Possession, Fashion & the Avant-Garde

The avant-garde in fashion is often clothing that departs from functionality and the boundaries of the body. Perhaps the term would now be “queering” fashion, but fashion throughout much time and space has been constrictive and a practice of the elite class. If the term queer still had any meaning it would serve well to call the pieces found in the pages of Haute Couture magazines to mean eccentric and unconventional, which describes this kind of artistic expression well. Fashion is also a way to signify class. People become possessed by the idea of presenting themselves in the latest trends and fashions so as not to commit the dreaded fashion faux pas. Fashion is a way for people to buy into the prescribed micro identities meant to generate human capital.

I was inspired recently by the work of danish fashion designer Han Kjøbenhavn. Posted to twitter was a picture of some of his latest work, without much context:

Julia Fox at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party 2022 wearing Han Kjøbenhavn’s “Grip” dress

Kjøbenhavn has created a dress that is seemingly choking the model wearing it. We can also see the words “SANCTI”(?) and “SPIRIT”(VS)(?) on her shoulders. I can’t perfectly make it out. Maybe you, my dear audience, can. Let me know what you think. It is an obvious ode to The Black Swan. Which everyone else loved, while I found it to be a dull doppelganger trope. So just for fun, to break this image down, what is this demon, I mean woman, trying to convey with this look? At the very surface a dark side. A side possessed. Her eyes are also terrifying, but I guess this is a party, so she’s probably just stoned.

The dress is a collaboration between Kjøbenhavn and ceramics artist Naomi Gilon, who seems to specialize in making art and clothing that resemble otherworldly creatures. These strange demon like hands are depicted throughout Gilon’s work.

Naomi Gilon’s Ceramic “Calf-Skin” bag for the new “CowGirl” (2022) collection below

Many women on twitter were rightly outraged by the “Grip” dress. It is a visceral representation of possession of women within the context of fashion and culture. Don’t get me started on Gilon’s work evoking monsters and demons. I don’t think the model is actually wearing these shoes, but still, the message of transmogrification is glaring.

The “Grip” dress evokes domestic violence and “porn culture”. Quite literally this is a trope within pornography and many women report that during sex their boyfriends and husbands are choking them with and without consent. Is it consent if it came from Pornography? I consider it to be the OG hate speech.

The dress does look like it belongs in a BDSM club, and that is not at all by mistake. Avant-garde fashion has always put the garment above the body and form above function. It is its own special form of exploitation, torture, and possession.

Jean Paul Gaultier’s designs in “The Fifth Element” spring to mind:

Gaultier’s costume design in the 1997 film “The Fifth Element”. I admit is a movie I enjoy and own. It has great esoteric symbolism in it and we can all watch Bruce Willis in better days.

Yes, within the world of fashion, the human form is second to what the clothing can DO to it. We see highly sexualized versions of the female form, often contorting and accentuating certain body parts for sexual objectification. Sometimes I am unsure of who it is for, as many of the men creating it happen to also be homosexual.

Throughout history we see fashion that physically harms. It also depends on the conventions at the time. Contortion is often the end result. At the height of the French Empire, Rococo fashion was all the rage. The convention during this time was to contort and distort the female form behind panels and layers of fabric.

This is a typical Rococo period women's dress, "robe à la française". The ensemble shown here consists of a gown, the petticoat much like what we would call a skirt today, and a stomacher made in a triangular panel shape. The gown opens in the front, and has large pleats folded up at the back. All this would be worn after formed with a corset and pannier, which acted as underclothes. Until clothing accepted drastic changes with the 1789 French Revolution, rich outfits, such as is shown here, were worn.

Before the French Revolution, Rococo fashion was a symbol of an elite class on the brink of collapse. Much like the fashion of today, it was worn by the upper class to signify just where they were as the world collapsed around them.

One of the most obvious and still ubiquitous forms of female contortion is the high heel. No matter if wearing them makes it impossible for you to wear flats, the shoes make your calves look good and that’s what counts. Form over function. Contortion over comfort. This is where possession comes in. It will literally harm you to be possessed by an idea, in this case high fashion.

It is an interesting coincidence, that the page I found Kjøbenhavn’s work on, is called “Culted”. Within fringe cults we often see the control of dress and appearance. I had never heard of this site but it seems to be a fashion and art site meant to sell you high end new balance sneakers and tell you about new DJs. It reminds me of the old days of VICE, when it was a publication, doing just about that: pimping sneakers, fashion, and women:

VICE has always been interested in demoralization

So called high fashion and art are always just to sell you stuff. We see these strange, novel images, and fashions that control the body and we are meant to become possessed by this idea of contortion and keeping up. The God of Consumerism must exploit the body and corrupt the psyche with desire for that which it can not have. It is the obfuscation of the self and the becoming of an idea. We see this with micro identities like the TikTok Bimbos and the language of genderism.

It is the total and complete commodification of the body and identity. What artists like Kjøbenhavn and Gilon are showing us is that the human is only an animal meant to consume and be possessed. This completes the dehumanization, humiliation, and degradation that equal demoralization.

One could say these people are...possessed...by a culture that encourages self abasement. "Gender" aka sex role stereotypes as expressed in fashion often result in harm to the body and the psyche.