Alexander Fury is becoming my favorite fashion writer. Here he takes on appropiation of cultures for designer’s collections. What is inspiration and when are you crossing the lines? And how did the sensitivity changed throughout the past decades:
Despite the fashion calendar shifting continents and an entire fashion week unfolding in the interim (London’s five-day schedule ended yesterday evening), attention is still being drawn back to New York; namely, to Marc Jacobs. Last Thursday afternoon, Jacobs unveiled his spring/summer 2017 show, to generally positive critical reviews — and a social media brouhaha. The focus was the models’ hair, braided into multicolored dreadlocks inspired by the transgender filmmaker Lana Wachowski and sourced online. The designer was subsequently accused of cultural appropriation, of lifting influences from black culture and showing them on a cast of predominantly white models. Jacobs was rapidly tried and sentenced by a public jury; a fusillade of comments rained down on Instagram and Twitter. Jacobs responded, first by “justifying” his actions and then, after that engendered further criticism, apologizing for the justification, and for any offense caused. The story had already leapt from the fashion pages: Time ran a piece, as did many other general-interest publications.
The thing that struck me was, ironically, how very Marc Jacobs all this feels. Jacobs’s distinct talent is to, somehow, divine the moods of the moment and compress them into 10-minute fashion shows. Often, the mood is confined to the aesthetic, to a particular fashion buzz about to chime with the populace: Fetish! Leopard! Denim! Sometimes, he digs deeper. His spring/summer 1993 grunge collection for former employer Perry Ellis nailed an emerging cultural moment, coupled to fashion but also encompassing music and a general “slacker” feel. It was presented two years before Kevin Smith’s “Clerks,” but, as that film did, represented a break with not only the aesthetics but the social mores and values of the ’80s. It was, maybe, the true start of the ’90s. (F.Y.I., it got Jacobs fired.)
This collection isn’t quite as seminal — but when it comes to nailing the mood of the time in which we live, it’s bang-on. Today is a moment of uncertainty, a moment teetering on tenterhooks, of walking on eggshells. Jacobs collection wasn’t intended to be controversial: “cyberpunk, cyber-goth, street kids, club kids, couture,” were the references Jacobs’ stylist, Katie Grand, reeled off to me 48 hours before the show. If anything, Jacobs’s appropriation was of the already-appropriated, the dreadlocks sported by the aforementioned style subsects. The reaction to it, however, epitomizes a media landscape dominated by 21st-century terminology like “trigger warning” and “micro-aggression.”
Fashion has been “borrowing” from other cultures for decades. Elsa Schiaparelli based her upturned shoulders, the ones that set the silhouette for the ’30s and ’40s, on the costumes of Balinese dancers. Yves Saint Laurent pillaged the Steppes and the Far East. Almost everyone’s turned to Japan at some point — or an idea of Japan, like those laid out by Edward Said’s 1978 book “Orientalism,” and which are applicable to collections by designers as diverse as Paul Poiret, Yves Saint Laurent and Giorgio Armani.
But at what point did appropriation become inappropriate? When did designers start being called out on their picture-postcard odes to foreign lands and people — what’s changed?
I wonder if those collections will be reassessed, by subsequent generations, with the judgment we apply to blackface — of decidedly inappropriate cultural colonialism, antiquated and uncomfortable to watch. “The point of academic analysis is not to criticize, but to reveal the contradictions, to possibly reveal the flaws that are symptomatic of their time,” Evans points out. “It tells you something about the period, that we need to learn.”
What should we learn from our period? Perhaps that every look will be analyzed, and criticized, and that the criticism will be vocal via a permanently plugged-in, Wi-Fi world. That, regardless of intent or stated inspiration, every nuance and reference could be second-guessed. That it’s not easy to riff on other cultures without someone feeling ripped off, and that the offended are quick to take to social media to voice their disdain. That’s a good thing, potentially — it makes designers stop and think about other cultures, hopefully to gain a better understanding of their references, which probably makes their designs better, or at least more intelligent. There’s also a simpler lesson: that you’ll never please all of the people all of the time. But it’s good to try to understand their point of view.