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The fashion world's ethics are in rags and its soul shabby The fashion world's ethics are in rags and its soul shabby
(3 months later)
Since getting itself talked about was the only comprehensible reason why a lifestyle magazine would run a suicide-themed fashion spread, last week's internationally condemned fashion spread on suicide was a triumph for a publication that one might, in a supremely futile act of resistance, not bother to name. The whole thing could hardly have gone better: from publication of "Last Words", to the first tweeted expressions of outrage, to lengthy condemnatory articles, to withdrawal of the offending piece, and the editors' widely publicised semi-grovel — all within 24 hours.Since getting itself talked about was the only comprehensible reason why a lifestyle magazine would run a suicide-themed fashion spread, last week's internationally condemned fashion spread on suicide was a triumph for a publication that one might, in a supremely futile act of resistance, not bother to name. The whole thing could hardly have gone better: from publication of "Last Words", to the first tweeted expressions of outrage, to lengthy condemnatory articles, to withdrawal of the offending piece, and the editors' widely publicised semi-grovel — all within 24 hours.
Throughout, the publication responsible was introduced in news stories as "the hipster's bible", a trusted, super-edgy brand, new readers learned, for the kind of dashing young iconoclasts who dress in Prada or Issa – a couple of the labels into which the fashion team had inserted models pretending to be famous women writers just after, or in a more how-to mode, in the act of, suicide. One of the late writers has a living, 11-year-old son. In its apology – which will have doubled as a perfect, hi, subscribe and we'll send you 12 issues per year opportunity – the editors explained that their fashion spreads "are always unconventional".Throughout, the publication responsible was introduced in news stories as "the hipster's bible", a trusted, super-edgy brand, new readers learned, for the kind of dashing young iconoclasts who dress in Prada or Issa – a couple of the labels into which the fashion team had inserted models pretending to be famous women writers just after, or in a more how-to mode, in the act of, suicide. One of the late writers has a living, 11-year-old son. In its apology – which will have doubled as a perfect, hi, subscribe and we'll send you 12 issues per year opportunity – the editors explained that their fashion spreads "are always unconventional".
The women suicides shoot, for instance, was a hipsterish way of focusing "on the demise of a set of writers whose lives we very much wish weren't cut tragically short, especially at their own hands". Just as you might, say, use a fashion spread to focus on the demise of a set of underpaid garment workers whose lives you wished weren't cut tragically short, especially in a collapsed building.The women suicides shoot, for instance, was a hipsterish way of focusing "on the demise of a set of writers whose lives we very much wish weren't cut tragically short, especially at their own hands". Just as you might, say, use a fashion spread to focus on the demise of a set of underpaid garment workers whose lives you wished weren't cut tragically short, especially in a collapsed building.
Once it's explained, you get that posing demised bodies in the latest must-haves is an unconventional fash way of showing you care – so long, obviously, that no clothes are harmed in the process. And that shockwaves are bound to be created, among non-hipsters, when fashion is approached this way, as the magazine puts it, "with an art editorial point of view rather than a typical fashion photo-editorial one".Once it's explained, you get that posing demised bodies in the latest must-haves is an unconventional fash way of showing you care – so long, obviously, that no clothes are harmed in the process. And that shockwaves are bound to be created, among non-hipsters, when fashion is approached this way, as the magazine puts it, "with an art editorial point of view rather than a typical fashion photo-editorial one".
Now the only people who could be offended by that excuse, surely, are the many rival fashion magazines who work, no less tirelessly, and with an equal disregard for convention, to ensure that their own work resembles art and not "typical fashion photo-editorial". Think, for example, of the current Interview magazine sequence, in which pathological hoarding, rather than suicide, is having a moment. In "The Hoarder", this magazine's study in mental disorder/fash contrasts, a pallid beauty poses amid piled-up filth and chaos. "She's a contemporary Miss Havisham, as modernity meets tradition and classically tailored coats and jackets meet exaggerated boots and enormous wedges," runs the caption, referencing fashion's favourite – if non-hoarding – Dickens character: "Here comes pre-Fall."Now the only people who could be offended by that excuse, surely, are the many rival fashion magazines who work, no less tirelessly, and with an equal disregard for convention, to ensure that their own work resembles art and not "typical fashion photo-editorial". Think, for example, of the current Interview magazine sequence, in which pathological hoarding, rather than suicide, is having a moment. In "The Hoarder", this magazine's study in mental disorder/fash contrasts, a pallid beauty poses amid piled-up filth and chaos. "She's a contemporary Miss Havisham, as modernity meets tradition and classically tailored coats and jackets meet exaggerated boots and enormous wedges," runs the caption, referencing fashion's favourite – if non-hoarding – Dickens character: "Here comes pre-Fall."
Condé Nast staff, too, must be justifiably affronted by the suggestion that the suicide-fashion team have the monopoly on in-your-face fashion provocation. Was not Vogue Italia, a few years back, the first to show models looking dead in a polluted, seaside context, "precious reportage that delivers an artistic impact"? The photographer Steven Meisel laid the model Kristen McMenamy out like, sort of, BP's dead seabirds, if they, too, had expired in tastefully wrecked Ralph Lauren and Clinique. "She keeps her skin golden thanks to Self Tan Face Bronzing Gel Tint (to wear alone or with foundation)," is how Vogue glossed the desperate scene, with the pragmatic attention to detail that distinguishes this field of artistic endeavour: "It takes care of the skin, while giving it a hint of colour."Condé Nast staff, too, must be justifiably affronted by the suggestion that the suicide-fashion team have the monopoly on in-your-face fashion provocation. Was not Vogue Italia, a few years back, the first to show models looking dead in a polluted, seaside context, "precious reportage that delivers an artistic impact"? The photographer Steven Meisel laid the model Kristen McMenamy out like, sort of, BP's dead seabirds, if they, too, had expired in tastefully wrecked Ralph Lauren and Clinique. "She keeps her skin golden thanks to Self Tan Face Bronzing Gel Tint (to wear alone or with foundation)," is how Vogue glossed the desperate scene, with the pragmatic attention to detail that distinguishes this field of artistic endeavour: "It takes care of the skin, while giving it a hint of colour."
If last week's suicide creatives did not, incomprehensible as this might seem, ever consider issues of taste or responsibility, as this exercise in suicide trivialisation progressed from being deliciously out there into a glossy finished product, it could be because the absence of principles is, in so many respects, still vital to fashion industry profits. Start obsessing about taste and responsibility and where will it all stop? If fashion editors conceded, for instance, the case against dressing up death and illness to sell tights and enormous wedges and, thereby, advertising space, they might, in no time, be confronting equally difficult questions about their glamorising of emaciation, and of allegedly tax-evading designers and of tyranny, in those ever popular, meet-the-psychopath's-wife slots.If last week's suicide creatives did not, incomprehensible as this might seem, ever consider issues of taste or responsibility, as this exercise in suicide trivialisation progressed from being deliciously out there into a glossy finished product, it could be because the absence of principles is, in so many respects, still vital to fashion industry profits. Start obsessing about taste and responsibility and where will it all stop? If fashion editors conceded, for instance, the case against dressing up death and illness to sell tights and enormous wedges and, thereby, advertising space, they might, in no time, be confronting equally difficult questions about their glamorising of emaciation, and of allegedly tax-evading designers and of tyranny, in those ever popular, meet-the-psychopath's-wife slots.
As much as the invention of ethical fashion has raised awareness of the pollution and human exploitation intrinsic to an industry built on waste, it may also have contributed, less usefully, to an expectation that, if only fashion could guarantee carbon neutrality and fair trade, it would emerge as, if not 100% wholesome, no worse than any other form of cultural production. If greenness and improved sweatshops are all it needs to be ethical, we can look forward to John Galliano's ethical antisemitism, Ralph Lauren's ethical bribery and Dolce and Gabbana's ethical tax-evasion. Or how about a new line in ethical interviews in which we find, say, Asma al-Assad, Vogue's "Anon GM Rose in the Desert", in scrupulously vintage Loubs, with a special message about sustainable oppression?As much as the invention of ethical fashion has raised awareness of the pollution and human exploitation intrinsic to an industry built on waste, it may also have contributed, less usefully, to an expectation that, if only fashion could guarantee carbon neutrality and fair trade, it would emerge as, if not 100% wholesome, no worse than any other form of cultural production. If greenness and improved sweatshops are all it needs to be ethical, we can look forward to John Galliano's ethical antisemitism, Ralph Lauren's ethical bribery and Dolce and Gabbana's ethical tax-evasion. Or how about a new line in ethical interviews in which we find, say, Asma al-Assad, Vogue's "Anon GM Rose in the Desert", in scrupulously vintage Loubs, with a special message about sustainable oppression?
Going further in the application of ethics to fashion, it may not be fanciful to imagine a time when the regular distribution of clothes, accessories and beauty products, gifts whereby legions of fashion writers, celebrities and bloggers are groomed by fashion PRs into a condition of helpless adulation, is restricted to strictly recyclable items.Going further in the application of ethics to fashion, it may not be fanciful to imagine a time when the regular distribution of clothes, accessories and beauty products, gifts whereby legions of fashion writers, celebrities and bloggers are groomed by fashion PRs into a condition of helpless adulation, is restricted to strictly recyclable items.
It's more difficult, though, to see how eco-friendly ethics would influence some equally long-established fashion traditions, such as paying Hollywood names to sit, fan-like, in the front row or, equally, persecuting journalists who have misused that privilege.It's more difficult, though, to see how eco-friendly ethics would influence some equally long-established fashion traditions, such as paying Hollywood names to sit, fan-like, in the front row or, equally, persecuting journalists who have misused that privilege.
Thanks to a few journalists, including Liz Jones, Laura Craik and the Guardian's Hadley Freeman, who was once banned from his show by national treasure Paul Smith, the public is gaining some appreciation of the human cost of keeping fashion coverage permanently ecstatic, about absolutely everything.Thanks to a few journalists, including Liz Jones, Laura Craik and the Guardian's Hadley Freeman, who was once banned from his show by national treasure Paul Smith, the public is gaining some appreciation of the human cost of keeping fashion coverage permanently ecstatic, about absolutely everything.
When, for example, Cathy Horyn, fashion editor of the New York Times, advertised her eight-year exclusion from his shows, an exercised Hedi Slimane, the Saint Laurent designer, confirmed that, for all that it's now the stuff of doting V&A and Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibitions, fashion remains altogether too fabulous an art to be subjected to normal rules of critical engagement.When, for example, Cathy Horyn, fashion editor of the New York Times, advertised her eight-year exclusion from his shows, an exercised Hedi Slimane, the Saint Laurent designer, confirmed that, for all that it's now the stuff of doting V&A and Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibitions, fashion remains altogether too fabulous an art to be subjected to normal rules of critical engagement.
Horyn was, Slimane said , a "schoolyard bully", "thick" and, style-wise, "seriously challenged". Publishers and theatre directors must dream, reading stuff like this, of enjoying the same power to insult and exclude unhelpful journalists, without surrendering a fraction of the esteem they enjoy among more amenable critics or, at any rate, among the ones who depend on their advertising or handbags.Horyn was, Slimane said , a "schoolyard bully", "thick" and, style-wise, "seriously challenged". Publishers and theatre directors must dream, reading stuff like this, of enjoying the same power to insult and exclude unhelpful journalists, without surrendering a fraction of the esteem they enjoy among more amenable critics or, at any rate, among the ones who depend on their advertising or handbags.
For, like designer tax evasion, garment sweatshops and the fate of tissue-eating models, the suborning of the media is too delicate a question to detain upscale fashion reportage while being, at the same time, too commonplace to outrage everyone else.For, like designer tax evasion, garment sweatshops and the fate of tissue-eating models, the suborning of the media is too delicate a question to detain upscale fashion reportage while being, at the same time, too commonplace to outrage everyone else.
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