attention to the cracks that have always existed in the water-tight descriptions of the human – how the “human” has changed radically and continues to change radically over time’ (Campbell, O’Driscoll, and Saren 2010: 91). One of the most prevalent tropes of the organic and technological intersectionality between the human and the posthuman is the cyborg, a term coined in 1960 by Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline (1995) to refer to a human–machine hybrid that could be adapted for extra-terrestrial travel. But it is Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, a potent fusion of scientific and philosophical ideas, first published in 1985 and in which she set out to explore the future of feminism and socialism, that has become instrumental in a broader debate concerning species-thinking and hybrid identities. In her telling, what constitutes a cyborg does not hinge solely on beings that are part human and part machine, such as Maria in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1925), but also on the broader culture of androids and replicants, such as Rachel in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982). As she concludes, ‘cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves’ (Haraway 1991: 181). At the same time, inhabiting ‘a post-gender world’ (1991: 50), Haraway’s cyborg coincided with the rise of queer politics that, influenced by Michel Foucault,

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interrogated gender, sex and sexuality as a site of power and control. Fuelled by the impact of HIV/AIDS on everyday life, queer activism emerged in the late 1980s to address the shortcomings of the gay liberation movement of the 1970s in dismantling homophobia and to foreground sexuality as a primary category in gender politics. Initially, the word queer was co-opted to signify lesbian and gay sexual politics, but during the 1990s it started to be used to describe anyone who challenged or transgressed cisgender and heteronormative identities – on any level – and is currently summed up by the acronym LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, Asexual/Agender, and Ally). Accordingly, Michael Warner, one of the first queer theorists, has argued that ‘heteronormativity has a totalizing tendency that can only be overcome by actively imagining a necessarily and desirably queer world … The preference for “queer” … rejects a minoritizing logic of toleration or simple political interest-representation in favor of a more thorough resistance to regimes of the normal’ (1991: 8 and 16). These, then, are the concerns that we explore in this chapter with reference to case studies concerning the work of two Italian male producers: photographer Andrea Giacobbe and Gucci’s creative director, Alessandro Michele. Giacobbe has revealed little more than that the cryptic millennial symbolism of his fashion shoot ‘Simplex Concordia’ (1996) was contoured directly by his interest in science fiction but, as we argue, its sex and gender politics can also be framed in light of Haraway’s cyborg manifesto.1 By contrast, Michele has avowed openly that he took direct inspiration from her work as well as Foucault’s writings on power and the normalization of bodies to conceptualize the ninety looks and mise-en-scène for his inventive ‘Cyborg’ runway of 21 February 2018 for Milan Fashion Week. Thus, he contends in the show notes: ‘Identity is a never-ending process, keen on new determinations each time. The consciousness of how everything is socially built, even who we are, opens a field of fresh possibilities to performatively explore’ (Gucci 2018). Furthermore, as this idea indicates, the work of both producers not only raises significant questions as to what kind of human and posthuman identities are represented by them but also the potential for cyborg and queer identities to intersect with and redefine a wide range of social issues and civil rights in space and time: ‘It means being able to challenge the common understanding of what gender difference means, or what the state is for, or what “health” entails, or what would define fairness, or what a good relation to the planet’s environment would be’ (Warner 1991: 6). Indeed, for Haraway herself, abandoning all types of binary classifications is imperative when it comes to optimizing how societies should operate in future: ‘I needed to locate biology in its intersection with many other communities of practice, made up of entangled humans and others, living and not … The cyborg is a figuration, but it is also an obligatory worlding’ (Gane and Haraway 2006: 138 and 139). Finally, therefore, in unravelling the mutability of posthuman identities in ‘Simplex Concordia’ and Gucci’s ‘Cyborg’ runway, we address the spatio-temporal dynamics of their ‘obligatory worlding’ with regard to, respectively, redemptive time or kairos, and poetic anachronism that, as Jacques Rancière contends, is a question of thought rather than fact (2015: 28). 106

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Andrea Giacobbe and ‘Simplex Concordia’ Andrea Giacobbe was born in Florence in 1968. As an undergraduate in Italy, he initially studied architecture, but after arriving in London sometime in 1987 he abandoned his programme of studies in favour of photography. Between 1987 and 1988 he worked as a studio assistant to Paolo Roversi and Andrew Macpherson, whose work had been published in Vogue and Arena respectively, and at the same time he began to photograph the collections of the Japanese designer Atsuro Tayama. Eventually, he took a diploma course in creative photography at the Arts Institute at Bournemouth between 1989 and 1992, where Wolfgang Tillmans, the Turner Prize winner in 2000, had studied at the same time. After graduation, he relocated to Paris to begin his career as an independent professional photographer, working for the cult Paris publication, Citizen K. In collaboration with the stylist Maida, he also produced four fashion spreads for The Face between 1994 and 1996: ‘Leisure Lounge’ (October 1994); ‘ark life’ (March 1995); ‘littleearth’ (February 1996); and ‘Simplex Concordia’ (July 1996), the gnomic title of which alludes to the genetic mutability of the simplex cell as well as the idea of societal harmony. Coterminously, he developed an interest in producing music videos for various independent bands, such as ‘Dirt’ (1997) for Death in Vegas and ‘Push It’ (1998) for Garbage. Giacobbe is also an avid follower of science fiction, which is reflected in his photographic imagery. This tended to be electronically mediated and to demonstrate a clear technical and aesthetic reliance on contemporaneous computer artwork applications such as Quantel Paintbox, Barco and Adobe Photoshop. Along with flatbed photographic scanners, these image manipulation programmes began to be more cheaply and widely marketed by the mid-1990s. As a result, photographers, filmmakers and video artists could download them on to their own personal computers rather than relying totally on specialist digital labs to process their simulated images for them. Although such computer-manipulated images appear to transcend any straightforward sense of reality, the intention of many digital photographers is not merely a matter of escapism but rather of contextualization, with Vincent Peters arguing that the point of such digitization is ‘how you bring fashion and reality together’ (Flett 2000: 20). Accordingly, the new technologies afforded Giacobbe an opportunity to reconfigure human bodies and conjure up strange new worlds that invite spectators to ruminate on the meaning of their own identities in more complex ways: ‘It’s not just the making and remaking of bodies, but the making and remaking of worlds that is crucial here’ (Featherstone and Burrows 1995: 2). This sense of other worldliness is evident in all the spreads he shot for The Face. In them, the male and female models occupy recognizable spaces – for instance, a nightclub in ‘Leisure Lounge’ and fields and motorways in ‘ark life’. In both cases, however, the models appear to be matter out of place – their faces shine with metallic makeup and they perform unsettling or disorienting acts. In one of the images from ‘ark life’ a man sits in a car with a rooster on his lap, while in ‘Leisure Lounge’ we observe a model in the process of replacing one of her eyeballs, much like the cyborg, played by Arnold 107

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Schwarzenegger in The Terminator (1984), repairs his wounded eye. But the alien identities and the strange acts they perform in each of these instances are represented in more extreme terms by Jason and Ketuta, the two models who appear in ‘Simplex Concordia’. And, in common with Giacobbe’s earlier spreads, the woollen, cotton and leather garments by Paul Smith, Martin Margiela and Yohji Yamamoto that they wear are not necessarily alien or technocratic in terms of cut and fabric, though the way the deconstructive aesthetic of the last two designers often challenged the binaries of male and female clothing lends itself to the gender-swapping connoted in the spread. Notably, the use of natural materials also stands in marked contrast to how futuristic fashion has often been envisaged in terms of synthetic materials, for example, the 1960s space-age collections of André Courrèges and Paco Rabanne (who had contributed the figurehugging geometric outfit made of green and black plastic for Jane Fonda to wear in the 1968 film Barbarella, directed by Roger Vadim). In fact, in several of the images in ‘Simplex Concordia’ clothing is either absent altogether or else it is marginal to the ostensible narrative that is elaborated by Giacobbe (Figure 32). In the first page of the spread we encounter an image that is tinted green; it depicts a yellow Narcissus in a plastic bottle on a table, alongside a tumbler half-filled with yellow liquid, and in the background are a set of empty bookshelves, a green dining chair and a light-table. The picture that it faces represents Jason and Ketuta in a spartan living room, which is tinted red and illuminated by fluorescent lights. They wear distressed wigs over their shaved heads and, kneeling face to face on the floor with their groins pressed together, they project their reptile-like tongues at each other, as if involved in some strange mating ritual. When we turn the opening, we see them kneeling again, dipping undergarments into a bowl that is filled with green liquid and placed in front of them on the floor. This time they are facing us and we can also make out that they both have a black disk emblazoned on the middle of their foreheads. Adjacent to this image is a picture of Ketuta, naked but for a pair of men’s underpants, standing in a bath filled with the same green liquid and which she has also smeared on to her skin.2 What follows is a double-page photograph of the naked couple, who gaze directly out at us as they stand side by side in the bay window of a red-tinted room. This image forms a pendant with the next double-page opening, which, the caption tells us, depicts Jason with Ketuta’s head and Ketuta with Jason’s head (Figure 32). Here, the gaze and stance of the couple are similar to those in the previous photograph, but they are located in a green room and, having apparently changed sex, they each nestle an obstetric baby doll to their breast/chest. In turn, the final two pictures form a marked contrast (Figures 33 and 34). In the first, Jason and Ketuta stand holding hands in a magenta room; she is wearing a knitted cardigan and brown leather belt by Martin Margiela, which have been set on fire, and he is wearing a long-sleeve knitted V-neck djellaba by Yohji Yamamoto and, warrior-like, holds a fluorescent lamp erect in his left hand. In the final image, we observe Ketuta standing alone in the kitchen. She has dropped a glass of milk on the floor and she tramples in it, with blood dripping from her bare feet. As she does so, once more she looks out at us, and we notice now that she has different-coloured eyes – her right one is green, and her left is brown (as it is in the other photographs). 108

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Figures 33–34  Andrea Giacobbe, ‘Simplex Concordia’, 1996. 109

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When we turn the pages of the spread, each of the photographs has its own momentum and there does not appear to be any strict sense of denouement taking place. On the surface, therefore, ‘Simplex Concordia’ presents us with a structural aporia and functions on the level of the postmodernist anti-narrative that tends, as Robert Scholes aptly puts it, ‘to problematize the entire process of narration and interpretation for us’ (Scholes 1980: 211). Although we may initially find the spread incohesive, its producers exhort us to try and interpret it – the tagline on the opening page states, ‘End of the millennium paranoia seeks spiritual salvation. All reasonable offers considered.’ Taking up this hermeneutic challenge, then, we propose there are two significant, interrelated ways in which to decode the latent millennial symbolism of ‘Simplex Concordia’: first, by analysing its depiction of fluid postgender identities and second, by considering the way that it deals with a putative future time in terms of apocalyptic degeneration versus redemption. Transgressing binaries and boundaries In the spread the world appears to have been turned upside down and Jason and Ketuta do not always appear to understand how to make sense of the dystopian spaces they inhabit. They wash their clothing and bodies in what passes for undiluted detergent, for instance, while Ketuta also wears a cardigan that is ablaze and she stands in a puddle of spilt milk and broken glass, her feet bloodied yet, ostensibly, without feeling any pain. Furthermore, in all the photographs their poses are wooden and somewhat cataleptic, and, although they look out at us, their gaze seems impenetrable. This sense of alienation is reinforced by the black spots that stigmatize their foreheads but is particularly heightened in the image where they cross genders and can both breastfeed. Quite clearly, Giacobbe has not represented mere earthlings or ‘pure’ human beings but bodies that are insensible to heat and discomfort and can mutate into the opposite sex. On this level, Giacobbe seems to mimic the concept of the replicant portrayed in Philip K. Dick’s futuristic novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) as a bio-robotic being that is almost impossible to distinguish from human life.3 Thus, the character Rachel is devoid of memory and has been programmed so that not only does she fail to recognize herself as a replicant, but she is notoriously difficult for the untutored eye to identify as one as well (hence the role of bladerunners like Deckard, a member of the special police force trained to unmask and tame advanced replicants). This type of being is also non-human insofar as it suffers injury without feeling it and is able to repair itself spontaneously, unlike its flesh and blood counterpart. Yet, in his narrative – and Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner – the replicants are slaves deployed in the Tyrell Corporation’s extraterrestrial colonies, whereas in ‘Simplex Concordia’ they are represented much more as autonomous beings. As such, therefore, Jason and Ketuta seem to be what Haraway has called creatures of ‘social reality … as well as … of fiction’, who inhabit a ‘postgender world’ (Haraway 1991: 149 and 150). Moreover, they exemplify the embodiment of what Matthew Gladden (2018) coins as synthetic posthumanism, which is concerned with hypothetical future entities. Taking his cue from Stefan Herbrechter (2013), he 110

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argues more particularly that, in its theoretical form, posthumanism is a matter of the imagination, which encourages us to contemplate new knowledge about what existence means in an age of digital technologies. Ultimately, as Gladden maintains, posthumanism refutes the idea that humans are the only rational beings in existence, ‘not primarily for the sake of effecting some specific change within the world but for the sake of obtaining a deeper, richer, more accurate, and more sophisticated understanding of human beings and the world in which we exist’ (2018: 41 and 43). In ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ Haraway presses this idea of transformative posthumanism further, co-opting it precisely for political and social change: ‘My cyborg myth is about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities which progressive people might explore as one part of needed political work’ (1991: 154). What was particularly at stake during the late twentieth century (and beyond) she insisted is the disruption or blurring of normative concepts concerning identities, be they sexual, racial or class-based, or any intersection of them: I do not know of any other time in history when there was greater need for political unity to confront effectively the dominations of ‘race’, ‘gender,’ ‘sexuality’, and ‘class’ … None of ‘us’ have any longer the symbolic or material capability of dictating the shape of reality to any of ‘them’. Or at least ‘we’ cannot claim innocence from practising such dominations. (1991: 157) Thus, in Haraway’s epistemology, the cyborg is ontologically disruptive and subversive, resisting the ‘dream of community and revolutionizing the social relations of the household’ (1991: 151). This reframing of household relations seems to be exactly what is taking place in ‘Simplex Concordia’. Not only is the home invaded by replicants who behave dysfunctionally within it, but the role of female as natural housekeeper and child-bearer has been breached. Home is connoted as a fundamentally messy place, and Figure 32 plays on the tension within what Elizabeth Potter has called hic mulier/haec vir (masculine woman/feminine man) (Haraway 1997: 29–32). Jason and Ketuta are depicted here as transgendered breastfeeders, which infers that now both male and female subjects have the ability to reproduce: ‘Sex, sexuality, and reproduction are central actors in high-tech myth systems structuring our imaginations of personal and social possibility’ (Haraway 1991: 169). Giacobbe’s spread contests, therefore, the idea of straight ‘reprosexuality’ (Warner 1991: 9) and generational succession by symbolizing that the human race would not die out if queer people were self-sufficient breeders. By extension, the representation of Jason as a maternal figure appears to transcend the ‘womb envy’ that Fritz Lang symbolizes in Metropolis and that Mary Ann Doane (1990: 169) also identifies as one of the chief themes of The Terminator (1984). In both films the male protagonist desires to be the generator of human life and it is through this act, Vivien Sobchak has argued, that ‘a reunion of patriarch and paternity’ takes place (1986: 8). But cyborg culture, as Haraway and Giacobbe frame it, resists such heteronormativity, nor does it merely portend a mythological vision of what may come to pass in the 111

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future. Rather, it resonates with the hopes and fears of what was already possible at the dawning of the second millennium with the widespread use of new technologies, genetic engineering and biohacking. Haraway propounds, ‘Communications technologies and biotechnologies are the crucial tools recrafting our bodies’ (1991: 164), and this is not merely a matter of speculation or science fiction.4 For, high tech and microelectronics have already enabled some individuals to recraft their bodies in the way she suggests, transgressing the threshold between human organism and machine. These include Moon Ribas, co-founder of the Trans-species Society in Barcelona, who identifies as a cyborg and has sensors implanted in his feet to perceive seismic activity; Professor Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading, who has implanted microchips into his own body; and Serge Faguet, who has spent $250,000 on digital implants that monitor and improve his body’s performance (Godwin 2018). Faguet is still in his early thirties but wants to become superhuman and live forever, relying on research in bionic engineering by the likes of the Sens Foundation in California, founded in 2009, that aims to transcend old age altogether and even make death ‘optional’ (Sens 2020). To this end, humans have already been surgically fitted with bionic organs that replace and mimic the function of natural ones, such as the pancreas and heart (Godwin 2018).5 On the one hand, therefore, the rise of digital technologies has facilitated not only the representation of hybrid human identities but their very existence as well. And on the other, gender reassignment and cloning have literally enabled the transcendence of our biological bodies and destinies, such that ‘the boundary between human and animal is thoroughly breached’ (Haraway 1991: 150). Biomedical methods of assisted reproduction have already led to the modification of DNA, the molecule that carries the blueprint for life itself, in the fertilized eggs of mammals. In experiments by Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell, for example, this resulted notoriously in the production of Dolly, a lamb whose genetic makeup was cloned from the udder of a dead ewe, in July 1996 (Silver 1998), while Peter Goodfellow and Robin Lovell-Badge successfully transformed female embryos into male ones by injecting the Sry gene into the fertilized eggs of mice (Concar 1991). There is currently an international moratorium on similar forms of cloning and genetic mutation in human beings on eugenicist grounds, witness the Human Fertilization and Embryology Act (1990) in England and Wales. Nonetheless, the founding of the Human Genome Diversity Project in 1991 to collect genetic tissue from over 700 groups of indigenous peoples across the world has opened up the potential for biotechnological engineering and ex utero forms of gestation.6 It is not for nothing, after all, that Giacobbe’s fashion spread bears the title ‘Simplex Concordia’ to allude to the potential of the simplex cell not only to replicate but also to transform itself genetically. As a corollary, we enter the evolutionary terrain of metahumanism, a form of synthetic humanism that encourages us to ponder the normative limits of human existence through encounters with the transformative metabody, in and through which flesh and bone are rematerialized. It is in this respect, as Giacobbe symbolizes it, not only are men able to become breastfeeders but human beings can swap heads as well (to which idea we return in assessing Michele’s ‘Cyborg’ runway).

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The replicant and redemptive time The significance of these transmutations takes on additional weight in the context of millennialism and, accordingly, the symbolic content of ‘Simplex Concordia’ also has a bearing on the meaning of human/post-human identities in time and space. Since Metropolis (1928), in its suturing together of the technocratic cityscape and medieval underworld, a trope of many science fiction films is the way that space and time get mashed up, with the present, past and future blending into each other, such that ‘real and virtual space can no longer be distinguished’ (Smelik 2017: 117). Figure 33, for instance, seems to harp on the idea of the Twilight of the Gods, a sacrificial event by which mankind will be redeemed; we witness Jason and Ketuta clasping hands, while she goes up in flames like some latter-day Brünnhilde and he holds up a fluorescent striplight/magic wand as if in homage to Luke Skywalker. The fictional time of ‘Simplex Concordia’, therefore, evinces Frank Kermode’s distinction between chronos, or passing time – the succession of one moment by another, which he likens to the tick-tick of a clock – and kairos, or seasonal time, which he likens to tick-tock, since it is special or commemorative and represents a sense of closure. Kairos or apocalyptic time inaugurates ‘ … an escape from chronicity, and so, in some measure, a deviation from this norm of “reality”’ (Kermode 1966: 50). As Kermode has it, then, kairos is ‘poised between beginning and end … a point in time filled with significance, charged with meaning derived from its relation to the end’ (1966: 46, 47). In other words, it is ‘time-redeeming’ time (1966: 52) that is symbolized in the penultimate photograph of the spread in the way Jason and Ketuta appear to have struck a covenant, which sediments the new social and sexual order connoted in the preceding images; indeed, the second word of title itself enlists an ethos of domestic and societal harmony, symbolized by the name of the Roman Goddess, Concordia. And yet, the final image of the spread appears to end on a disquieting note and portrays a sense of crisis, whereby Ketuta, standing on her own in the kitchen, returns us once more to a world turned upside-down (Figure 34). The presence of blood and the absence of Jason lead us to ponder on this as a scene of altercation and perhaps even of murder. In this respect it is tempting to regard Ketuta not as the (re)embodiment of Concordia but as the archetypal castrating, female double that Freud raises in his 1919 essay ‘The Uncanny’. In this, he recounts Hoffman’s story of ‘The Sand-Man’, in which Professor Spalanzani has invented Olympia, a fantastic living automaton. In due course, a young student called Nathaniel falls in love with her, but this induces his downfall, sending him into a state of madness in which he begins to confuse reality and fantasy. Thus, when he observes the doll without any eyes, it awakens in him a fear born in childhood of losing his own eyesight to ‘The Sand-Man’, a mythological character whom his mother used to invoke in order to get her children to go to bed early. This brings Freud to extrapolate that Olympia, the ‘double’ that Nathaniel first took to be a benign figure that could ward off the threat of blindness (and, in his telling, castration), ultimately becomes the ‘uncanny harbinger

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of death’ (Freud 1985: 356–7). Consequently, the closing image begs the question: what is the price, or indeed even the point, of sexual transformation and liberation if it leads to destruction and downfall? Far from simply being a castrating doubledealer, however, we must remember that Ketuta belongs to a post-Oedipal, cyborg world that has subverted the idea of penis-envy (if not castration anxiety) by enabling men and women to have gender reassignment and prosthetic surgery. As Haraway insists, ‘the cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world’ (1991: 151). In which case, the last photograph of the sequence appears to revolve around a double-take that invites us to consider the meaning of kairos on another level. Julia Kristeva argues that confrontation with certain foodstuffs, such as milk, leads to an extreme form of abjection or convulsive behaviour that brings identity to a crisis by disavowing any link with the Oedipal order of things: ‘ … that milk cream separates me from the mother and father who proffer it. “I” want none of that element, sign of their desire’ (1982: 3). Certainly, in the way that Ketuta treads in the spilt milk and the blood pours from her feet there seems to be a similar kind of reckoning with body fluids taking place. Figure 32, for example, already connotes that both she and Jason have transcended any straightforward biological relationship with milk and motherhood, which stands in marked contrast to the way we argued in Chapter 1 how Alexander McQueen’s sense of abjection led him to romanticize the figure of the menacing woman-mother. By extension, in Figure 34 the bloodstains on her feet seem to signify not just decadence and downfall but also revolution and retribution, and she bears them like the stigmata of the risen Christ as if to proclaim that not ‘man’ but ‘woman’ will be the Messiah of the new millennium. Thus, the closing image transforms the New Testament idea of kairos as the coming of God’s time, or the fulfilling of time (and what Jacques Rancière (2015: 24–5), whom we discuss in regard to Michele, refers to as ‘the redemption of time itself ’), to mean the epiphany of woman’s time, that is, of harmony. But more than this, in allying the idea of temporal concord to the genetic mutation of the simplex cell and the postgender metabody, it foretells a future that takes an unexpected turn in order to put polymorphous male and female replicants at centre stage: Cyborg writing must not be about the Fall, the imagination of a once-upon-a-time wholeness before language, before writing, before Man. Cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not on the basis of the original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other. (Haraway 1991: 175) In the final analysis, although the cyborg narrative of ‘Simplex Concordia’ connotes a world order that is still to come, it opens our eyes to Haraway’s warning that transformative, if not redemptive, time is never as remote as we imagine: ‘We require regeneration, not rebirth, and the possibilities for our reconstitution include the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender’ (Haraway 1991: 181).7 114

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Alessandro Michele and the Gucci Cyborg Some thirty-odd years after Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ was first published in 1985, Alessandro Michele, creative director of Gucci, resorted precisely to its ethos of redemption and emancipation to help conceptualize the ninety looks and mise-enscène for his inventive runway of 21 February 2018 for Milan Fashion Week. Hence, he postulated, ‘it talks about the relationship between being and becoming; about what we are and what we want to become’ (Donovan 2018), and he even presented the runway notes as a typewritten document, distributed online and to everyone attending the show, and containing ideas as if they were spontaneously articulated in their own right as a manifesto in support of Gucci’s reputation for groundbreaking fashion. Guccio Gucci founded his eponymous company in 1921 in Florence, Tuscany, initially retailing luxury leather luggage, followed by handbags in 1937, and its iconic loafers in 1952. In 1953, he opened its first New York store on Fifth Avenue and by the 1960s and 1970s it had become a truly global brand, running outlets in London, Paris, Palm Beach, Tokyo and Hong Kong (Gucci 2016). Following a period of family feuding between Aldo and Maurizio Gucci and financial instability in the 1980s, under the aegis of its American Vice-President Dawn Mello it reinforced its reputation as a global luxury fashion brand in the 1990s, hiring Tom Ford in 1994 as creative director (Tiffany 2019: 163 and 171). Currently owned by luxury parent company Kering, whose portfolio also includes Saint Laurent and Bottega Veneta, Gucci sales stood at €2.73 billion in the period July–September 2019 (Marriott). Michele has been working for them since 2002, when he was appointed by Tom Ford to lead the label’s leather handbag designs, and he eventually took over as creative director of fashion at Gucci from Frida Giannini in January 2015. From this time onward, he has steered the house away from its reputation as a producer of luxury, if safe, chic items to become a pioneer of idiosyncratic, eclectic and queer forms of dressing that contest what he refers to as ‘an aesthetic of toxic masculinity’ (Cartner-Morley May 2020b). Gucci’s brand ambassadors include the likes of American actor Jared Leto and British singer and actor Harry Styles, both of whom attended ‘Camp, Notes on Fashion’, the New York Met Gala homage to Susan Sontag on 6 May 2019 – the former wearing a floor-length evening gown and carrying a replica of his own head (an echo of the cyborg symbolism of Michele’s 2018 runway show in Milan) and the latter donning a jumpsuit with black lace sleeves and bodice. As a fashion designer, Michele is noted not just for the way he upends the norms of gendered clothing but also for his catholic taste (in both its secular and religious senses), mixing and matching clashing fabrics and styles of dress from various cultures – whether from West or East, couture or the street – and drawing on a wide knowledge of different historical and cultural reference points and practices. Thus, he contends, ‘fashion is not only about garments, about clothing. That is only part of the story’ (Marriott 2020). But this wide-ranging and iconoclastic approach to fashion design mined a particularly rich seam of associations in ‘Cyborg’, which ‘turned the fashion dial up to 11’, according to i.D magazine’s Steve Salter (2018). The mise-en-scène of the runway display took the form of a surgical theatre, complete with two operating tables and clinical overhead lighting, and 115

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adorned with green plastic walls and waiting room seating (Figure 35). ‘There’s a clinical clarity about what I am doing’, Michele explained in an interview after the show, ‘I was thinking of a space that represents the creative act. I wanted to represent the lab I have in my head. It’s physical work, like a surgeon’s’ (Moss and Bew 2018). But rather than being what Adam Geczy and Vicky Karaminas regard as a space of horror that is sealed off from the world (2020: 60–1), we propose that the ‘Cyborg’ show is one of provocation through which an obligatory worlding and new social order are envisioned (Gane and Haraway 2006: 139). The runway looks and themes The creative labour to which Michele refers resulted in ninety different and hugely playful looks that displayed an eclectic use of materials, patterns, styles and cuts. As the models paraded the collection around the theatre, they were accompanied acoustically by the intermittent beep of a medical monitor and a recording of the thirteenth-century hymn Stabat Mater that is based on the suffering of the Virgin Mary as she witnesses the crucifixion of her son Jesus Christ. There were several prevalent themes and types of dress discernible in the busy collection that Michele curated for the runway, many of them drawing inspiration from national and/or ethnic clothing in terms of styles and materials. Chief among them were the use of Russian folk dress; Hollywood cinema, such as applying the camp graphic imagery from Russ Meyer’s 1965 sexploitation film Faster, Pussycat! Kill, Kill! or the logo for Paramount Pictures onto sweaters; Art Deco brocade dresses; Italian corporate power dressing; the wide-eyed cartoon faces of Japanese manga, applied to sweaters and backpacks; ornamental Raja body jewellery and appliqué tiger motifs and brooches; and Scottish tartan and tweeds. At the same time, head and face coverings were worn for fiftythree of the looks. Oyku Bastas balanced a miniature black pagoda on top of a balaclava (Look 29) but, chiefly, they consisted of Russian headscarves, New York Yankees baseball caps and beanies (Michele has collaborated with them in the production of clothing accessories), bejewelled headpieces, Sikh-style turbans and woollen balaclavas – ranging from Scandinavian style ski masks to the gimp-inspired masks as worn by performance artist Leigh Bowery in the 1980s, and referred to as ‘knitted masks of all creepy kinds’ by the New York Times (Friedman 2018). In the context of the show’s surgical milieu, such face dressing is evocative of post-operative bandaging. However, the contrasting black mouthpiece and bright red lips of one of them, worn by three white models, also controversially flirted with blackface minstrel makeup, while the way some of the head coverings obscured the models’ faces formed what may be generally described as terrorist chic (Figure 36). Yet, if so many cross-cultural references were not going far enough, Michele further chose to layer at least two clashing styles, materials and motifs in each of the ninety

Figure 35  Dwight Hoogendijk and Unia Pakhamova, Gucci ‘Cyborg’, 2018. 116

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carefully crafted pastiche looks paraded by the models.8 Some of the most striking examples include: Look 4 – Gaston Virgolini, wearing a baseball cap, aviator glasses, a beaded red fair isle V-neck, tucked into plaid shorts, calf-length white socks and loafers, and carrying a snakeskin jacket over his shoulder; Look 7 – Zarina Green, sporting a 1920s style beaded head-dress, a floral print, baggy zip-up sports top with a double collar, an embroidered priest’s stole and bejewelled floral skirt; Look 21 – Matthijs Huizinga, wearing a head scarf, flared trouser suit with floral print and New York Yankees logo on the jacket breast, and a backpack harnessed to his torso; Look 41 - Jeppe Julius, wearing a striped blue shirt, orange and faun plaid flannel blanket, styled as a baggy overcoat, with a paisley-motif shawl around his shoulders, and knitted blackface mask (Figure 36); Look 46 – Giulio Donvito, wearing a suede zip-up sports top with baggy sleeves and geometric panels in orange, brown and grey, pink pyjama pants with a floral pattern, jewel-encrusted sandals, and a blue turban; and Look 63  – Line Kjaergaard, clad in flared orange and yellow tweed skirt and fitted black leather shirt, combined with a Sami style red coat decorated with blue woollen fringing that, along with pompoms, was also applied to the most elaborate head-dress in the show and – worn with a knitted mask – completely concealed the model’s face. Some Looks, such as 2 and 67, even involved the models being veiled in an extra layer of diaphanous tulle over their garments, as if to suggest they had arrived straight off one of the operating tables with surgical gowns or, if not that, clothing was being worn straight off the rail or fresh from the dry cleaners and still waiting to be unwrapped (Figure 36). More outrageous was the way several of the Looks incorporated prosthetic props by the Makinarium special effects studio in Cinecittà, Rome, founded by Leonardo Cruciano, Nicola Sganga and Angelo Poggi, which has also collaborated with film directors Ridley Scott and Danny Boyle. In order to satisfy what Cruciano refers to as Michele’s ‘very precise ideas’ and ‘fantasy so intense’, they took six months to fabricate (Cardini 2018). Unia Pakhamova (Look 1) and Dwight Hoogendijk (Look 71; Figure 35), for instance, were each sent along the runway carrying a replica of their own head; Leopold van der Not d’Aasche appeared with goat’s horns sprouting from his head (Look 85; Figure 37); Felix Pettersson had eyes on the back of his hands (Look 45); Lily Nova sported the third eye in the middle of her forehead, in a nod to Hindu philosophy (Look 90; Figure 38); while Caleb Elijah carried an iguana (Look 42), Oslo Grace nursed a sleeping baby dragon – described as a puppy in the show notes (Look 57; Figure 40) – and Gail Pelizzari held a red, white and black Kingsnake that Michele has incorporated into his collections since 2017 to symbolize wisdom and power (Look 22). It was on this symbolic note also that the show finally came to a close, as a group of security guards wearing black suits emerged from among the spectators, joined hands to form a protective human chain, whispered among themselves and then dispersed from whence they came.

Figure 36  Jeppe Julius and Oumie Jammeh, Gucci ‘Cyborg’, 2018. 119

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‘Undisciplining’ bodies While the Gucci Cyborg runway acknowledges the global reach of the fashion brand with its multicultural references, as we have noted, it also pays homage to Donna Haraway: ‘The collection takes the shape of a genuine Cyborg Manifesto (D.J. Haraway), in which the hybrid is metaphorically praised as a figure that can overcome the dualism and dichotomy of identity’ (Gucci 2018). And yet the way the chain of security guards closed the spectacle echoes Michele’s decision to begin the advance press release and show notes by referring not to her but with the following statement on the institutional regulation and control of bodies, attributed to M. Foucault (sic): The challenge of the disciplinary power is to impose a precise identity on the subject. This operation is carried out placing the subject inside binary fixed categories, as the normal/abnormal one, with the specific intent of classifying, controlling and regulating the subject. The regulative strategies prove so alluring that the subject voluntarily chooses to stick to that particular categorization, claiming its positioning inside a given social structure. In this frame of reference, the regulation of the living body uses the concept of identity as a device of bio-political control. (Gucci 2018) The exact provenance of the quotation is not cited and nor can the words be traced directly to any of Foucault’s writings. But Michele enlists it to synthesize and plunge in medias res to Foucault’s complex ideas concerning the dynamic interplay of power, discourse and bodies (by which he often refers to institutions as well as human beings) that he raises in seminal works, such as Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975) and The History of Sexuality, Volume 1 (1976), as well as the biopolitics that he began to assess in Society Must be Defended, the lectures he delivered to the Collège de France between 1975 and 1976. In all these instances Foucault argues how the subject accepts and internalizes the will of power exercised by legal, medical and religious discourses and, in so doing, contributes to their own subjection, visibly captive as both the subject and the object to an invisible power or force at work ‘outside’ themselves (Foucault 1978: 100). He argues, therefore, ‘In every society, the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures … It is in discourse that power and knowledge are joined together’ (Foucault 1981: 52). At any rate, such a theoretical framework was entirely overlooked by the majority of the fashion journalists who reviewed the runway, while one who did refer to it (and who has a doctoral degree) concluded, ‘it was nearly incomprehensible’ (Segran 2018). Part of the problem for critics and spectators alike was that Michele did not pause to reflect in the show notes on why he was specifically citing Foucault or to contextualize the relationship between theory and practice. He was not forthcoming, for example, on whether the performative use of a religious hymn for a fashion spectacle transgresses or underscores the discursive role of music in normalizing Christian beliefs. By contrast, when interviewed after the Figure 37  Leopold van der Not d’Aasche, Gucci ‘Cyborg’, 2018. 121

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show, he had a little more to say about the surgical setting, arguing that it ‘represented the way we change ourselves, our physicality and the idea of possibility’ (Donovan 2018). But he also concluded somewhat gratuitously, ‘Clothes just help us become who we want to be’, and on no level does he intimate that the symbolic use of an operating theatre and the beep of a cardiac monitor to display fashion significantly challenge the institutional power of medical discourse. Rather, Michele breathlessly moved on to contest the Foucauldian ideas on the regulation of human identities he had just cited – much as Haraway did in her original manifesto of 1985, where she contends that he evinces a ‘form of power at its implosion. The discourse of biopolitics gives way to technobabble’ (1991: 245, n.4). For her, Foucault’s version of biopolitics is ‘flaccid’ (150) when compared to the dynamism of cyborg politics that she regards as ‘a much more potent field of operations’ (1991: 163). In fact, Foucault himself also contended in Society Must be Defended that power only has meaning when it is exercised in relation to freedom and resistance (2004: 29), and in his essay ‘The Subject and Power’ he raises the ongoing agonism or struggle in which the two concepts are inseparable: The relationship between power and freedom’s refusal to submit cannot, therefore, be separated. The crucial problem of power is not that of voluntary servitude (how could we seek to be slaves?). At the very heart of the power relationship, and constantly provoking it, are the recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom. (Foucault 1982: 790) Foucault’s analysis of biopolitics in work such as this argues how the norms of sex, sexuality and corporeal pleasure, which have been regulated and normalized according to various discourses of institutional power, are not fixed phenomena but rather dynamic ones that are open to resistance and redefinition by individuals: ‘Thus, it is not power but the subject which is the general theme of my research’ (1982: 778). The Gucci show notes continued in a similar vein, endorsing resistance to the imposition of any identity norms in the following terms: Identity, though, is neither a natural matter nor a preset category, which can be imposed with violence. It’s not an immutable and fixed fact, rather a social and cultural construction and, as such, it’s a matter of choice, joining, invention. Identity, thus, is a never-ending process, keen on new determinations each time. The consciousness of how everything is socially built, even who we are, opens a field of fresh possibilities to performatively explore. A field of liberty and responsibility in which anybody can become who he/she really wants to be, getting social expectations and personal desires back in the game. (Gucci 2018) Despite the uniform ectomorphism of the models whom Michele selected for the runway, they displayed a polymorphous and performative attitude to identity, though the Figure 38  Lily Nova, Gucci ‘Cyborg’. 123

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postgender ‘pluriverse’ (Gucci 2018) he created did not stretch to including anybody over the age of thirty. There were fifty-one who identify as female, thirty-four as male, and two as trans – Oslo Grace and Teddy Quinlivan – but they all demonstrated a considerable blurring of binary gender and sex codes in the way they wore their outfits, makeup and hair, and performatively adopted the same blank expression, air of nonchalance and ambling gait as they proceeded before the spectators. In particular, several male models donned feminine dress, as in the case of the outfit worn by Matthijs Huizinga (Look 21) mentioned above, or the red silk, décolleté evening gown with padded shoulders worn by Oleg Ulrich (Look 43). Otherwise, hairstyles (Looks 3, 11, 23, 38, 39, 59, 73 and 81), head-dresses and masks (Looks 32, 46, 47, 51 and 60), loose-fitting outfits (Looks 19, 27, 45 and 56), or a combination of all or any of these elements (Looks 4, 12, 17, 25, 35, 36, 41, 64, 78 and 82) rendered the identity of the respective models wearing them indeterminate and, to some critics in the popular press at least, confounding (Figure 35). Carly Stern (2018), for instance, titled her review of the show for the British Daily Mail, ‘A (cat)walking nightmare!’ in which ‘ … one male model even carrying what looked like a baby dragon from Game of Thrones’. The model was, in fact, Oslo Grace who is nonbinary and whose preferred pronouns were they/them in 2018 (Figure 40). Inasmuch they represent human identities as fluidly multicultural and postgender, however, the Gucci models evince once again the Foucauldian idea of assujetissement or subjection that we discussed in the previous chapters and his analysis of how individuals are not simply docile or disciplined bodies but able to disrupt the normative hierarchies that society aims to impose on them (Foucault 1991: 133–8). Hence, Michele contended that the ‘Cyborg’ runway ‘talks about the relationship between being and becoming’ (Donovan 2018); this idea evokes Rosi Braidotti’s concept of the ‘becoming-machine’, a cybernetic entity which ‘actualizes the relational powers of a subject that is no longer cast in a dualistic frame’ (2013: 92). Simultaneously, the non-binary coding of the entire collection adumbrates the developing interest Michele had in the institution of fashion as a heterotopia, ‘a world within a world’, as his partner Giovanni Attili went on to coin it in the show notes he wrote for the Gucci runway that took place in Milan on 22 September 2019.9 Accordingly, Michele’s assertion that ‘we are the Dr. Frankenstein of our lives’ (Friedman 2018) aligns itself with what Foucault designated as ‘heterotopias of deviation: those in which individuals whose behavior is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm are placed’ (Foucault 1986: 25). Nonetheless, significant questions remain concerning the relationship of theory to practice and the extent to which the ‘Cyborg’ runway can be seen to deal with the disruption of power and normalization of human identities that Foucault analyses, especially when it comes to Michele’s treatment of race and ethnicity.

Compromising race and diversity If Andrea Giacobbe’s representation of the household of the future in ‘Simplex Concordia’ centred exclusively on white replicant identities, at least Michele acknowledged a more 124

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multiracial and multicultural cyborg heterotopia with his runway show, including four female black models (Haytal Blacwood, Oumie Jammeh (Figure 36), Achok Majak and Shanelle Nyasiase), three black males (Caleb Elijah, Thomas Riguelle and Cheikh Tall), four females of Southeast Asian heritage (Layla Ong, Gao Jim, Xie Chaoyu and Mae Mei Lapres) (Figure 39) and one male (Eun Sang). To this end, Michele mobilized fashion intersectionally to mix not only the gender identities of the models but their racial and ethnic ones as well. Hence, the prevalence of Raja-inspired items such as body jewellery and tiger brooches (Looks 8, 20, 25, 26, 30, 32, 36, 37, 45, 48, 55, 68, 69, 71, 72, 78, 79, 85 and 89 – Figures 35 and 36). The problem, however, was there weren’t any models of South Asian heritage on the runway to display them. Furthermore, Mae Mei Lapres sported a turban hat along with a tweed jacket, red leather pants and Art Deco body jewellery (Look 53; Figure 39), while turban hats were worn on four further occasions by white male and female models (Looks 46, 51, 62 and 66). Not surprisingly, this tactic caused some consternation among the Sikh community, for whom the turban is not a hat and rather a dastar cloth that is twined by men around the head to conceal their long hair, worn as a token of symbolic affinity with gurus. As Harjinder Singh Kukreja @SinghLions attested on Instagram on 22 February 2018. ‘dear @gucci, the Sikh Turban is not a hot new accessory for white models but an article of faith for practising Sikhs. Your models have used Turbans as “hats” whereas Sikhs tie them neatly fold-by-fold. Using fake Sikhs/Turbans is worse than selling fake Gucci products’. Within hours of posting, his comment had received 5,476 likes but worse was, indeed, to follow with the outcry that erupted against the golliwog blackface woollen masks worn by three of the white models with a couple of them, Matthieu Perrais (Look 36) and Jeppe Julius (Look 41), respectively modelling this kind of mask as well as a Raja tiger brooch (Figure 36). As a result, in July 2019 Gucci appointed its first diversity officer, lawyer Renée Tirado, but she resiled from working full-time in the position one year later and was replaced by the company’s head of human resources, Luca Bozzo, and the African-American activist model Bethan Hardison. Nonetheless, as late as winter 2019, Gucci was forced to remove from sale a polo-neck jumper that had also referenced the blackface motif of the ‘Cyborg’ balaclava, with Michele regarding it as ‘an intolerable insult’ for which ‘I am heartfully sorry’ (Young 2019). The intention of Michele to portray a world that is inclusive on all levels, representing ‘the invitation to diverge, not conforming to univocal and other-directed identity models’ (Gucci 2018), therefore, is somewhat compromised. His unequivocal apology, furthermore, exemplifies what Minh-Ha T. Pham aptly calls ‘racial plagiarism’, such that it directly acknowledges the injustice done in the name of global(ized) fashion by seizing ‘authorial identity, control and capital away from the source community’ (2017: 74), in contrast to the more anodyne term cultural appropriation that euphemistically ‘blurs the dynamics of power’ between the designer and the cultures from which s/he borrows (2017: 73). This distinction underscores the idea that Frantz Fanon expressed some sixty years ago about how colonialism is a perverted form of logic that distorts and destroys the history of those it oppresses (Fanon 1963: 210–11) and it applies equally to the coopting of other ethnological phenomena in the ‘Cyborg’ collection, such as Sami-style 125

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masks and Manga cartoons. Yet, such double standards can also be levelled at other Italian fashion houses for whom, as South African fashion photographer Kudzai King asserts, racial otherness is a ‘fascination and dislike all at once’ (Elan 2020). This point was pressed formally by black fashion designers Stella Jean and Edward Buchanan in ‘Do #BLM in Italian Fashion?’, sent to Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, and Marni, and in which they are upbraided for the persistent racial – if not racist – stereotyping in their designs and publicity. They aimed fire in particular at Marni’s ‘Jungle Mood’ Spring-Summer 2020 collection and an image posted online that represented a black male model with chained ankles, describing it as ‘the worst example presenting black bodies through the white gaze’ (Elan 2020a). By extension, such insensitivity to the objectification and commodification of racial and ethnic identities evidently spells trouble for Michele in his theoretical framing of the Gucci cyborg through a Foucauldian lens. Foucault himself has frequently been accused of whitewashing the genealogy or counter-history of the biopower he propounds by overlooking, for example, the role of slavery in it (Chow 2018; Howell and RichterMontpetit 2019). Yet, in Society Must be Defended (2004), he assesses the discourse of race wars and their transmogrification into racism in Europe since the seventeenth century as a matter of dialectics. Hence, he argues, race wars were initially a form of revolutionary resistance for the marginalized and disenfranchised of all kinds  – the poor, the mad, the sexually deviant; that is to say, he regards these battles essentially as if they are a class struggle in which the powerless oppose and reveal sovereign power as an unstable lie (2004: 49). But – as he argues was the case in Nazi Germany (which he also discusses briefly in the final pages of volume one of The History of Sexuality) – when race war is insidiously upended and weaponized by the centre to support the biopower and supremacy of certain ethnic and social groups against the threat posed from those at their margins, then it turns racist: ‘It is no longer a battle in the sense that a warrior would understand the term, but a struggle in the biological sense … Racism is, quite literally, revolutionary discourse in its inverted form’ (2004: 80 and 81). Of course, Michele does not refer to any of these Foucauldian ideas concerning attitudes to class or race in the ‘Cyborg’ show notes and yet, ironically, they help to illuminate the tensions and inconsistencies that are evident in his own treatment of race. On one level, the positive call to arms for society to reject the binaries of ‘normal/ abnormal’ and the parading of shape-shifting identities on the runway that ‘transgress the normative discipline’, while on another level, the recognition after the event of his own sovereign status as a fashion designer, negatively empowered to co-opt and plagiarize at will the cultural artefacts of other peoples, non-Western and otherwise, in the creative quest for self-expression. This was a conflict he was to encounter again in September 2019, when he premiered the looks for Gucci Spring-Summer 2020. Once more, he resorted to deconstructing the Foucauldian concept of the disciplined body, sending models down the runway under

Figure 39  Mae Mei Lapres, Gucci ‘Cyborg’, 2019. 127

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harsh lighting in white utility garments that resembled straightjackets, as if they were the passive inmates in a lunatic asylum. But, in protest against being treated merely as a docile puppet, one of the models, non-binary musician and artist Ayesha Tan-Jones (aka Yaya Bones), held up their hands, as if in surrender, and on to their palms had written in block capitals, ‘MENTAL HEALTH IS NOT FASHION’ (Eckhardt 2020).10

A ‘genuine cyborg manifesto’? How, then, does any of this square with Michele’s avowed source of inspiration for the Milan runway of February 2018  – Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’? For her part, much like Foucault, race must be regarded in intersectional terms, one identity among several others in a broader project to reform both society and politics. To this end, she cites Chela Sandoval who ‘theorised a hopeful model of political identity called “oppositional consciousness”, born of the skills for reading webs of power by those refused stable membership in the social categories of race, sex, or class’ (Haraway 1991: 155), and she reinforces this with a point that we have already cited apropos of Giacobbe’s replicants but is worth restating here in the context of Michele’s runway, ‘I do not know of any other time in history when there was greater need for political unity to confront effectively the dominations of “race”, “gender”, “sexuality”, and “class”’(1991: 157). Clearly, he is of a like mind when it comes to expressing solidarity with this kind of intersectional identity politics, reiterating in the show notes: ‘Gucci Cyborg is posthuman … It’s a biologically indefinite and culturally aware creature’ (Gucci 2018). But he continues: The Cyborg, in fact, is a paradoxical creature keeping together nature and culture, masculine and feminine, normal and alien, psyche and matter. Conflicting with any category grid, the Cyborg is the expression that blends different evolving identities. Hybrid and shifting identities, built on multiple belongings, that transgress the normative discipline. It is notable here that once more Michele does not refer specifically to race or class and that his concern for fluid and alien identities centres chiefly on the categories of gender, sex and sexuality. To this extent, therefore, the show’s medical mise-en-scène functions as a delivery room for the manifestation of all kinds of ‘mongrel identity under constant transformation’ (Gucci 2018). As we have seen, Michele’s predilection is for youthful androgynous, gynadrous and transgender models, whose identity is, in turn, disguised by the outfits and masks they wear on the runway. The face coverings and garments worn by eighteen of the models for the Cyborg runway completely veiled their sex, while eight of the male models and five of the females were cross-dressed. More especially, for Looks 32, 35, 41, 63 and 76, the models’ bodies were completely shrouded from head to toe. Much like the clothing worn in ‘Simplex Concordia’, therefore, Michele eschews the stereotypical idea of futuristic fashion as metallic, synthetic and shiny. 128

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And yet, notwithstanding that the Gucci runway looks contest normative sex and gender binaries, it is doubtful Haraway would regard the acts of disguise and crossdressing they entailed as sufficiently transformative or iconoclastic when it comes to cyborg culture. In fact, since writing ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, she has become increasingly perplexed by the elastic way ideas concerning hybrid identities have been interpreted, declaring, ‘I have trouble with the way people go for a utopian post-gender world … Still, human/posthuman is much too easily appropriated by the blissed-out, “Let’s all be post humanists and find our next teleological evolutionary stage in some kind of transhumanist techno-enhancement”’ (Gane and Haraway 2006: 137 and 140). Here, she foreshadows similar concerns about the epistemological definition of posthumanism expressed by Dieter Birnbacher, for whom the term acts more like a slogan than a welldefined concept (2008: 96), and Stefan Herbrechter, for whom it is ‘radically open’ in meaning (2013: 69). Without wishing to disparage Michele as being ‘blissed out’, therefore, it would be difficult to state that the majority of the ‘mongrel identities’ parading in ‘Gucci’s pluriverse’ can significantly be classified as either posthuman or cyborg, at least when compared to Giacobbe’s representation of the other worldliness of Jason and Ketuta in ‘Simplex Concordia’. That is to say, queer and trans-subjects may qualify as postgender, undermining conventional boundaries between masculinity and femininity, but this doesn’t necessarily mean they also spill over into the status of the posthuman. ‘The Dr Frankenstein of our lives’ Nonetheless, the Gucci runway pinpoints that human and posthuman beings co-exist and it portrays the similarities and differences between them on quite another level in the Looks where Michele incorporates prosthetic devices, through which the models’ identities become more challenging and groundbreaking (Figures 35, 37 and 38): ‘The symbol of an emancipatory possibility through which we can decide what we are’ (Gucci 2018). Sported as they are on the runway, fake heads, goat’s horns worn as if by a mythological faun, and eyes on the back of hands and on the forehead could be regarded as no more than speculative fashion accessories. However, considered alongside the surgical references and operating tables, they can be interpreted also as an excessive example of synthetic posthumanism of the imagination, which we have already identified at play in ‘Simplex Concordia’ and that is also evident in another of Giacobbe’s fashion spreads, ‘La Comédie 2000’, produced for Dazed and Confused (December/January 2000). In the latter, a young girl appears with diabolic horns alongside a man whose enlarged head is too big for his body. By this measure, it is possible what Michele had in mind, when he proclaimed in a post-show interview that we are all ‘The Dr. Frankenstein of our lives’ (Friedman 2018), was an idea Haraway expressed in ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’: ‘Single vision produces worse illusions than double vision or many-headed monsters’ (1991: 154).11 In her review of the show, Tiziana Cardini (2018) indirectly alludes to the same point, observing about the models carrying their own heads, ‘Let’s call it a metaphor for carrying the spiritual burden of one’s own evolution and self-awareness.’ 129

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And, of course, the sense of spiritual transcendence to which she refers applies not just to prosthetic heads. For, located in the forehead, the third eye is one of seven psychic chakras in ancient Hindu philosophy, associated with the Indian deity Shiva and the attainment of wisdom and insight. Rather than being thought of exclusively in terms of posthumanism, the dense interplay of cultural references and the bodily mutations enacted in Michele’s runway attest to a desire, in his own words, to ‘transcend dualisms … the courageous affirmation of the self and its singularity’ (Gucci 2018) or to reiterate, ‘We are the Dr. Frankenstein of our lives … all hybrids now’ (Friedman 2018). As in the case of ‘Simplex Concordia’, therefore, what we encounter here is the transformative metabody, such that, as Jaime Del Val and Lorenz Sorgner contend, the metamorphosis enacted is ‘post-anatomical’, producing a kind of quasi-human monster (Gladden 2018: 85). The Australian performance artist Stelarc has been modifying his body in this way for the past thirty years, for instance, having an extra ear grafted onto his arm in 2007 (Herath, Kroos and Stelarc 2016: 3–28). Where the mongrel or monstrous figurations of the Gucci ‘pluriverse’ most coincide with Haraway’s thinking, however, is in the inextricable relationship they convey between human and animal life (much as McQueen did with the bird-woman of his ‘WOC’ collection), and her emphasis on the Chthulucene epoch in which planet earth will survive only by harnessing the power of human and non-human species alike (Haraway 2016; Figures 37 and 40).12 Some critics traced the baby dragon that Oslo Grace cradled, as well as the padded and studded black doublet he wore, to the influence of the cult fantasy drama Game of Thrones, screened by HBO between April 2011 and May 2019 (Petrarca 2018; Stern 2018). Furthermore, Stern stated that Gucci had been inspired by the story of a baby dragon being discovered by David Hart in his garage in Oxfordshire in March 2004. He had apparently found a specimen jar containing the dragon, along with a note claiming it had been created by German scientists in the 1890s, who had preserved it in formaldehyde and sent it to the Natural History Museum, London. In fact, it was fabricated from rubber by model makers Crawley Creatures and the hoax was elaborated as a publicity stunt by Hart to kick-start the stalled publishing career of his friend, author Alistair Mitchell, whose nom de plume is PR Moredun (Wolff 2012: 82). Haraway herself had begun to speculate in A Cyborg Manifesto how ‘the boundary between human and animal is thoroughly breached’ in posthuman societies (1991: 150) and how ‘a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines’ (154). But it is in subsequent writing that she muses in more detail on how humans and non-humans co-exist mutually as ‘socially active partners’ (1997:8; 2016). In The Companion Species Manifesto (2003) she ruminates particularly on the implications of the reciprocal tactile relationship she shares with her own pet dog and, by extension, the way this haptic sensorium hinges on the matter of space and time: ‘When my dog and I touch, where and when are we? Which worldings and which sorts of temporalities and materialities erupt into this touch?’ (Gane and Haraway 2006: 145). On the question of worlding and temporality, then, it is significant how in another symbolic turn Michele referred to the dragon as a puppy in the show notes, arguing: ‘Gucci cyborg is post-human … It’s a 130

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biologically indefinite and culturally aware creature’, while he also concluded, ‘what can seem atypical, anomalous, flawed, to a normalizing eye, acquires a new legitimacy. A new breath’ (Gucci 2018). Fashion, the cyborg and anachronism When Haraway speaks of the new sodalities that will emerge from the ‘obligatory worlding’ of cyborg culture she describes this as a ‘very situated becoming’ (Gane & Haraway 2006: 145) such that ‘Companion species’ thinking inquires into the projects that construct us a species, philosophical or otherwise … You also can’t think species without being inside science fiction’ (140). She continues this train of thought by contemplating the bearing of time and history on what changes to human/nonhuman identities have taken and can take place, ‘I think the cyborg story is a fairly historically limited one and it’s not all human–machine joining … You can’t do “human” ahistorically either, or as if “human” were one thing’ (146). Just as Giacobbe’s ‘Simplex Concordia’ invites us to contemplate the concept of the posthuman in regard to harmonious redemptive time, or kairos, then Michele’s ‘Cyborg’ likewise entails a similar encounter with temporal rebirth and renewal. But in criss-crossing time the way his designs do, he troubles any linear understanding or interpretation of history; instead, he seeks to embody styles from the past and the future in the present, and on both levels, to go against the grain of mainstream fashion and the prevailing taste of the period in which he lives and works. As well as drawing comparisons with ethnic dress from across the world, for instance, his collection mixes and matches garments and accessories that take inspiration from Renaissance dress (Looks 6, 57 and 88), nineteenth-century dandyism (Looks 64 and 85), interwar Hollywood cinema and Art Deco (Looks 19, 23, 26, 31, 76, 81 and 90), and the androgynous style of 1970s and 1980s pop stars, such as David Bowie and Prince (Looks 11, 17, 79 and 81). Equally, the unconventional use of traditional objects  – a pagoda worn on top of the head (Look 29) – and the deconstructive cut of a jacket or coat with side slits functioning as armholes (Figure 39; Looks 9, 45, 53 and 78) nod to what will or could be worn in the future. Evidently, this could be regarded as nothing more than another case of postmodernist pastiche or style raiding by the fashion industry, a kind of faddish ‘fashionable and popular posthumanism’ that exists only in a commercial context rather than a ‘serious and philosophical one’ (Herbrechter 2013: 22). But both the fluid identities on the ‘Cyborg’ runway and Michele’s show notes reveal the ethos behind the collection is not a matter of style for style’s sake but underscore his intense interest in history, time and space. Consequently, this approach raises deeper questions about the use of anachronism and what we expect history and contemporary fashion should be, indeed, what constitutes the ‘obligatory worlding’ of being a companion species itself: ‘Who are we, when are we, where are we, and what is to be done? In that sense the “Cyborg Manifesto” is in a political tradition’ (Haraway 2006: 156). In his discursive analysis of what anachronism means and why it matters, philosopher Jacques Rancière asserts, ‘Only, let us take note, anachronism is not a question of facts. 131

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It is a question of thought’ (2015: 28). Thus, he disputes the historiographical approach of the Annales school in France and the likes of Lucien Febre, both of whom organize the passing of time into discrete chronological epochs and insist on history being a scientific discourse, based on a sense of belonging and the eternal unity of time and place: ‘Historical subjects must “resemble” their time, which is to say, they must resemble the principle of their co-presence’ (2015: 34). In this sense, Febre regards anachronism as counterfactual, the ‘sin that can’t be forgiven’ (2015: 21), since it not merely mixes up chronological dates but goes against the grain of scientific proof, as when someone breaches their Zeitgeist or ‘a thought makes its home in a scene to which it does not belong’ (2015: 29 and 44). He contests, for instance, the concept that Rabelais could have been a Christian apostate during the sixteenth century, when such an idea would have been regarded heretical and, thereby, impossible. In contrast, Rancière regards this as a conceit that privileges a certain idea of long time or time as eternity in order to refute anachronism, which for him ‘is not the confusion of dates but the confusion of epochs’ (2015: 24). Whereas historians are expected to verify their sources, the same criterion is not applied to cultural producers like Michele (hence he omits an exact citation for Foucault in the show notes). Nonetheless, Rancière is untroubled by such lack of facticity and he sides with Aristotle’s contention in the Poetics that ‘poetry is more philosophical than history’ (2015: 25), because it ‘utters universal truths’ that entertain ‘what is possible in terms of probability and necessity’ (Aristotle 2013: 28). Rancière propounds, therefore, that ‘Anachronism, before defining the requirements of the historian, defines those of poetry and fiction’ (2015: 23). But, simultaneously, he exposes the paradox that, both in attesting the ‘truth’ of history as eternal and defining linear epochs according to the possibility of phenomena ‘co-belonging’ in time, the Annales school resorts (if surreptitiously) to poetics as much as the creative writer: ‘Thus anachronism comes under the truth of poetry before it comes under that of the scholar. And it is in the debate on the rights of fiction that the characteristics of this concept inherited by historians will be defined’ (2015: 24). It is instructive, then, that Rancière enlists two concerns that are relevant to how we could justify anachronism in Michele’s runway. First, he gives a concrete example of how some things may just be factual errors rather than mortal sins against the veracity of history: It is the very idea of anachronism as error about time that must be deconstructed. To say that Diogenes had an umbrella is simply, in so far as we know, an error about the accessories available to Athenians in the fourth century BCE. There is no particular reason to put this in a specific class of errors that would be ‘errors against time’. (2015: 45)

Figure 40  Oslo Grace, Gucci ‘Cyborg’, 2019. 133

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Second, he argues the Platonic ideal of a social economy that allows time to think and rationalize only to philosophers and, by implication historians, is undermined by creative and proactive producers or artisans, ‘who escape their condition, who want to occupy themselves with more than their “own affairs”, and engage with the affairs of the city, even the affairs of philosophy’ (2015: 39). Yet what probabilities does Michele’s poetic reliance on anachronism and ‘confusion of epochs’ (2015: 24) in his ‘Cyborg’ runway connote? On one level, it challenges what we expect human/posthuman subjects should look like and wear, and at which period in time – that the very dichotomy human/posthuman is an anachronism, given the two entities are, if not entirely interchangeable, at least mutually intertwined in time and space. As Michele’s runway reveals, this is an ontological issue; that is, how are we to know precisely what cyborg fashion is or will be like at a specific time when opposition to anachronism is itself not a matter of certainty, ‘something did not exist at a given date’, but rather ‘the claim that something could not have existed at this date’ (Rancière 28).13 It is in this vein also, as Tony Davies has pointed out, that even the notion coined in the late eighteenth century of a universal, sovereign human nature ‘unconditioned by time, place or circumstance’ is, if not mythological, an anachronism, and one that is ‘still deeply engrained in contemporary consciousness and everyday common sense’ (2008: 24 and 25). As much as Foucault’s genealogical approach to history considers what is usually overlooked or omitted from the master narrative of events, Michele’s eclectic fashion designs  – alongside Giacobbe’s photography and Haraway’s writing  – iterate that the time of the cyborg symbolizes how none of us, whether human, posthuman or nonhuman, are static entities but always have been and will be mutable beings. Such a fluid or anachronistic concept of temporality and identities goes against the grain of historiographical concerns with the possibility for establishing whether something is eternally ‘true’ and the idea that ‘to exist is to belong to or to “suit” a time. It is to “suit” a concept of time identified with the principle of sufficient reason’ (Rancière 2015: 44). Instead, the aim of anachronism is ‘to undo a double knot: the knot of time with the possible and its knot with the eternal’ (46). It is this denouement that returns us also to a reckoning with cyborg culture, posthumanism and species thinking – however messy it may be – through which ‘boundary lines and rosters of actors – human and nonhuman – remain permanently contingent, full of history, open to change’ (Haraway 1997: 67–8).

Conclusion: Towards emancipatory possibilities The idea of the producer as poet that Rancière enlists to substantiate the role of anachronism to illuminate the ‘what could have been possible’ in and across time would appear to bring us full circle to the poetic text that we analysed in Chapter 1. Although we may find echoes between Michele and McQueen in their creative treatment of time, history and bodies, there are some significant differences between them as well. McQueen’s the ‘Widows of Culloden’ collection for Fall-Winter 2006, for instance, 134

Loving the Alien: Fashion and Cyborg Identities

signifies a personal reckoning with his own past that evinces the pre-symbolic order of Kristeva’s semiotic chora in such a way as to reaffirm the bond between the child (in this case, McQueen himself) and the figure of woman-mother (his mother and sister, and Isabella Blow). By contrast, the anachronistic mixing of styles in Michele’s ‘Cyborg’ collection portends a more universal post-symbolic order whose potential is yet to be fully realized  – one in which creatures, both human and posthuman, will inhabit a future postgender pluriverse, much as Jason and Ketuta contest the norm of straight ‘reprosexuality’ in Giacobbe’s fashion spread ‘Simplex Concordia’. And yet, as Chiuri’s ‘We Should All be Feminists’ T-shirt demonstrates, there is some circularity between the semiotic and (post)symbolic orders, inasmuch as her act of l’écriture feminine is a call for sexual, social and political equality and – by implication – a better future for all women and men in rejecting the Law of the Father. In the final analysis, it could be argued that a T-shirt costing some $710 or cyborg runway models carrying replicas of their own heads make little or no impact on the lives of most people in society. While on this level the ‘world within a world’ that is fashion and everyday existence in the world itself appear to be polarized, they do intersect in some significant ways. The key global event of 2020 – the outbreak and rapid spread of the Coronavirus pandemic and the social distancing that Covid-19 entails – has made this abundantly clear, having a huge effect on the general public and practitioners in the fields of fashion design and publishing alike. The Guardian’s ‘Fashion for All Ages’ feature that we discussed in Chapter 2, for instance, was abruptly suspended in late March 2020 after running for over ten years, while the fashion week global runways were cancelled and replaced by digital presentations in 2020. By the same measure, this also led major fashion houses to ponder that the creation of so many different looks and the imperative to produce seasonal designs to display in major cities twice every year are wasteful material practices. Thus, Michele began to reappraise in his Instagram account the baroque lavishness of his own shows for Gucci in the following terms: Our reckless actions have burned the house we live in. We conceived of ourselves as separated from nature, we felt cunning and almighty … So much haughtiness made us lose our sisterhood with the butterflies, the flowers, the trees and the roots. So much outrageous greed made us lose the harmony and the care, the connection and the belonging. All of this is clearly a far cry from the idea of fashion as a safe space or heterotopic garden. Rather, in harnessing consumerism to the ecological needs of planet Earth, it chimes with the World Health Organization’s call for inclusivity and the setting aside of national interests and differences in order to overcome the life-threatening global consequences of Covid-19: ‘None of us will be safe until everyone is safe’ (Adhanom and von der Leyen 2020). To this extent, until society is prepared to recognize the multifarious identities that we have addressed in this and the preceding chapters of this book as different from, yet intersectional with, each other, it could likewise be argued that ‘none of us will be safe’. This isn’t to pretend that fashion could ever have the 135

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solutions to all of the social, political, economic and ecological problems that we have to face in a rapidly changing world. But, if cultural intermediaries such as Giacobbe and Michele have the power to mobilize fashion and identity politics to express how humans, posthumans and non-humans could live in harmony in the twenty-first century, the idea of redemptive time and rebirth that their work embodies may yet bear fruit as ‘the symbol of an emancipatory possibility through which we can decide what we are’ (Gucci 2018).

Notes 1

See Jobling (2002) for an earlier assessment of this work. We have revised and recontextualized it alongside Michele for the purpose of this chapter.

2

A similar, dysfunctional bathroom scenario is also included in ‘La Comédie 2000’, which Giacobbe produced for Dazed and Confused (December/January 2000). In this spread, a double-page opening represents a young girl with diabolic horns in the guise of Humanity and a man representing God both standing in baths of water while wearing their clothes.

3

In Dick’s narrative human beings are able to detect replicants because they possess the sense of empathy, which the replicants do not. In the film, it is not so much a lack of empathy that demarcates the replicant, but a lack of memories. For one of several illuminating studies of Blade Runner, see Kerman (1991).

4

To this extent it is also worth citing how Ursula Le Guin in her science-fiction novel of 1969, Left Hand of Darkness, dealt with the significant question of the relationship of gender neutrality and reproducibility by enabling the King to bear his own child: ‘I suspect the distinction between a maternal and a paternal instinct is scarcely worth making: the parental instinct, the wish to protect, to further, is not a sex-linked characteristic …King Argaven had announced his expectation of an heir … an heir of the body, king-sun. The King was pregnant’ (2017: 99).

5

Contrariwise, the sinister implications of cloning humans for the harvesting of their organs are the theme of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Never Let Me Go (2005). Its narrative is set in latetwentieth-century England, when its chief protagonists Kathy, Ruth and Tommy attend a special boarding school called Hailsham, directed by ‘Madame’. Ishiguro concentrates on the emotional and moral life of the characters and their indoctrination with artistic creativity, which acts as an alibi to conceal the fact they have been bred to become organ donors or carers of donors when they are adults.

6

Anne Balsamo, in Featherstone and Burrows (1995), mentions that a special issue of Life magazine in February 1989 called ‘Visions of Tomorrow’ discussed the development of an artificial uterus. And in 2001, the UK’s House of Lords gave its backing to the government’s legal order extending the types of disease that can be researched on human embryos under the 1990 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act (Hall and Radford 2001: 2).

7

Were it not for the picture’s caption, it would be tempting to interpret this image as another that portrays Jason with Ketuta’s head. (After all, the model is wearing a figure-masking, loose-fitting garment that could be worn by either a man or a woman.) In which case the double-take of kairos would mean that neither simply ‘man’ nor ‘woman’, but ‘man-woman’, in the form of the hybrid character in Figure 32, will be the second millennium’s saviour. It is this kind of deconstructed identity that Barthes (1995: 133) prefigured as the embodiment

136

Loving the Alien: Fashion and Cyborg Identities of a new social and sexual politics: ‘Once the alternative is rejected (once the paradigm is blurred) utopia begins: meaning and sex become the object of a free play, at the heart of which the (polysemant) forms and the (sensual) practices, liberated from the binary prison, will achieve a state of infinite expansion.’ 8

The sequence of the Looks specified in the rest of this chapter concords with those given in the online slideshow for Gucci’s Fall 2018 Ready-to-Wear collection – see Gucci (2018a).

9

Attili is a Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Rome, and is also intensely interested in Foucault’s key texts, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medicine (1963) and Madness and Civilisation; History of Madness (1961). Given the theme of Gucci’s runway shows for 2018 and 2019, it is more than likely that Michele and he discussed and shared the ideas in them.

10 In an Instagram post, composed after the show took place, they addressed their own struggles with mental health and stated that the runway was insensitive to the fact that LGBTQ subjects had higher rates of suicide and BAME populations higher rates of mental illness, concluding, ‘It is in bad taste for Gucci to use the imagery of straightjackets and outfits alluding to mental patients, while being rolled out on a conveyor belt as if a piece of factory meat. Presenting these struggles as props for selling clothes in today’s capitalist climate is vulgar, unimaginative, and offensive to the millions of people around the world affected by these issues’ (@ayeshatanjones, 22 September 2019). 11 It is ironic that one critic unwittingly referred to this, opining, ‘While the meaning behind the under-arm heads can’t be summed up in a sentence from Haraway’s tome’ (Sharp 2018). 12 Haraway prefers the term Chthulucene (derived from khthon, Greek for earth) to the Anthropocene to describe our current ecological epoch. She finds the latter too one-sided as it denotes only the role of mankind in altering the natural world, whereas for her, all living organisms that co-exist must be accounted for in the web of relationships on planet Earth. 13 The ‘multiplicity of lines of temporality’ to which Rancière refers and that anachronism foregrounds (2015: 46) is further exemplified by the inclusion of Converse sneakers in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006), which we encounter only in a flash frame – indeed, as a prolepsis or cinematic flash forward – when Kirsten Dunst, in the title role, is trying on satin slippers. Coppola’s film centred not simply on Marie Antoinette as a self-indulgent clotheshorse or trendsetter in fashion but also on how, for her, clothing was integral to evolving some sense of female empowerment, first as Dauphine between 1770 and 1774 and then as Queen of France until her execution in 1793, aged thirty-seven. Accordingly, Coppola includes the sneakers as a subliminal device to draw a diachronic parallel between Marie Antoinette’s dual identity as teenage princess and adult queen of fashion in the late eighteenth century and fashion-conscious young females and girl power in our own era – an anachronism that, co-incidentally, came full circle in the way the film inspired John Galliano’s collection to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Maison Dior in the Orangerie at Versailles on 2 July 2007 (Diamond 2011: 210; Vogue UK 2007).

137

EPILOGUE

Who or what am I? What if my identity does not fit or coincide with any pre-existing social and cultural categories or definitions? And why does it matter? These are the key questions we have addressed in the preceding chapters about intersectional identity politics in the context of the fashion system. As we have also argued, this is not a matter of theory for theory’s sake but of praxis, the relationship of theory to practice, which involves a series of key authors and actants: the producers of the objects and images of fashion; models and role models; and the consumers who purchase clothing and spectators who look at and interact with its textual representations. The intersectional identities of designers Maria Grazia Chiuri, Alexander McQueen and Alessandro Michele, for instance, were instrumental in the formation of their respective runway collections ‘We Should All Be Feminists’, ‘The Widows of Culloden’ and ‘Cyborg’. To one degree or another, these authors mobilized clothing to transcend normative binaries of gender, sex and race, and in so doing, they reclaimed and foregrounded the abject other/Other. In the case of Chiuri and McQueen, we framed this tactic through the psychoanalytical lens of l’écriture féminine, emphasizing how for both producers, the poetic text and semiotic chora enabled a creative space for them to recuperate the corporeal and psychic bond between the maternal figure and the child. To this extent, their work illuminates both the positive and negative power that the phallic mother enacts in identity formation. By contrast, in Michele’s ‘Cyborg’ runway he addressed power with resort to Foucault’s writing about the disciplined body, biopolitical control and subjection, alongside Haraway’s proposal that hybrid identities, embracing all living organisms and species, will bring an end to the patriarchal dominance of binary classifications during the ecological epoch of the Chthulucene (2016). Nonetheless, all three designers are unified in the way they deal with fashion as essentially performative, representing identity as being en procès, that is something simultaneously under construction and on trial, rather than ever being entirely fulfilled. This concept is particularly evident in our analysis of the role of transgender and gender non-conforming models in the fashion system. Here, we analyse whether it proffers them a heterotopic safe space to behave as the authentic non-binary subjects they are or wish to be, or whether it accommodates them (exploits them, even) to capitalize its own sense of political correctness. Thus, the trans-models we interviewed, such as Oslo Grace and Rostok Smirnov, expressed how they exist and work on the threshold of being self and other/Other, subject and object, in terms that coincide with the demarcation of the pure and recognizable from the impure and unintelligible that Kristeva enlists in her assessment of abjection and the logic of marginalization. ‘My knowingness of myself and gender has grown alongside my modeling career’ in Grace’s epigrammatic telling.

Epilogue

Equally, such a performative and heterotopic approach to identity and the dynamic interplay between inclusion and exclusion underpin the photographic projects we have analysed in this book. Thus, in ‘Simplex Concordia’ Andrea Giacobbe symbolized the tension between human and posthuman beings, and in common with Michele, the transformative potential of the cyborg not only to inaugurate a queer, post-gender world but an ecologically and socially fair one as well. If, as Emilia Petrarca (2018) has posited, ‘Cyborgs are the ideal fashion muse. They never age, never get tired, hungry, or bloated’, her statement also begs the questions: why should bodies never grow old and why should fashion shy away from bodies that are less than perfect? These issues are precisely the focus of our exploration of the relationship of clothing to age ordering and ‘active aging’, exemplified in photographic work such as David Newby’s ‘Fashion For All Ages’ (FFAA) for the Guardian, Ari Seth Cohen’s Advanced Style and Magali Nougarède’s Crossing the Line. Cohen’s ongoing concern is to curate fashion and clothing as a matter of individual taste and customization, choosing to overlook the negative aspects of ageing in the process. To this end, he persuaded seven women aged fifty years and over from diverse class, ethnic and professional backgrounds, whom he encountered on the streets of New York City, to participate in an ethnographic project about style and old age. But in their approach to dress and dressing all of his actants eschew any contact with mass-produced objects and high street merchandise, and thus they self-present as unique and exclusive arbiters of taste – ‘I do a portrait with clothing’, as sixty-two years old Tsiporah Salaman expressed it. By contrast, Newby and Nougarède’s work coincides with Gloria Steinem’s argument that ‘Segregating by age is as ridiculous and destructive as segregating by race or class or gender or anything else. We learn from each other. We need each other’ (2020). Hence, they juxtaposed young and old, and male and female subjects alike to convey an intergenerational perspective on clothing and identity, inviting the actantial engagement of spectators and readers. On this level FFAA represents models also as role models and functions as an invaluable semiotic resource or mirror image to test out whether older people would feel comfortable wearing the garments worn before they decide to buy. Nougarède’s photography, meanwhile, takes a different participatory tack to both FFAA and Cohen. She uncompromisingly examines how age is written on the body and revealed how becoming old is a matter of physical decay as well as metaphysical experiences through the use of close-cropped, uncaptioned images that represent the closeness of fabric to human flesh. And, whereas Cohen interviewed his subjects to elicit their fashion back story, Nougarède’s photographic method evinces memories and stories by proxy, operating intertextually as a kind of ‘ekphrasis in reverse’. Accordingly, we propound that her visual representations recall verbal ones such as poetry, and how this open-ended tactic invites us to contemplate that the history of individuals and the history of the clothes they wear are inevitably intertwined. On a completely different authorial level, we assessed how Chiuri’s co-opting of Adichie’s statement, ‘We Should All Be Feminists’, acts as a poetic text in regard to l’écriture féminine, such that it embodies Cixous’s call to arms for women to vocalize their independent place in the world and in history. Moreover, the labile message transformed 139

Epilogue

the T-shirt into an intersectional object in its own right. First of all, as utilitarian material text, the T-shirt afforded Dior’s clientele a sense of self-empowerment and engagement with protest. And second, its free and promiscuous dissemination through the rhizome of the digital hypertext enabled Dior to engage with multifarious actants. Many of them also performed online as recalcitrant or oppositional readers, subverting Adichie’s and Chiuri’s original message into anti-capitalist memes of their own, such as ‘Feminism isn’t fashion’ and ‘Search on the web … you’ll find lots of dupes!’ By extension, this kind of digital visibility and interaction pinpoints that, at the bottom line, fashion’s engagement with identity politics hinges on another inescapable intersection addressed in this study: the economic imperative to sell merchandise and turn a profit. It is not for nothing, after all, that Tom Ford once referred to McQueen as ‘poet and commerce united’. In adopting the same speech act as Adichie, for instance, Chiuri avowed that she intended to reveal that ‘there is not one kind of woman’, while simultaneously promulgating the message on the Dior runway in the name of fashion and the T-shirt online for sale to an exclusive, affluent clientele. But her paradoxical fashion tactic raises several significant questions about l’écriture féminine in terms of neoliberalism, inclusivity and intersectionality. Most obviously, the T-shirt retailed in its original context for $710, notwithstanding Christian Dior’s claim that a (unspecified) percentage of the profits would go to Rihanna’s Clara Lionel Foundation. Hence, Cinzia Arruzza et al postulate in their manifesto Feminism for the 99% (2019) that global feminism must concern itself with those at the bottom as well as the top of the social scale and, by implication, reconcile anticapitalism and antiracism with concerns about eco-socialism and the anthropocene. In this way, the Guardian’s FFAA represents clothes from across the fashion spectrum, always including merchandise from designer labels alongside high street retailers; thus, on one occasion, H&M jeans costing £19.99 were worn with a Missoni tweed jacket at £640. Yet, this is not to deny that FFAA exploits the World Health Organization’s neoliberal policy of ‘active aging’, and the affluence of Third Agers and burgeoning ‘silver economy’ it entails. On this level, the key aim of its stylists was to transcend age barriers or ideas of age-appropriate dress and to gainsay the feelings and anxieties about appearance and fashion probed by Richard Ward and Caroline Holland for the Age Discrimination project they conducted in 2011 for Help the Aged, which foregrounded the idea of ‘if I look old, I will be treated old’. Even the co-option of queer and cyborg culture by a fashion designer like Michele is inevitably bound up with commerce and the desire to maximize corporate capital. As Stefan Herbrechter maintains, ‘Global virtual hypercapitalism needs an equally plastic and flexible individual subject … Economic neoliberalism, free market ideology and late capitalist individualism can no longer be separated from the various technological and cultural posthumanization processes’ (2013: 25 and 55). And yet, if the profit motive were the only thing that mattered to Michele, there would be no need for him to also contextualize his ‘Cyborg’ runway theoretically through Foucault and Haraway. To this extent, he exploits fashion design to give some agency to the marginalized, excluded and misrepresented, and in the way he criss-crosses time and history anachronistically prompts us to consider more deeply about how identities can be rethought and reformed. 140

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This is not a matter of him being counterfactual but of posing once more the question ‘what if?’ That is, what if human and posthuman identities and histories are and have been so intertwined in time and space that we cannot or should not be expected to tell one apart from another? None of this is to argue that the fashion industry on its own initiates or forces change to come about in society, even though over the past thirty years or so it has demonstrated a more sensitive and nuanced approach in its treatment and representation of marginalized and non-normative subjects. In 2008 Wilhemina Models in New York City recorded that its ‘sophisticated’ division of older models was the fastest growing area (Collins 2019: 71) and in Fall 2018 almost 40 per cent of models on the runway were non-white – double the percentage reported in 2015 (Tai 2018). Meanwhile, fashion editor and stylist, Carine Roitfeld has impugned the uniform thinness of models across the world, contending, ‘I do not like this … I like older women. I like bigger girls. I like black women’ (Heawood 2019). And, after his appointment in 2017 as the first black male editor in chief of UK Vogue, Edward Enninful has deliberately embraced diversity in the workplace and editorial policy, inviting Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, to guest edit the ‘Forces of Change’ issue in September 2019 and following it up with ‘Activism Now – The Faces of Hope’ in September 2020. By the same measure, fashion has been implicated in the dynamic and evolving nature of intersectionality and identity politics in both positive and negative ways. For instance, whereas Judi Dench was lauded for appearing on the cover of UK Vogue in July 2020 at the age of eighty-five with silver hair and wrinkles, US Vice-President Kamala Harris, who is of Indian-Jamaican heritage and was born in 1964, was accused of appearing both ‘washed out’ and too juvenile on the February 2021 cover of American Vogue (Cartner-Morley 2021). The Converse sneakers and skinny pants she wore in black photographer Tyler Mitchell’s image, however, symbolize her formative political years, while the salmon pink and apple green fabrics used in the backdrop connote the official colours chosen by Beulah Burke for the African American sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, which was founded in 1908 and of which Harris was a student member at Howard University in 1986 (Okwodu 2021). And just as Chiuri and Michele demonstrate allegiance with feminism and queer and transgender subjects in their fashion design, so too do they become implicated into the wider sphere of culture wars which, emanating in America in the 1990s, have hinged on issues of diversity and solidarity (Davison 1991). As the twenty-first century has progressed, this debate has grown increasingly polarized; identity politics is enacted in support of all those who have been or are still disempowered by patriarchal society on one side, or on the other, upended to caricature pejoratively such ‘wokeness’ as virtue-signalling that is blindsided by the problems ‘real’ people have to endure in the ‘real’ world (Daum 2019). In other words, when activated by movements like #MeToo, Black Lives Matter and Stonewall, identity politics is often blamed for sowing the seeds of division that undermine the integrity of some larger or ‘more important’ categories such as nationality and racial purity, as espoused by the neo-right Identitarian Movement in Europe and QAnon in the United States.1 141

Epilogue

But, if debates about identity politics are rife with contradiction and cannot ever be fully settled, their nexus to fashion nevertheless draws attention to the complexities that all human interaction involves, as well as the need to embrace difference and diversity, plurality and acceptance. This, then, brings us full circle to the main point that Preciado (2015) presses about the shape-shifting intersections and fluidities that occur in the formation of any individual or group identity and that we attempt to unpack in this book. For, as he concludes, ‘We are the post-porn Parliament to come. They say Represent. We say Experiment. They say Identity. We say Multitude. They say Debt. We say Sexual Cooperation and Somatic Interdependency. They say Human Capital. We say Multispecies Alliance. They say Crisis. We say Revolution.’

Notes 1

142

An egregious example of this dynamic occurred on 16 January 2020 when British actor Laurence Fox upbraided a female audience member of the BBC programme ‘Question Time’ for being racist, after she had called him a ‘white privileged male’ because of the way he had ridiculed the Duchess of Sussex’s sensitivity to the negative comments about her own racial background posted on social media.

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INDEX

abjection 4, 16, 17, 23, 28, 101, 135, 138 active ageing 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 45, 46, 48, 50, 51, 54, 56, 61, 62, 139, 140 Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi 1, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 28, 102, 103, 139, 140 advertising 1, 30, 37, 40, 45, 46, 53, 67, 127 anachronism 106, 130, 131,133, 134 androgyny xiv–xv, 29, 70, 71, 72, 73, 77, 85, 86, 124, 131 anthropocene 7, 9, 130, 137, 140 authenticity 70, 84, 85, 92, 101 Barthes, Roland 2, 57, 136 Butler, Judith 15, 18, 20, 22, 23, 94 Chiuri, Maria Grazia 1, 4, 5–11, 13, 14, 28, 29, 33, 46, 135, 138, 139, 140, 141 Cixous, Hélène 1, 2, 4, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 29, 30, 139 class 4, 6, 9, 33, 34, 40, 44, 48, 50, 52, 54, 55, 57, 71, 111, 127, 128 Cohen, Ari Seth 35, 51 and Advanced Style 52, 53, 54, 55, 59, 61, 139 Covid-19 41, 62, 65, 135 cyborg 29, 54, 65, 105, 112, 116, 123, 124, 131, 138 and posthuman 105, 106, 110, 111, 129, 130, 131, 134, 135, 136, 139, 140, 141 Dior 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 28, 30, 33, 46, 137, 139, 140 Diski, Jenni 37, 38, 39 fashion model agencies 45, 68, 74, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 90, 92, 94, 101, 102 Fashion For All Ages (Guardian) 35, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 48, 52, 55, 56, 61, 63, 64, 135, 139, 140 Foucault, Michel 34, 65, 105, 106, 121, 123, 124, 127, 133, 134, 137, 138, 140 and assujetissement 90, 124 and heterotopia 70, 79, 90, 96, 125, 139 and power 123, 127 and race wars 127 Freud, Sigmund 113, 114 Giacobbe, Andrea 106–114, 124, 128, 129, 131, 134, 135, 136, 139

grey hair 46, 48, 50, 63, 64 Grandville, J.J. 27, 31 Gucci 15, 61, 68, 79, 82, 85, 86, 100, 106, 115, 121, 123, 124, 125, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 135, 136, 137 habitus 55, 59 Haraway, Donna 105, 106, 110–112, 114, 115, 116, 121, 123, 128–31, 134, 137, 138, 140 inclusion 6, 28, 44, 55, 96, 97, 98, 101, 102, 125 intersectionality xii, xiii, xv, xvi, 2, 4, 6, 9, 10, 12–15, 28, 29, 34, 35, 39, 45, 48, 50, 52, 56, 61, 62, 70, 92, 93, 94, 96, 105, 111, 124, 125, 128, 129, 130 135, 138, 140, 141, 142 Irigaray, Luce 14, 20, 23, 24, 30, 54 and mimicry 2, 4, 9, 10, 18 jeans 40, 41, 44, 45, 61, 73, 86, 90, 140 Johnson, JoAni 35, 48, 50, 62 Kristeva, Julia 2, 4, 11, 13–16, 20, 23, 24, 29, 58, 73, 75, 76, 96, 114, 135, 138 Lacan, Jacques 2, 10, 14, 16, 18, 30, 39, 65, 103 La Ritournelle 20, 22, 27 L’écriture féminine and Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi 1, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 28, 102, 103, 139, 140 and Ahmed, Sara 2, 12 and Cixous, Hélène 1, 2, 4, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 29, 30, 139 and Kristeva, Julia 2, 11, 13, 14, 15, 23, 29 and semiotic chora 1, 2, 4, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 22, 25, 27, 28, 29, 135, 138 LGBTQIA+ xvi, 14, 22, 24, 29, 62, 67, 72, 73, 74, 82, 105, 106, 111, 115, 129, 137, 139, 140, 141 Lucas, Pam 33, 35, 42, 45, 46, 48, 50 McQueen, Alexander 1, 4, 14, 15–18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 31, 114, 130, 134, 135, 138, 140 mask of ageing 39, 40 Michele, Alessandro 105, 106, 112, 114, 115–136, 137, 138, 139, 140 Moss, Kate 7, 25, 27, 79, 99

Index Neoliberalism xi, 5, 7, 11, 34, 45, 61, 140 Nougarède, Magali 35, 52 and Crossing the Line 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 139 performativity 5, 14, 15, 35, 73, 106, 121, 123, 124, 138, 139 poetic text 1, 2, 4, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 22, 24, 27, 28, 29, 60, 61, 106, 133, 134, 138, 139 and hypertext 11, 12, 13, 28, 140 Preciado, Paul B. xi, 68, 102, 142 race and ethnicity xi, xii, xvi, 23, 24, 33, 35, 42, 45, 48, 50, 58, 59, 62, 93, 94, 96, 116, 124, 125, 127, 128, 141 Rancière, Jacques 106, 114, 131, 133, 134, 137 redemptive time 110, 113, 114 Selfe, Daphne 33, 45, 48 Semiotic chora 1, 2, 4, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 22, 25, 27, 28, 29, 135, 138

158

transgender xi, xv, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 83, 84, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 124, 142 and Alana Jessica 68, 94, 97 and Ashley, April 74, 75 and Fleming, Connie 68, 76, 77 and Grace, Oslo 68, 81, 85, 86, 87, 90, 98, 99, 100, 119, 124, 130, 138 and Meme Meng 68, 91, 92 and Moo, Richie 68, 90, 91 and Nef, Hari 78, 79, 81 and Norman, Tracey 74, 75, 77 and Omar, Ceval 68, 92, 94, 99 and Quinlivan, Teddy 78, 79, 81, 124 and Smirnov, Rostok 68, 81, 88, 89 and Toye, Teri 76, 77 Twigg, Julia 33, 34, 36, 40, 44, 45, 52, 61 and age ordering 34, 38, 42, 56, 57 World Health Organisation (WHO) 34, 102, 135, 140