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Critical Cases on the Violence of Fashion

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VICTIMS OF STYLE Critical Cases on the Violence of Fashion VICTIMS OF STYLE Critical Cases on the Violence of Fashion 1 2 The essence of oppression is that one is defined from the outside by those who define themselves as superior by criteria of their own choice. (Dworkin 1981: 149) 3 edited by Otto von Busch ISBN: 978-91-980388-4-2 New York: Selfpassage 2015 The authors has made every reasonable attempt to contact owners of copyright. Errors and omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. 4 AUTHORS: Axelle Boyer Rachel Branker Gabriela Corretjer Margaux Donnellier Joelle Firzli Mariza M. Galindo Julie Mahdavi LaChaun Moore Keneilwe Morifi-Winslow Rose Park Anushikha Rentala Otto von Busch Fellow discussant: Elizabeth Dilorenzo 5 6 VICTIMS OF STYLE Introduction 9 Abuse 10 Before & After 18 Bullying 24 Capital/Waste 30 Clash of Cultures 36 Cyberaggression 44 Debt & Death 50 Double-Crossed 56 Elitism 62 Fake or Fortune? 68 Fashionscapes 74 Fear 84 Girl Tax 92 Hierarchy 96 Institutional classism 104 Invalidation 108 Narcissism 120 Online Invalidation 132 Shame 136 Shopping Microaggressions 138 Suicide 142 Victim/Victory 146 Post-script 158 Dictionary 176 References 183 7 8 Introduction A dominant paradigm in the exegesis of fashion has been the perspective of desire and sexuality, seeing clothing as a symbolic interface for attraction and communication. However, within the realm of nature as well as culture, sexuality is only one real motivation for action, the other predominant force would be the establishment of territories and rivalry between peers. Social life may be about seduction, but it is also closely intertwined with dominion, power and popularity. From such perspective, fashion is no longer merely a matter of attraction and sexual selection, instead it becomes a matter of vio- lent natural competition: fashion as the rule of the strong, the law of beauty as a matter of power, expolitation and popularity. Adoration is indeed a powerful social instrument for power, and to be fashionable means to be a ruler in the realm of appearances. This perspective on fashion would mean we have to look more closely at the mechanisms of aesthetic stratification, examining fashion from the perspective of violent social competition, and how it intersects with domination, rather than peaceful communication. Here, fashion is a matter of Realpolitik rather than idealism. To be fashionable means to be attractive at the cost of someone else. Fashion is not a realm of peace and attraction, but a violent force of systemic and individual rivalry. A game, red in tooth and claw. This reader is an attempt to frame an introduction to fashion and violence. It is the outcome of the course “Critical Fashion and Social Justice” at Parsons School of Design in the fall 2015. The short studies are meant to map out a wide array of examples of how fashion is entangled into various forms of violence. However, as the reader will notice, the cases are focusing on the vio- lence of fashion at the consumer end, and primarily in a western context, not the well documented violence in sweatshops or under repressive govern- ments. Instead, we have focused on the violence amongst us, in a city like New York. We hope this may spark future discussions, and not least make fashion designers start thinking about how conflict resolution and nonvio- lence could be manifested within the domain of dress. 9 ABUSE 10 Axelle Boyer The action takes place in a psychologist office in Manhattan, NY. The room is lit by a declining autumn sun whose rays ricochet off the trees of Central Park - where the leaves are turning red and yellow – onto the large window. M.G.: Hi A.! What brings you here? A.B.: I’ve been feeling down… I want to sit around all day, do nothing, sleep… I’m doing a pretty intense internship, it is time-demanding and ex- tremely draining. I only work three days a week, but it wears me out. M.G.: Tell me more about this internship…? A.B.: I’m M.L.’s assistant. I found the position through my university’s career services and started working two months ago. M.L. is an established stylist who works for Vogue and other publications of that kind. I should consider myself lucky to work for her. She’s a pretty big player in the industry, she knows a lot of people, she’s invited to all the fashion shows and sits front row, you know… Working in fashion had always been a dream of mine, since I was a little girl… But now I’m not so sure anymore… M.G.: Oh that’s sad. Why is that? A.G.: It’s a tough microcosm. People are mean. My boss can be very cruel - with me, at least. She’s very nice to the rest of the world. Well… now that I think about it, she’s nice to the people who are at her level in the fashion hierarchy, you know, but she treats people below her as nobodies, underlings, good for executing orders. And that’s when she deigns to notice their exist- ence. Most of the time, she acts like I don’t exist. I’m free labor and she’s the boss, so she can abuse me, nobody’s going to say anything. M.G.: What’s your relationship with your colleagues? Do they feel the same way as you? A.G.: I don’t really see them that much. M.L. makes us work on different days, probably so we don’t conspire against us. For the longest time, I thought that I was her scapegoat, but I recently got in touch with a fellow intern, who con- firmed that she’s was being treated just as poorly. Apparently, M.L. criticized 11 12 her hand-writing, saying she had to be stupid to write like that. Everybody is scared of her, it’s not just me. M.G.: You used a very strong and powerful word earlier: “abuse.” Can you tell me more about that? How is she abusive? A.G.: Well first of all, she abuses me economically: she doesn’t pay me yet makes me work long hours and go on all sorts of missions that weren’t in- cluded in the description of the job I applied for. She’ll ask me to go to the air- port’s Lost and found to pick up a personal item she forgot on the plane. She’ll ask me to clean up her desk full of dirty used tissues, or carry heavy racks by myself, while she’s walking next to me, on the phone, laughing. Sometimes I feel like she even perversely enjoys asking me to take the trash out. And of course, no please, no thank you – I don’t deserve that level of consideration. I go to a good school, I actually know something about fash- ion, and my boss knows that. I think she doesn’t like it because she hasn’t gone to university herself. She threatens to fire me every so often, when she’s in a bad mood, or when I don’t do things correctly – and I never seem to do things correctly! I always buy the wrong type of clothes hang- ers, or order the wrong kind of milk for her latte… That’s because she al- ways gives me very vague, confusing indications, or not enough informa- tion, which makes it hard for me to perform the task correctly. Sometimes she even gets pissed at me when I haven’t done something she didn’t even ask me to do… Thank god I only work for her three days a week. And you know what, she still harasses me by texts on my days off… And of course, she gets pissed at me if I don’t answer right away. It’s a vicious circle: now, when her name appears on my phone screen, I feel anxious. I’m scared to open the text right away, as I know it will be full of reproaches. I think to myself: “what did I do wrong this time? What does she want me to do now?” M.G.: Why do you think M.L. treats you like in such a degrading manner? A.B: It’s actually funny: back in the days, she was the personal assistant of a very famous journalist who has a reputation for being a difficult person. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for her then and but I don’t understand why she perpetu- ates the pattern. It’s a sort of revenge against life I guess… M.G.: How much are you willing to accept to keep this job? A.G.: At this point, I feel like I have already accepted everything. M.G.: What you’ve just described to me closely resembles the structure of emotional abuse. Have you heard of it? 13 14 A.B: No, what is that? M.G.: According to my colleague Marie-France Hirigoyen (2005), emo- tional abuse happens when someone engages in an abusive conduct toward you, infringing upon your personality, dignity or physical integrity. It of- ten takes place in a couple, but it can also happen in the workplace. That’s precisely what Dr. Hirigoyen works on - emotional abuse in the workplace. The context for the abuse isn’t set up in one day: the aggressor starts by depreciating the work of the victim, and ultimately the person herself. In reaction, the victim, who is under a great deal of pressure, starts feeling anxious, acts erratically, making mistakes in her work, handling poorly the situation – which is sanctioned by more and more reproaches on the part of the aggressor.
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