Off The Rails Fashion Politics
Nell Frizzell is dressing to the left
Off The Rails: Fashion Politics
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When you put politics and fashion together, you tend to be met with a wardrobe of well-worn tropes.
One: The Wives. This election, it seems, we will be bombarded by a dress-by-dress comparison of Sarah Brown, Samantha Cameron and Miriam Gonzalez Durantez (yes, Nick Clegg has a wife too, wouldjabelieve it).
Two: Ethical fashion. Is your cotton organic? Has your garment been made using child labour? Is your denim dye poisoning rivers? Has your beading been sewn on by a seven-year-old?
Three: Slogan t-shirts. From the AIDS awareness days of Katherine Hamnett to the totally castrated re-working by Henry Holland, for many people a message is best delivered by a pair of breasts.
Which brings me on to the main thrust of today’s dressing-down. Someone bled the politics out of fashion. Don’t get me wrong - the pale and waxy corpse is still there, it just doesn’t have any real message pumping through its veins. Instead of Choose Life, we’re now told to Save the Rave.
They may not know it, but most fashion-conscious young women are currently dressing like radical feminists of the late 1980s. Ripped tights, heavy black boots, undercuts, little floral dresses with heavy woollen cardigans, big T-shirts and lycra leggings. These were once the hallmarks of a strong, feminist, alternative fashion movement; a reaction against the sharp-shouldered, ultra-feminine couture of supermodels like Jerry Hall.
Now, however, these symbols of once-subversive gender politics have been plucked and drained like your finest Halal chicken. Which leaves a rather nasty taste in my mouth.
Posted on Wednesday 17th March 2010
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