WHERE DO YOU SEE THESE PEOPLE WEARING THESE ROSES?
HAPPY WOMEN’S DAY!! Happy for whom? Well, while the date has become a symbol of more war and less flowers, we need to talk about fashion and what women want to wear.
And the latest season, which ended on Tuesday, was crucial to understanding the path of fashion in a post-pandemic world: we are getting dressed more and more by… MEN!
Okay, nothing against them, they’re great, but where are more women wearing women? Women who understand women? It seems to be fading.
CHLOÉ X YSL
First Yves Saint Laurent, whose creative director is called Anthony Vaccarello. His show was invariably apotheotical, with the same thin women as always, and in this case a little beyond measure: more than all the dominant sexuality of the brand, almost all (!!) were on board with transparency.
It was not one or the other view, but the vast majority of them were transparent, out of 48 views, only 12 did not have breasts. (and of those 12, three were minidresses with garter belts). The transparency was created with pantyhose fabric, an apparently fragile material that Vaccarello himself took on. “These dresses took four days to make and if not handled properly they tear and have to be made again”.
NYT fashion editor Vanessa Friedman began her review of the show with one “No more curds!”. She also revealed the difficulty of finding a suitable photo to illustrate the newspaper article.
“At this stage in the 21st century, so much transparency seems like the most banal form of misogynistic and pretentious fashion provocation. Something that is particularly poorly thought out given the current politics of women’s bodies. They are already being treated as objects, do we really need more objectification?” – Vanessa Friedman in The New York Times
So we can only ask, who is this woman and where is she going?
Not even the most partisan Parisian uses this level of transparency that often. And the fact that it’s a man thinking of a woman as a catwalk model ready to go viral, rather than a woman looking for an outfit to wear, also weighs heavily.
Ok, ok, Yves Saint Laurent himself created this almost erotic fashion, but it is also necessary to remember that Yves himself was very revolutionary in women’s clothing.
Interrupted for the next day with Chloé, and its new creative director, Chemena Kamali, who is the creative house, had a stint at YSL herself and ensured an acclaimed debut. Her looks were reminiscent of the usual boho Chloé, with romanticism and a touch of sex, but with doses of finesse and dress, unlike Yves Saint Laurent.
This reinforces the question, which women are the ones who wear tops with pants and go out out and about around? This seems like a limiting factor for any woman, whether a Parisian woman or a woman from Rio de Janeiro. It’s not about questioning a woman’s freedom to wear whatever she wants, but understanding the practicalities of everyday life, clothing like this is UNREALISTIC.
Voted as one of the best fashion shows of the season, specialized critics pointed out that the main fact is precisely because it was created by a woman who understands the emotions, feelings and needs of another woman. Customers just want nice coats, nice pants and different shoes and Chloé served it in a natural way (unlike Anthony).
In the Chloé show there are also transparencies, which reveal the breasts under delicate blouses and dresses, but here it seems to have a different connotation. Clothes serve the woman and not the other way around. It is a choice to wear a loose shirt or dress without a bra, which seems to come from a thought about freedom and expression that was strengthened in the 1970s with the hippie movement. – Camila Yahn of FFW.
Still in Paris, it was time for the long-awaited debut of Seán McGirr, with the difficult task of replacing the well-known Sarah Burton, who sublimely followed the legacy of Alexander.
While she promoted playful, yet provocative and exuberant fashion shows. It focused on grit, many conceptual pieces and very few memorable ones.
While in her latest collection, Sarah created dresses that resemble breasts, vaginas and other feminine details, Seán made dresses made of steel that resemble car chassis! That was the highlight for me.
The always provocative and controversial McQueen showed, somehow inside out, that her brand is now a counterexample. This was the explosion that resulted from the excess of men wearing women.
McGirr’s appointment at McQueen sparked a debate about the lack of female creative directors at Kering, which owns the brand, and fashion more generally. So many white men with the same haircut on top and so many capable women were passed over. Hmmm.” – Rachel Tashjian.
According to the TWP article called “We need more female designers”what happens is that male designers seem to lack imagination and fun.
“It seems like many designers are overworked and don’t have enough time to create interesting, relevant and contemporary ideas. There is too much of a rush to seduce cheaply and by ordinary means.”
At LVMH, the world’s largest luxury conglomerate,Only Dior and Pucci have female designers at the helm. Rihanna, who created her Fenty “fashions”, becoming the first black woman to have her own brand in the group, very soon ended the activity and to this day the reason is still unknown. Apart from them, Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo are managed by their creators, but for how long? At Kering, Sarah Burton was the only name. Chanel, which is independently owned by the Wertheimer family, has Karl Lagerfeld protégé Virginie Viard, who appears to be faltering but unlikely to fall.
Why are women still subject to the concepts of male designers, especially when many of them seem to have no particular understanding of what women want or need, or how they live? The same question should be asked of non-white designers; there is only Pharrell, in Vuitton, Olivier Rousteing in Balmain and Nigo in Kenzo.
Another reason for this male dominance, beyond the obvious, may be fashion’s growing obsession with commercialism and its continued growth. The demands imposed on a designer have become absurd – sometimes 10 or more collections per year. Maybe female designers feel they don’t want to communicate in such a simple and urgent way.
Maybe these women don’t make clothes the way men in finance or marketing think they should be made. While women tend to be bolder and more nuanced, executives look for immediacy and marketing. Far from thinking that women do not have this greater commercial acumen, it is still imagined that they ultimately do not deliver as much as men in the same positions.
“Fashion is a powerful tool in building identity. Male influence in this process raises questions about who has the power to narrate and define female experiences. The field of dreams and desires is an important tool in creating fashion, but you have to move with the times, knowing the real needs of the audience you are creating for. In fashion, harmony is a key word.” – Camila Yahn
As I said before, we should wear the clothes and not be dressed by them. As long as there are more men in charge, they will continue to have the power to decide what we wear, dictating fashion and the rules. If the transgression that fashion suggests depends on them, there will be no transgression or revolution, only clothing. And we want more than that.
Anyway, Happy Women’s Day!
kiss,
Theresa
