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d of course no you cannot buy this item yourself it s all mine i guess for me the question right now is how do we make clothing our own posted by slanderous at 12 01 pm labels feminism gender politics race vintage 07 december 2009 the truth of lagerfeld s idea of china several days ago karl lagerfeld head designer and creative director at chanel debuted paris shanghai a fantasy a short film made to accompany the chanel pre fall runway show the 22 minute short was projected on an outdoor screen amid the shanghai cityscape the film clip is below cross overs between fashion and film are nothing new indeed paris shanghai isn t lagerfeld s first foray into filmmaking either last year he made his directorial debut with a 10 minute silent film called paris moscow another designer filmmaker is tom ford who just released his first film a single man a feature length adaptation of a novel with the same name by christopher isherwood and while the cook the thief his wife and her lover was not produced or directed by a fashion designer jean paul gaultier s contribution to the 1989 acerbic comedy film on the pleasures and perils of all manner of consumption undeniably exceeded his role as head costume designer lagerfeld s latest film has lithuanian model edita vilkeviciute playing a very tightly wound coco chanel who travels to 1960s shanghai in her dreams vilkeviciute also played chanel in paris moscow there she meets two chinese youth in mao style suits played by danish supermodel freja beha and lagerfeld s french male muse baptiste giabiconi both are adorned with mao style outfits and heavy kohl lined eyes while the beha character admits that she doesn t know much about western designers she admires chanel s jacket and is soon invited to try it on chanel then offers the giabiconi character a men s jacket to try on as beha and giabiconi happily embrace each other in their new jackets and hurry to admire themselves in the mirror speaking fake chinese chanel beams smugly at the camera you see everyone in the whole world can wear chanel as with french vogue s earlier blackface editorial featuring dutch model lara stone yellowface and other dominant forms of racial masquerade highlight and reaffirm white thin female bodies as the signification of universal beauty despite defensive assertions by among many others carine roitfeld with regard to the french vogue editorial tyra banks in her apology for the racial drag photo shoot on america s top model and now lagerfeld that racial performances by white models actors is avant garde and post racial such performances are ridiculously retrograde and reproduce historical racial hierarchies in which white bodies imagined as racially unmarked and thus universal are superior to racially marked bodies it is from this location of universality what nirmal puwar calls the universal empty point that white female bodies like beha s and stone s can play with the assigned particularity of ethnicized dress without suffering the violence of revulsion lagerfeld seems to anticipate this critique when he argues that his short film represents the idea of china not the reality it has the spirit of and is inspired by but is unrelated to china without meaning to lagerfeld describes precisely one of the core truths of orientalism a system of western knowledge that as edward said explains had since antiquity imagined the orient as a place of romance exotic beings haunting memories and landscapes remarkable experiences lagerfeld s china like the orient said discusses is a european american invention more from said s groundbreaking book orientalism the orient has helped to define europe or the west as its contrasting image idea personality experience yet none of this orient is merely imaginative the orient is an integral part of european material civilization and culture in the example of lagerfeld s film and its accompanying runway show the material effects of the cultural enterprise of orientalism is clear lagerfeld s production of an idea about china articulated through western epistemologies and white bodies sells both chanel fashions and the chanel brand as vilkeviciute chanel puts it you see everyone in the whole world can wear chanel the implication being that if chinese people who are imagined as located in a time place and culture so far removed from and thus alien to fashion s modern western cosmopolitan center can desire chanel fashions then anyone can thus chanel s dream is the neoliberal dream of increased global markets for western commodities orientalism is distinctive in the western cultural archive of racial projects because it operates not simply through the hatred of but also the fantasies about the other orientalist objects and this includes oriental people like the yellowfaced characters in lagerfeld s film and those in so many of hollywood s classic films are to quote homi bhabha at once an object of desire and derision the writers frank chin and jeffrey paul chan have also described this racial ambivalence in terms of racist love and racist hate the desire for the other and the desire to consume otherness are subtle forms of genteel racism that have become preferred modes of cultural representation in this multicultural or post racial historical moment i want to note that while genteel racism is specific to this historical moment it emerges from a legacy of patrician orientalism the production of otherness through its exoticization and eroticization that has always been an integral part of u s history jack tchen observes in his book new york before chinatown that george washington and other founding figures sought distinction and respectability through the consumption and display of chinese and chinese style goods like porcelain tea and silk it may be difficult for lagerfeld and others in fashion who practice and endorse blackfacing or yellowfacing as well as their supporters to accept that these cultural modes emerge from and reproduce histories of racism orientalism and xenophobia because lagerfeld does not fit our image of the virulent racists we remember from sensationalist talk shows like jerry springer also aesthetic practices seem far afield from more recognizably racist practices like cross burning for example and it is not my contention that genteel racism and overt racism are the same thing what we have been seeing in fashion magazines and on runways are cultural practices of boutique multiculturalists to borrow a phrase from vijay prashad boutique multiculturalists like the faddishness of difference they reduce different ways of life to superficial tokens that they can harness as style but refuse to engage with those parts of difference with which they disagree prashad argues and i would agree that boutique multiculturalism is more pernicious than overt racism because it covers over or occludes the structures and practices of actually existing racism by aestheticizing their histories while lagerfeld stumbles upon the truth of orientalism it is clear that he doesn t understand its material and political effects locating paris shanghai among classic orientalist productions like the good earth in which luise ranier won an oscar for her yellowface portrayal of o lan and madame butterfly mary pickford famously played the japanese geisha cho cho san in the 1915 silent film lagerfeld explains people around the world like to dress up as different nationalities what lagerfeld misses though is that yellowfacing as with blackfacing is not simply about playing at difference but about reaffirming and securing traditional meanings about racial difference that are constituted by their asymmetrical and contrasting relationship to the universal ideal of whiteness posted by minh ha t pham at 1 38 pm labels film orientalism race 27 november 2009 radio silence some noise apologies for the recent radio silence i m suffering a terrific head cold as well as ever anxious anticipation for my manuscript workshop this week being ill has been something of a relief quite frankly as it feels like a legitimate reason to stop working for at least a little while or to do other work though i have my cat morton to do my laundry for me i ve actually taken a bit of a break from the internets except for vintage shopping on etsy but here are a few things i ve enjoyed reading in the last week or so while minh ha has been on a research trip _______________ queer novelist and performer michelle tea is blogging for the san francisco museum of modern art now and in her latest missive she ponders the return of possibly regrettable fashions past i don t know if i am ready for creepers to make a comeback even in the form of a boot even if the boot comes with a leather faux sock poking over the top even and especially if it comes hung with a couple of decorative boot belts and even if they are designed by alexander wang but you know even as i type this looking at the boots in their buttery lighting at barneys where they live i am starting to have second thoughts maybe they are actually the greatest things i ve ever seen sometimes being repulsed by a piece of fashion is a signal that i m about to be obsessed with it _______________ it seems that the internets is spitting up reflections on the impact of fashion bloggers these days we re no exception especially with style rookie tavi s skyrocketing interplanetary profile as both model and muse imran amed from the business of fashion offers this new social media reality check to industry insiders while evil monito s lindsey ibarra chimes in with some thoughts on the increasingly blurred divisions between insider outsider status as well as shifting measures of expertise especially apparent as amateur fashion bloggers appear to replace professional stylists as the fashion blogosphere has grown it s become packed with new voices talents and faces through its evolution it has become clear that in order to be a valid blogger one must be a visible blogger and in turn the world wide web has been flooded with boys and girls eager to show themselves off to the rest of the world no longer is it just about the clothing suddenly it s also about a face wearing the clothing and yet i suppose in some ways it always has been when supermodels ruled the world their faces were just as important if not more so as the clothing they were modeling but the added element of worldwide exposure at the click of a button has created an entire generation of i m famous on the internet icons _______________ next there be black dandies all over jezebel covers the recent release of photographer daniele tamagni s gentlemen of bacongo documenting the phenomenon of sapeurs or the congolese subculture of dandies i d been worrying at this postcolonial knot of politics and desires since i read a few months earlier patty chang s review at fashion projects of george amponsah and cosima spender s documentary the importance of being elegant chang s comments are insightful watching this documentary it s unavoidable to draw parallels to the image of bling bling culture propagated by new school hip hop the projection of cool by emulating the conspicuous consumption of elites and the impersonation of success and fashionability rather than the projection of a sense of depravation are traits shared by both subcultures indeed amponsah and spender seem more inclined to portray the phenomenon of la sape in a similar vein to the glorification of material excess found in hip hop culture the inherent paradoxes of poor unemployed urban youths who hustle to be able to wear designer duds or footage of papa wemba trying on garish fur coats by cavalli all seem to confirm this yet la sape has a history that is far older than this documentary suggests originating in congo brazzaville in the 1930s the movement s inspiration though often disputed draws reference from the archetypal dandies of modernity as well as western films of the 1940s and 1950s especially those of mobster black and white thrillers and the three musketeers the sapeurs of brazzaville were mainly composed of lower middle class young men high school drop outs and later disenfranchised youths observing a strict three color rule their austere elegance became a method to cope with colonialist hegemony and assimilation policies as well as a way of subversion and resistance in addition the acronym la sape plays on the french term for clothing and points to the fascination with their colonizers the sapeurs of brazzaville preached a conservative style that focused on cleanliness and absence from using hard drugs through the cultivation of clothes they sought to define their social distinctiveness while deriving pleasure in admiring themselves somewhat akin to what pierre bourdieu has called a strategy of self representation fashion became a symbolic gesture of reclaiming power in times of economic deprivation and attempts at political dominance in some instances it proved a man could be a master of his own fate some authors have remarked that the sapeurs concealed their social failure through the presentation of self and the transformation of it into an apparent victory _______________ and finally fashion for writers is on some kind of posting roll with wonderful prose and lovely photographs i m inspired though not enough to get dressed in something besides yoga pants and my old maximumrocknroll t shirt right now damn this cold i will just have to heal in the warm glow of the kate bush dance troupe posted by slanderous at 6 10 pm labels blackness dandyism fashion blogging laundry masculinity morton new technologies sapeur 23 november 2009 film schmatta rags to riches to rags hbo set your dvrs for tomorrow morning when hbo will be showing a new film on the rise and fall of the new york city garment industry called schmatta rags to riches to rags from hbo s description for generations of new yorkers the garment district was the lifeblood of the city but with the increased globalization of clothing manufacturing this once thriving area continues to shrink this documentary looks at the vibrant unexpected history of the garment district and features interviews with workers labor organizers designers and fashion executives who look back at their careers in an area that was a doorway to the american dream for thousands of immigrants these stories provide an intimate portrait of an industry in decline and give a timely look at how american manufacturing has changed perhaps forever if you miss it on tuesday november 24 you can find it on hbo on demand through december 6 2009 posted by minh ha t pham at 6 04 am labels film labor new york city 11 november 2009 in vintage color image blatantly stolen from fashion for writers there is a lot to appreciate about fashion for writers s meggy wang like her recent conversation with her new collaborator jenny z on overdressing but one of the things i appreciate the most is how her outfit posts might be alternately imagined as a series of found photo...
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