S.U.N.Y. Fashion Institute of Technology Normcore: A

Home , Acne Studios, Fashion plate, Forever Cool, Morning dress, Riccardo Tisci, Stillness in Time

S.U.N.Y. FASHION INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

NORMCORE: A 2014 TREND AND THE END OF POSTMODERNISM IN FASHION

A QUALIFYING PAPER SUBMITTED TO

THE DIVISION OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE

MASTER OF ARTS

FASHION AND TEXTILE STUDIES: HISTORY, THEORY, MUSEUM PRACTICE

J. LEIA LIMA BAUM

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

DECEMBER 2016

ProQuest Number:10252173 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.

ProQuest 10252173 Published by ProQuest LLC ( 2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106 - 1346

This Qualifying Paper was submitted by

J. Leia Lima Baum

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts in Fashion and Textile Studies

December 2016

Lourdes Font, Advisor

Denyse Montegut, Chairperson

Mary E. Davis, Dean

ABSTRACT

In October 2013, a New York-based trend forecasting company, K-HOLE, introduced the concept of normcore in a manifesto titled Youth Mode: A Report on

Freedom. The text is not singularly concerned with fashion, but offers an analysis of general ideas about youth and consumerism, with particular interest in notions of sameness and difference, and community and belonging. In February 2014,

New York Magazine published a story on normcore and connected the idea with a particular style of dress that was prevalent in urban street style. Normcore soon became synonymous with pleasure in basic dress, a deliberately inelegant sense of style, and a paradoxically fashionable un-fashionableness.

For my qualifying paper, I analyzed the concept of normcore and its relationship with fashion. The first stage of my research was an analysis of how normcore was presented to the public via the fashion press. The second stage of my research was a return to the original source of normcore: a thorough examination of K-HOLE’s manifesto Youth Mode, which varies greatly from how the concept was transmitted via the fashion press and how it related to a particular style of dress. Studying Youth Mode provides insight into how the next generation of artists, thinkers, consumers, and fashion designers will change the face of fashion.

Lastly, I applied my knowledge of fashion history and summarized my findings from the first two stages of my research. I suspect that normcore is an indicator that we are entering, or have already entered, a post-postmodern era. Because normcore is indeed representative of a transitional period, then my comparing it to other major historical changes between fashion eras will be valuable to the study of contemporary fashion. CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ...... ii

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Chapter

1. “LOL NORMCORE”: A FASHION TREND ...... 9

What is Normal?

2. NORMCORE AND “THE PATH TO A MORE PEACEFUL LIFE” ...... 26

Alternative

Mass Indie

Acting Basic

Normcore

3. THE END OF POSTMODERNISM IN FASHION ...... 48

The Fashion Fractal

The Rules of Fashion

Democracy

The Fashionable Body

The Fashion System

Conclusion

ILLUSTRATIONS ...... 73

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 110

i LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure Page

1. Phoebe Philo at the end of the Céline Fall 2012 ready-to-wear presentation on March 6, 2011, AP Photo/François Mori ...... 73

2. A model shows an ensemble from Yves Saint Laurent’s Spring 1971 Libération collection, Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent ...... 74

3. Corinne Day, “Kate Moss,” 1990 ...... 75

4. Left, Larry David, ca. 2013, REX; right, Preston Chaunsumlit, ca. 2013, Tumblr ...... 76

5. Tommy Ton, street style during the Spring 2013 New York Fashion Week ...... 77

6. A model pushes a supermarket cart at Chanel’s Fall 2014 presentation, Getty Images ...... 78

7. Nicolas Coulomb, “New Faces by Nicolas Coulomb,” Novembre, October 2013 ...... 79

8. Kate Moss in Alexander McQueen’s Fall 1996 Ready-to-Wear collection, Condé Nast Archive ...... 80

9. Peter Lindbergh, “Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford,” January 1990 ...... 81

10. Hanes, “We were #normcore before #normcore was #normcore,” Twitter, April 10, 2014 ...... 82

11. Craig McDean, “Banal Plus,” W Magazine, September 2014 ...... 83

12. Sharon Stone at the 1998 Academy Awards, Getty Images ...... 84

13. Ryan Estrada, guest strip for Templar, AZ, September 17, 2008...... 85

14. Occupy Wall Street, “‘Civilians’ Spring Training,” March 29, 2012 ...... 86

15. David Sims, “Kurt Cobain,” The Face, September 1993 ...... 87

16. Stephen Sweet, “Kurt Cobain with his daughter, Frances Bean,” 1993, REX Images ...... 88

17. Matt Irwin, “Cara Delevingne,” K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 15 ...... 89

18. Nicolas Coulomb, “Ona by Nicolas Coulomb,” Novembre, December 5, 2013 ...... 90

19. Woman with tan lines, K-Hole, Youth Mode, 32 ...... 91

20. David Bowie in SoHo, ca. 2015, Spokeo/W.E.N.N...... 92

21. Gucci, Fall 2016 Ready-to-Wear, Yannis Vlamos/Indigital.tv ...... 93

22. Jacques-Louis David, Mme Recamier, ca. 1800, Musée de Louvre, Erich Lessing/Art Resource, N.Y...... 94

23. Left, evening dress, British, ca. 1810, Victoria and Albert Museum; right, Paul Poiret, “Eugenie” dress, ca. 1907, Musée des Arts Décoratifs ...... 95

24. Young Thug for Calvin Klein, Fall 2016, Instagram ...... 96

25. Mark Zuckerberg, “First day back after paternity leave. What should I wear?” January 25, 2016, Instagram ...... 97

26. Left, fashion plate, Magasin des modes nouvelles, françaises et anglaises, décrites d'une manière claire & précise, & représentées par des planches en taille-douce, enluminées, 1786, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Gallica; right, Robert Dighton, Beau Brummell, 1805, University of California, San Diego ...... 98

27. Left, Hans Holbein the Younger, Henry VIII, ca. 1540, Galleria nazionale d'arte antica, Rome, SCALA, Florence/Art Resource, N.Y.; right: Anthony Van Dyck, Charles I, King of England, During a Hunting Party, ca. 1636, Musée de Louvre, Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/Art Resource, N.Y...... 99

28. Viviane Sassen, advertisement for Acne Studios, Fall 2015 ...... 100

29. Linda Rodin, The Row lookbook, Pre-Fall 2014 ...... 101

30. Beyoncé at the Met Gala in a custom dress by Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy, May 4, 2015, Lucas Jackson, Reuters ...... 102

31. Kendall Jenner at the MuchMusic Awards in a dress by Fausto Puglisi on June 15, 2014, Getty Images ...... 103

32. Jeanloup Sieff, Yves Saint Laurent for Pour Homme, 1971 ...... 104

iii 33. Left, Sies Marjan, Fall 2016 Ready-to-Wear, Vogue.com; right, Giambattista Valli, Fall 2016 Couture, Yannis Vlamos/Indigital.tv...... 105

34. Alice Goddard, “Street Style,” Hot & Cool Issue No. 5, Spring 2013 ...... 106

35. “15 Nov 1996, Arnhem, NL, 14:45-15:45” from Hans Eijkelboom, People of the Twenty-First Century (London: Phaidon Press, 2014) ...... 107

iv LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1. “Postmodernism Practice and Style: A Rubric,” compiled by the Special Topics 2014 Seminar Participants, Fashion Institute of Technology M.A. Program in Fashion and Textiles Studies, http://docs.google.com/document/d/ 17MOwhEHxQBDjRSUdYx6pcUs69_DLeaHzcz1wWbudhsQ/edit ...... 108

2. The closed-circuit model between Alternative, Mass Indie, Acting Basic, and Normcore, K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 37 ...... 109

v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My journey through this program is a gift I will treasure forever, and it would not have been possible without the following:

Elliot Baum and your unwavering love and encouragement. Thank you for your constant belief in me.

Dr. Lourdes M. Font and your inspiring lectures, which were my greatest academic joy. You have greatly shaped me with your unparalleled passion for and knowledge of the history of dress.

And pretty, pretty princesses everywhere, and our legendary silk-clad adventures.

INTRODUCTION

In the spring of 2011, when Phoebe Philo took a bow at the end of the Céline presentation at Paris fashion week, she walked the runway in a minimalist turtleneck, trousers, and white Adidas Stan Smith sneakers (fig. 1). The sneakers were subsequently featured in a number of fashion editorials, although Adidas had temporarily halted production of the style.1 When they were re-released in January 2014, fashion insiders followed Philo’s lead, and the irresistible $75 sneakers were ubiquitous in the audiences during the February 2014 fashion month.2 It was during this time that New York

Magazine featured an article by Fiona Duncan about a “fashion for those who realize they’re one in seven billion.”3 The fashion press found the idea refreshing. If surrendering to the thought that they were all merely part of the masses meant there was no need to struggle to be impossibly on-point, then fashionable people weren’t just imitating each other with the latest “It” shoe, and they weren’t just tapping into another high-low styling so common to postmodern fashion. More radically, they were pushing the boundaries of fashion. Their condition had a name, and it was diagnosed as normcore.

1 Rory Satran, “How Did the Adidas Stan Smith Become the Ultimate Fashion Shoe?” i-D, May 26, 2015, https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/how-did-the-adidas-stan-smith-become-the-ultimate-fashion-shoe (accessed November 18, 2015). 2 Danielle Prescod, “How Adidas Sneakers Became a Fashion Girl ‘Thing’,” Elle, February 19, 2014, http://www.elle.com/fashion/news/a15316/adidas-originals-sneakers-trends/ (accessed January 5, 2015); Lauren Sherman, “Stan Smiths Are Even More Ubiquitous in Paris Than They Were at NYFW,” Fashionista, March 4, 2014, http://fashionista.com/2014/03/stan-smiths-paris-fashion-week (accessed January 5, 2015). 3 Fiona Duncan, “Normcore: Fashion for Those Who Realize They’re One in 7 Billion,” The Cut, February 26, 2014, http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/02/normcore-fashion-trend.html (accessed January 5, 2015).

1 2

Simultaneously, a revival of 1990s fashion was taking place. The postmodern era of the second half of the twentieth century was marked by a series of nostalgic revivals.

Fashion had welcomed back broad brushstrokes of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, and by the early 2010s, enough time had passed that the 1990s could be elevated from passé to fashion-forward. Fast-fashion shops promoted a resurgence of looser-fitting, higher- waist jeans, soft button-down flannels, and oversize T-shirts, and for young people, these silhouettes were fresh and new. These garments carried a multiple meanings, however.

Were they non-fashion basics, simple garments that perform a duty? Were they anti- fashion, a deliberate statement against the status quo? Were they fashion to the extreme, the refreshing new standard of elegance? For members of an older generation who had lived through the 1990s, who were not dedicated followers of fashion, these were their own, outdated clothes. These clothes weren’t fashionable, they were just…normal.

This, too, was normcore: a confusing platform where the fashionable and the unfashionable could coexist. Fashion tapped into an unexplored region, a place so normal it couldn’t even complete the word; it sublimates into hardcore, a portmanteau of uncompromising commitment to the idea of being normal. The fashionable were norm to the core. This was a trend to transcend all trends: turning fashion on its head so that those who dressed unfashionably were dressed at the height of fashion. Normcore thus became the most-searched fashion term in 2014. Thousands of online publications covered the topic, from homegrown bloggers to legitimate news sources, all determined to analyze, package, and disseminate the trend. The concept was novel and piqued public curiosity. Its viral spread across the internet led many to mock it, uncertain if it was anything more than a meme, a joke, or a prank.

Duncan traced the term normcore to Youth Mode: A Report on Freedom, a manifesto produced by K-HOLE, a New York-based trend forecasting group. The authors of Youth Mode are not singularly concerned with fashion, but offer an analysis of general ideas about youth and consumerism, with particular interest in notions of sameness and difference, and community and belonging. Youth Mode was first presented at London’s Serpentine Gallery in October 2013 at the 89plus Marathon, a festival by and about emerging thinkers born on or after 1989, which aimed to address the cultural norms of the so-called Millennial generation. K-HOLE and Youth Mode remained largely unknown except in New York City art circles, until four months later when

New York Magazine picked up the story and made it mainstream.

Unlike the normcore fashion trend, the Youth Mode concept was less concerned with material manifestations and was more focused on changing cultural patterns—the connection between the Youth Mode concept and a sartorial trend was a serendipitous misinterpretation. The Normcore concept presented in Youth Mode was scrutinized as heavily as the normcore concept publicized by fashion blogs and magazines.4 As a work of philosophy Youth Mode was derided for being sociologically shallow and not fully fleshing out intriguing modes of social reality. Even in academic discourse, Normcore as a concept was inextricably linked with its erroneous connection to the normcore fashion trend.

The theories presented in Youth Mode, however, are echoed in the fluctuations in fashion that have occurred in recent history. K-HOLE’s assessments of current youth

4 In Youth Mode, Normcore is referred to as a proper noun with a capitalized “N.” I will borrow a technique from Rory Rowan, author of “So Now!: On Normcore” and refer to the fashion trend with a lower-case “n” and differentiate the Youth Mode concept as “Normcore,” in upper-case. Rory Rowan, “So Now!: On Normcore,” e-flux, no. 58 (October 2014), http://www.e-flux.com/journal/so-now-on- normcore/ (accessed January 5, 2015).

4 values are also represented in the publications of leading voices of critical cultural discourse. When examining all three together, the spontaneous normcore fashion trend, the Youth Mode document, and the relationship between postmodernism and fashion, it becomes evident that the epoch of postmodernism is fading away further into history and giving way to a new relationship with that nebulous concept with an ever-fluctuating meaning: normality. The end of postmodernism has long been discussed by philosophers: as early as 1987, De Villo Sloan, in a study of literary works, noted that

“postmodernism [was fading] into the past”5; in their 2001 publication, Potter and Lopez consider postmodernism in the past tense6; in 2005, Lipovestky wrote, “twenty years ago, the concept ‘postmodern’ was a breath of fresh air, it suggested something new, a major change of direction. It now seems vaguely old-fashioned”7; in 2009 Kirby “assess[ed] the case for the decline and fall since the mid-late 1990s of postmodernism”8; the curators of the Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition “Postmodernism: Style and Subversion,

1970-1990” declared “postmodernism was a pre-digital phenomenon” and set the show’s end date to correlate with the public availability of the World Wide Web in 1991.9

Naturally, grand narratives do not have hard stops and starts, but grow and fade over time. Most of this discourse roughly places the end of postmodernism as the leading cultural force in the 1990s, coincidentally the decade that is the source of normcore’s

5 De Villo Sloan, “The Decline of American Postmodernism,” SubStance 16, no. 3, issue 54 (1987): 41, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3685195 (accessed October 29, 2016). 6 Garry Potter and Jose Lopez, eds., After Postmodernism: An Introduction to Critical Realism (London: The Athlone Press, 2001), 4. 7 Gilles Lipovetsky, Hypermodern Times (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 30. 8 Alan Kirby, Digimodernism: How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and Reconfigure our Culture (New York: Continuum Publishing Group, 2009), 3. 9 Glenn Adamson and Jane Pavitt, eds., Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990 (London: V&A Publishing, 2011), 10.

5 aesthetic revival, but in order to debate the denouement of postmodernism it is necessary to understand the shifts that led to its emergence in the first place.

The very term “postmodernism” involves a reaction against modernism; therefore, the definition of postmodernism must include an understanding of what, exactly, it is responding to and the nature of that reaction. The modern era at the beginning of the twentieth century had favored simplicity in design, the progress of technology, and the manufacture of new objects. By the late 1960s, postmodern thought replaced these forward-thinking values; societal norms were challenged by the civil rights movement and women’s liberation; in fashion, the dominant system was challenged by the coming of age of a new generation that rejected the haute couture. In the mid-1960s, a new body type became fashionable when Twiggy burst onto the fashion scene; all lashes and limbs, she was a striking contrast from the voluptuous femmes fatales who had preceded her, like Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe. The New Look introduced by Christian Dior in

1947 had run its course; tidy full skirts and nipped-in waists had given way to sheath dresses and mini skirts. Although designers such as Pierre Cardin and Andre Courrèges advocated for a futuristic fashion aesthetic, the dominant popular taste soon retreated backward in style. The decline of the old modes of fashion was hastened by the 1968 retirement of Cristobal Balenciaga, the death of Gabrielle Chanel, and

Yves Saint Laurent’s audaciously retro 1971 Libération collection (fig. 2). The old became more appealing than the new. In quick succession, revivals of Art Nouveau,

Art Deco, the 1950s, and, by the 1970s, a mixture of all permeated fashion design.

Young people turned to second-hand shops for more creativity in fashion, claiming vintage fashion as their own. This new era was not categorized just by its eclectic

6 aesthetics, but by the motivations that drove them there. Out of fear of the future, postmodern fashion fetishized nostalgic revivals, and its relationship with the past was driven by a different relationship with objects.

Over the approximately fifty-year span of postmodern fashion, mini movements colored each decade, such as the “psychedelic” style of the late 1960s, the arts and crafts of the 1970s, and the exaggerated, excessive luxury of the 1980s. Even though each of these phases of postmodern fashion had a personality of its own, they were all born of an anxiety for the future and together make up the larger postmodern movement.

Throughout the postmodern era, fashion continuously reinvented itself by recycling and reinterpreting the past fashions of the twentieth century, rather than creating and accepting something new. This continuous reintroduction of the passé blurred the lines between reality and meaning, and symbols and signs. Elements of postmodern fashion included nostalgia, exaggeration, androgyny, contrast, kitsch, and contradiction; these values were repeated with increasing intensity until they transformed into an unrecognizable, irreversible version of themselves.

It is at this point of no return that normcore arrived—both normcore, the fashion trend, and Normcore, the Youth Mode concept. The two versions of normcore are widely different, fully-formed ideas, and each reflects a timely and important shift in cultural attitude. Neither, however, could exist without the other: normcore, the fashion trend, is defined as an ideation of the Normcore concept, but it was born of a misappropriation of the term. Youth Mode’s Normcore needed the vehicle of the normcore fashion trend to propel itself to widespread recognition. It is in the intersection of the two definitions that awareness of the nuance of one’s own era begins to be defined. This descent into the

7 chaos of lost meaning is a product of postmodernism, and the convergence of normcore and Normcore into the social lexicon suggests that in fashion, the postmodern era is at its end.

In order to offer a valuable contribution to the study of contemporary fashion, I have approached the concept of normcore in a tripartite manner. First, I began by analyzing the fashion trend normcore and how the style was disseminated by the fashion press. It was important to begin with a study of the fashion trend because that is how most people were first introduced to normcore. I studied numerous fashion journalism articles, blogs, and videos to better understand how information on the trend was spread, how journalists influenced each other, and how a paradoxically fashionable un-fashionableness became a viral sensation. This research is covered in Chapter 1.

Next, I returned to the original source of normcore: a thorough examination of

K-HOLE’s manifesto Youth Mode, where the definition of Normcore varies greatly from how the concept was transmitted via the fashion press. In Chapter 2, I offer an analysis of the K-HOLE document Youth Mode, where Normcore is more of a general concept and is not particularly related to a style of dress. Studying Youth Mode provided insight into how the next generation of artists, thinkers, consumers, and fashion designers will change the face of consumerism and, therefore, fashion.

Lastly, in Chapter 3, I applied my knowledge of fashion history and summarized my findings from the first two stages of my research by studying them against postmodern theory. In the fall of 2014, students in the Special Topics Seminar at the

Fashion Institute of Technology, led by Professor Lourdes Font, studied Postmodernism and its relationship with fashion. The postmodern era was given a start date of 1964, and

8 the movement was analyzed to 2014, the current year for the class and the year that the normcore trend took a hold of fashion. The students compiled a rubric identifying ten key characteristics of postmodernism, their progression throughout the Postmodern era, and their relationship to each other (table 1). This Postmodern Rubric will be referenced throughout this paper to assist me in comparing both normcore, the fashion trend, and

Normcore, the Youth Mode concept, against postmodern theory. I suspect that normcore is an indicator that we are entering, or have already entered, a post-postmodern era, and I offer historical precedents to support this theory.

CHAPTER 1

“LOL NORMCORE”: A FASHION TREND

The term normcore exploded into the fashion lexicon with the publication of

Fiona Duncan’s article “Normcore: Fashion for Those who Realize They’re One in Seven

Billion.”10 The article begins with an anecdote: Duncan, puzzled at her inability to distinguish fashionable young urbanites from outdated yokels based on their dress, messaged a friend for explanation. Her in-the-know artist friend texted back promptly:

“lol normcore.”

The nonchalant digital giggle suggested the privileged possession of secret information. Following K-Hole’s presentation of Youth Mode: A Report on Freedom at

London’s Serpentine Gallery in 2013, normcore was a concept quietly buzzed about in art circles. Prior to the publication of Duncan’s article and the subsequent viral spread of the term, it is unknown how precisely normcore trickled through the artistic crowd and to what extent the term was used, but via Duncan’s fortuitous connection to an artist it reached her ears, and she felt the term “effectively captured the self-aware, stylized blandness”11 she’d noticed in young urbanite dress. Both men and women were wearing a “non-style” consisting of unisex “stonewash jeans, fleece, and comfortable sneakers.”12

In her article, Duncan attempts to define the driving force behind the normcore style as well as describe it with words and images. She writes, “Normcore isn’t about

10 Duncan, “Fashion for Those Who Realize They’re One in 7 Billion.” 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid.

9 10 rebelling against or giving into the status quo; it’s about letting go of the need to look distinctive, to make time for something new.” Duncan uses descriptive prose to capture the sentiment of the normcore look, such as “ardently ordinary clothes. Mall clothes.

Blank clothes…as lukewarm as the last sips of deli coffee.”13 Adjectives like

“nondescript,” “anonymous,” and “genuinely average”14 pepper her descriptions of the look. She identifies key items that might make up a normcore ensemble, such as “mock turtlenecks with Tevas and Patagonia windbreakers; Uniqlo khakis with New Balance sneakers or Crocs and souvenir-stand baseball caps.”15 Duncan identifies the 1990s as normcore’s aesthetic precedent, citing “grunge-lite and Calvin Klein minimalism,”16 and recalling the Corinne Day and Kate Moss collaboration of the 1990s (fig. 3). Finally, she links to Instagram images of impossibly cool “Internet ‘It’ kids,”17 such as VFILES’

Preston Chaunsumlit. The driving force behind these sartorial expressions was

“embracing sameness deliberately as a new way of being cool.”18

Duncan’s assessment that normcore was at the epicenter of a fashion trend for

2014, earning her the moniker “high priestess of normcore.”19 Within six days of her article’s publication, over 2,000 new articles on normcore had appeared online.20

Numerous journalists, bloggers, vloggers, and authorities on fashion followed Duncan’s lead, often building on her example, and tried to capture and define the normcore style.

Anything that referred to dressing down, or an unfussy appearance was deemed to be

13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Alex Williams, “Normcore: Fashion Movement or Massive In-Joke?” New York Times, April 2, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/03/fashion/normcore-fashion-movement-or-massive-in-joke.html (accessed January 5, 2015). 20 Sherman, “Stan Smiths Are Even More Ubiquitous in Paris Than They Were at NYFW.”

11 normcore, such as polish-free nails and unwaxed bikini lines.21 Public figures who were perceived to dress in a more relatable manner were also normcore, and the label was applied liberally to endear or condemn public figures: Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, was dubbed the “Duchess of Normal,”22 and Sarah Palin worried that Barack Obama’s

“mom jeans” made him look weak, leading Gawker’s Max Read to wonder if Obama was

“too normcore to defeat Putin.”23

Commentaries varied from criticism to praise, from ridicule to adoration, but in the mainstream media the nuanced concept of dressing in a normcore style could be pared down to two tenets. First, normcore had a certain visual aesthetic, and its style heroes included charmingly awkward figures like Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David (fig. 4); successful technology leaders like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, who achieved success while rejecting the fashion system; and colorfully suggestive imaginary characters like “regular working schlub”24 and “depressed ‘80s perverts.”25 To achieve the normcore look was to embrace symbols of unfashionable suburbia, such as ill-fitting

“mom jeans” (for both men and women).26 Second, the purpose of normcore was to

21 Beth Shapouri, “More Evidence the Normcore Trend Has Extended to Nails,” Glamour, July 14, 2014, http://www.glamour.com/story/more-evidence-the-normcore-tre (accessed August 31, 2016); Maureen O’Connor, “The Full-Bush Brazilian: ‘Having It All’ With Pubes,” The Cut, April 3, 2014, http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/04/full-bush-brazilian-having-it-all-pubes.html (accessed August 31, 2016). 22 Sarah Mower, “Kate Middleton is the Duchess of Normal,” Vogue, April 15, 2014, http://www.vogue.com/868918/kate-middleton-normcore-london-calling/ (accessed January 5, 2015). 23 Max Read, “Is Obama Too Normcore to Defeat Putin?” Gawker, March 4, 2014, http://gawker.com/is- obama-too-normcore-to-defeat-putin-1536067479 (accessed January 5, 2015). 24 Luke Zaleski, “10 Reasons You, Normcore Guy, Are An Idiot,” GQ, February 27, 2014, http://www.gq.com/style/blogs/the-gq-eye/2014/02/normcore-fashion-is-for-idiots.html (accessed January 5, 2015). 25 Simon Doonan, “Beware of Normcore,” Slate, April 7, 2014, http://www.slate.com/articles/life/doonan/ 2014/04/normcore_the_new_fashion_trend_and_its_perils.html (accessed January 5, 2015). 26 Erica Cerulo, “Is Normcore Really a Thing?” Vanity Fair, March 30, 2014, http://www.vanityfair.com/ news/daily-news/2014/03/normcore-fashion (accessed January 5, 2015).

12 allow the “real self” to shine through without the barrier of fashion27: if everyone dressed in a more homogenized manner, then the colorful nuances of the individual’s personality could take center stage. Overt displays of fashion were seen as false signifiers of a person’s true personality. Normcore was an exciting new development in fashion, “a trend that transcends trends,”28 a hyperbolic “final fashion frontier [where] dressing like a big fat anonymous nobody”29 was the most fashionable status one could attain.

In February of 2013, prior to the publication of Duncan’s article, Suzy Menkes called out the “circus” of fashion that dominated Fashion Weeks worldwide, where the action was as much about the street style outside of the tents as it was about the shows inside.30 The organizers of fashion shows had evened the playing field between bloggers, who were once considered nobodies and rarely invited to runway presentations, and fashion editors, who were at the helm of powerful fashion publications (fig. 5). Editors had long dressed for attention, exhibiting their prowess through expert styling and wily alignment with desirable designers. But the rise of prolific bloggers and street stylists, who became famous via their own social media pages, quickly challenged fashion editors’ stronghold on paparazzi attention; designers, too, gave these new celebrities products in exchange for the inevitable viral images through social media. The overt peacocking made it difficult to discern who was truly stylish, and who was merely

27 Duncan, “Fashion for Those Who Realize They’re One in 7 Billion”; Aimee Farrell, “Meet Norma Normcore,” Vogue UK, March 21, 2014, http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2014/03/21/normcore-fashion- vogue---definition (accessed June 30, 2016). 28 Maddie Schmitz, “Welcome to Normcore: Why Ugly Clothes Are Cool,” Boston College Her Campus, March 31, 2014, http://www.hercampus.com/school/bc/welcome-normcore-why-ugly-clothes-are-cool (accessed January 5, 2015). 29 Doonan, “Beware of Normcore.” 30 Suzy Menkes, “The Circus of Fashion,” New York Times, February 10, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/t-magazine/the-circus-of-fashion.html (accessed December 10, 2015). See also Casey Lewis, “The Meteoric Rise and Painfully Slow Death of Street Style,” Racked.com, February 12, 2015, http://www.racked.com/2015/2/12/8020721/street-style-history-nyfw-fall-2015 (accessed October 31, 2016).

13 advertising for their suppliers. Postmodern fashion was over-stylized, fussy, and frivolous, and it had gotten in its own way. Its own self-referential irony disrupted the hierarchy of fashion leaders and followers.

Like a refreshing antidote, this was the stage onto which normcore swooped.

Normcore supported a desire to find virtue in normality and an authentic self that had been obstructed by the overcomplicated form of postmodern fashion. In March of 2014,

Karl Lagerfeld expressed this philosophy in his Chanel Fall 2014 collection, which included sweatpants and sneakers, with models performing the unglamorous task of pushing carts through a supermarket (fig. 6). On a more accessible level was the Adidas

Stan Smith-loving crowd, led by Phoebe Philo, who had championed a pared-down aesthetic. Normcore allowed the fashionable set to reap the rewards of looking as though one could not be bothered to try so hard. Comfortable shoes, relaxed clothes, unkempt eyebrows and “‘meh’ hair”31 were seen as a way to let the real self shine through (fig. 7).

This adoption of a particularly un-stylish look allowed those who were genuinely stylish to cash in on their social cachet.

It wasn’t long before commentators noticed that the real self could hardly show through when a fashionable person was merely following a codified look, and normcore was critiqued as an appropriation of the unfashionable. Luke Zaleski ranted in

GQ Magazine that normcore is a way of “reducing actual real and working people into a look to be copied and codified.”32 Simon Doonan gently broke the news to bewildered and unfashionable men that they were at the forefront of fashion, but not to worry, the

31 Alice Gregory, “‘Meh’ Head,” New York Times, February 4, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/t-magazine/meh-hairstyle.html?_r=0 (accessed February 4, 2015). 32 Zaleski, “10 Reasons You, Normcore Guy, Are An Idiot.”

14 hipsters would move on soon enough.33 Doubters had their say, also: “Is normcore really a thing?”34 asked Vanity Fair; “Massive in-joke?”35 questioned the New York Times.

Vogue was disinterested and coolly asked, “What comes after normcore?”36 as though normcore were nothing but an annoying fad that would fade away by summer’s end.

Riding the momentum of postmodern fashion revivals, fashion in 2014 was rife with the sartorial flavor of the 1990s. Minimalist camisoles, buffalo plaid button-down shirts, light wash jeans, and other signifiers of 1990s fashion were starting to be accepted into fashionable wear again. However, these flavors of the 1990s, which had once represented the epitome of style, represented a nostalgic return to a too-recent past.

Genuine articles of clothing from the 1990s were abundant and easy to locate in thrift stores and hidden in the back of closets, the places to where once-fashionable clothing disappear once they reach obsolescence. Borrowing silhouettes from the 1990s gave fashionable youth a fresh, new perspective on clothing, but they were not being revived because they were attractive. Normcore imbued these revivals with a different meaning.

One of the hallmarks of normcore fashion is “mom jeans,” the antithesis to the stretchy, low-riding skinny jeans with roots in the Alexander McQueen “Bumster” design, which had been the dominant trouser silhouette for the past twenty years (fig. 8).

“Mom jeans” is a pejorative term that “effectively describe[s] and dismiss[es] the bad trouser choices of an entire generation of unsexy and desexualized mothers.”37 Writing for The New Yorker, Susan Orlean described mom jeans as “medium wash denim,

33 Doonan, “Beware of Normcore.” 34 Cerulo, “Is Normcore Really a Thing?” 35 Williams, “Normcore: Fashion Movement or Massive In-Joke?” 36 Katherine Bernard, “What Comes After Normcore?” Vogue, March 10, 2014, http://www.vogue.com/ 866532/what-comes-after-normcore/ (accessed January 5, 2014). 37 Eugenia Williamson, “The Revolution Will Probably Wear Mom Jeans,” The Baffler, no. 27 (Winter 2015), http://thebaffler.com/salvos/revolution-mom-jeans (accessed August 15, 2016).

15 buttoned over the slightly-out-of-shape belly, tasteful stitching, legs neither wide enough to be subversive nor tight enough to be sexy.”38 Reduced to this clinical shorthand,

“mom jeans” lose their connection to their powerful, sexy origins. In the 1980s,

Calvin Klein infamously defended his controversial jeans ads with the rebuttal, “Jeans are sex.”39 Indeed, the jeans worn by Brooke Shields, although exhibiting the tenets described by Orlean, were the epitome of sensuality at the time. “The girls of the ‘80s and ‘90s are the ultimate babes. Winona Ryder? Kelly Kapowski? They look perfect.

It’s not like they were called ‘mom jeans’ back then. It was all there was,” said model

Ali Michael.40 Jeans of the 1980s and 1990s were beautiful, sensual, and accepted as the norm (fig. 9).

As this silhouette faded into obsolescence, a new ideal of beauty was born, and by 2011, Orlean defines the moms who wear these jeans as

someone who wears their jeans high enough to hide their tramp stamp; is attractive but genderless; is, in other words, nice, slightly frumpy, has old cookie batter dried in her badly-in-need-of-an-updated-haircut hair, exudes not one jot of danger or adventure or abandon although somewhere, under her really-should- give-it-to-Goodwill-it-is-so-old-and-unstylish flowered top, you can detect a whiff of a once-exciting woman.

This idealized person who is nonchalant and indifferent, slightly pathetic but devoted to a higher cause than looking fashionable, immune to the trappings of the dictates of fashion—embodies the very zeitgeist of the normcore movement. In contemporary fashion, jeans that are not tight and plastered to the body are misinterpreted as frumpy, even though a looser fit, in the 1990s, had been attractive. Normcore accepted

38 Susan Orlean, “Why Mom Jeans?” New Yorker, May 23, 2011, http://www.newyorker.com/culture/susan-orlean/why-mom-jeans (accessed August 15, 2016). 39 Calvin Klein quoted in Graham Marsh and Paul Trynka, Denim From Cowboys to Catwalks (London: Aurum Press Limited, 2002), 106. 40 Madison Stephens, “Rethinking the Mom Jean,” XOJane, May 23, 2014, http://www.xojane.com/ clothes/rethinking-the-mom-jean (accessed August 15, 2016).

16 fashions of the 1990s because they were obsolete, out of touch, and discarded. Everyday, ubiquitous articles like pleated-front trousers, overalls, loose-fitting button-down shirts, souvenir sweatshirts, visor hats, and fanny packs were once part of a fashionable dialogue, but slowly faded into symbols of the befuddled and out-of-touch. If it was once a closet outcast, normcore made it a fashionable must-have. Normcore’s impact was due to the simultaneous existence of the out-of-touch and the revived acceptance of the

1990s.

The essence of normcore lay in the nuance of understated cool. This nuance marked the difference between an unfashionable woman wearing “mom jeans”—perhaps an actual mom, harried, unconcerned with fashion—and a hip young urbanite wearing

“mom jeans” attractively, almost daring the garment, considered unattractive to contemporary eyes, to find fault in her figure. The understated cool is also the difference between Phoebe Philo in her simple tailored trousers and sneakers, a high-low pairing exemplary of postmodern fashion, exuding an aura of elegance—and an urban commuter, wearing the same formula but in another context, her tailored clothing with pragmatic footwear for the walk to the office failing to signal any level of sophistication. This is how, truly, the fashion trend normcore celebrates the person inside the clothing. The fit and styling of the garments could be minimal, but the personality, the confidence, and the physical attractiveness of the wearer are what make all the difference in normcore.

Thus, creating a shopping list for normcore proved to be impossible. Normcore styling advice contradicted itself, with some voices, for example, declaring that

“normcore is an unlogo’d sneaker,”41 and others hailing the Adidas Stan Smith as the original normcore shoe. Similarly, to some writers, normcore was supposed to be free of

41 Doonan, “Beware of Normcore.”

17 brands and logos, but other writers connected the trend with Patagonia and Levi’s42; or a brand’s normcore level was ranked, such as New Balance deemed more normcore than

Nike.43 It is important to note that regardless of normcore’s relationship with logos and branding, the brands used to exemplify the trend were not associated with designers, who drive a period’s fashion, but with products that ride the ebb and flow of fashion’s desires.

Nike, Patagonia, New Balance, Levi’s, and Adidas are manufacturers of sartorial products, not fashion-forward designs (fig. 10). These basic items, or non-fashion, satisfy a consumer’s need for functional garments that neither make a statement against the current status quo, like anti-fashion, nor follow the dictates of fashion.

To counteract this, fashion merely joined in on the fun and satisfied the desire for basic clothing with minimalist luxe offerings. Since the 1970s, designers like Céline,

Calvin Klein, Alexander Wang and Issey Miyake (who, as it turns out, was the designer of Steve Jobs’s signature turtlenecks44) had long championed streamlined looks, and became a font for normcore-appropriate attire. W Magazine published a photographic spread called “Banal Plus” for its August 2014 issue, in which models sported the same sleek bowl haircut and bland faces. The set is evocative of the basement of a middle- class home, with shabby beige upholstery, dark wood stair railings, a simple and functional kitchen, minivan parked outside, and sensible carpeting—the sort of place were it would seem that a family could be raised with the values that collecting memories is more important than keeping up appearances (fig. 11). Writing for Bustle.com,

Erin Meyer railed against “Banal Plus,” because normcore, she said, “can’t be

42 Jian Deleon, “10 #Normcore Essentials Every Man Should Have*,” GQ.com, February 27, 2014, http://www.gq.com/story/10-normcore-essentials-every-man-should-have (accessed December 16, 2015). 43 Leann Duggan, “Why Dressing Like Your Dad is Suddenly Cool,” Refinery29.com, February 27, 2014, http://www.refinery29.com/2014/02/63461/normcore-fashion (accessed December 16, 2015). 44 Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 362.

18 fashion-ized.”45 Other online publications, including Racked.com and Jezebel.com dismissed the audacity of the $356,000 worth of designer merchandise used to illustrate normcore as inauthentic.46 The W Magazine spread tried to illustrate normcore’s anti- fashion as high fashion, with models dressed in designer clothing paired with off-brand merchandise. The spread was a fabricated, visual interpretation of the normcore trend, where more athletic logos were visible than designer labels. An undemocratic price point was irrelevant. W Magazine editor-in-chief Stefano Tonchi acknowledged this difference in noting that normcore “could be detected in its original and purest state in crowded airports and suburban malls across America.”47 Yet the editorial shoot still promoted the message “I really do not want to have anything to do with fashion”48; fashion, in this case, being more akin to Menkes’s “circus.” The “Banal Plus” shoot championed the normcore look with expensive, inaccessible-to-most articles of clothing, but still promoted the self-assured, cool-on-the-inside look that was gaining momentum in the fashion world.

Around the same time, Gap, Inc. introduced its “Dress Normal” campaign, hoping to capitalize from the normcore trend in the fast fashion market. First opened in 1969, the

Gap was one of the early fast fashion stores to sell basic wares such as jeans and T-shirts for the consumer who wanted a reliable source for basic, fashionable clothing at inexpensive prices, and by the 1980s the Gap was a multi-billion-dollar business and a

45 Erin Meyer, “‘W’ Magazine Normcore Photo Spread Proves High-Fashion Still Doesn’t Get the Non- Fashion Trend,” Bustle.com, July 15, 2014, http://www.bustle.com/articles/31760-w-magazine-normcore- photo-spread-proves-high-fashion-still-doesnt-get-the-non-fashion-trend (accessed August 17, 2016). 46 Erika Adams, “The Grand Total on W Magazine’s Normcore Story? $356k,” Racked.com, July 14, 2014, http://www.racked.com/2014/7/14/7586843/normcore-w-magazine-shoot (accessed August 17, 2016); see also Callie Beusman, “W Magazine’s ‘Normcore’ Story Involved $356K Worth of Designer Clothes,” Jezebel.com, July 15, 2014, http://jezebel.com/w-magazines-normcore-story-involved-356k-worth-of-desi- 1605288688 (accessed August 17, 2016). 47 Stefano Tonchi, “The New Normal,” W Magazine, September 2014, 44. 48 Ibid.

19 successful household name.49 The Gap was found in malls throughout America and in major cities worldwide, each store embodying the same aesthetic as the others regardless of which market it was in. The Gap was so mainstream that it readily symbolized

American “low” fashion, or a conventional non-fashion. The Gap itself was not fashion- forward, but in the 1990s it represented the height of style when paired with high fashion

(fig. 12).

The “Dress Normal” campaign starred celebrities like Angelica Houston and

Elisabeth Moss in its print ads, and David Fincher directed four commercial spots.

Seth Farbman, Gap’s global Chief Marketing Officer, skirted around the normcore affiliation: “In the fashion world, there's a trend and a conversation around this idea that's called normcore…I'm sort of edified in a way to see that there's a fashion trend that is more extreme but recognizes this same truth. We're not normcore, but we're seeing this same truth.”50

In theory, this should have been a successful marketing strategy, but the “Dress

Normal” experiment fell flat and sales went down.51 Detractors of the Gap in the 1990s had worried that its mass production of fashion would “[damage] individuality with everyone buying the exact same clothes from the exact same store everywhere in the world,”52 but in the era of normcore, logical reasoning would suggest that this uniformity would actually hold the key to success. The supposed elements of normcore were present

49 Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast, Modern World Part II: 1946-2003, vol. 5 of Fashion, Costume and Culture: Clothing, Headwear, Body Decorations, and Footwear Through the Ages (Detroit: UXL, 2004), 970. 50 Todd Wasserman, “David Fincher’s Gap Ads Are Black and White and Enigmatic All Over,” Mashable.com, August 28, 2014, http://mashable.com/2014/08/28/david-finchers-gap-ads/#Wlkt3QZ_9Eqp (accessed January 5, 2015). 51 Lara O’Reilly, “The Gap’s Sales Go Into A 3-Month Slide Following Its 'Dress Normal' Ad Campaign Failure,” Business Insider, December 5, 2014, http://www.businessinsider.com/gap-november-sales-down- 4-percent-2014-12#ixzz3VL1HRAnU (accessed January 5, 2015). 52 Pendergast and Pendergast, Modern World Part II: 1946-2003, 970.

20 in the Gap’s identity: mass consumerism, basic clothing, easy and democratic access.

But neither Gap nor its shoppers were aware of the irony of normcore, that it is like a

“chic club with no name on its door.”53 Just as internet style guides on how to dress in a normcore style were confusing and contradicting, so was Gap’s attempt to sell normcore fashion. The average Gap shopper did not want to look unfashionable, but did not want to be seen as avant-garde, either. To some shoppers, it is uncomfortable to be at the height of fashion, and shopping at a mainstream retailer like the Gap meant striking the right note between being outdated in appearance and pleasantly contemporary—the essence of non-fashion. A Gap shopper did not want to dress “normally” in an ironic way, and the atypical Gap shopper did not want to be told to shop for “normal” clothes.

If a person was already fashionably cool enough to dress in a normcore manner, it was not necessary to purchase the kit at a retailer. Normcore’s pared-down aesthetic was simply meant to be the vehicle through which a legitimately fashionable person could promote his or her own presence.

The current state of fast fashion, and the shrinking middle market which exists somewhere on the spectrum of consumerism between Patagonia and Hermès, relies on a fast turnover rate that is incompatible with the apparent indifference to fashion that normcore promotes. An individual who could embrace a normcore aesthetic first required a suave connoisseurship of fashion, which the old models of fashion journalism and fashion marketing were not prepared to promote.

Normcore is anathema to the fashion system; unlike other fashion trends, normcore’s message could not be transmitted by goods bought and sold. This contradicted the established commercial fashion system, where a prescribed set of

53 Schmitz, “Welcome to Normcore: Why Ugly Clothes Are Cool.”

21 aesthetic values could be made available for purchase. Yet normcore is not free from the shackles of fashion and is subject to its changing ideals of beauty. A legitimately unfashionable person, who does not fit those ideals and is truly indifferent to fashion, looks far different from someone thoughtfully styled with attention to color and proportion. A person who exemplifies the current standard of excellence’s physical appearance, who possesses the X-factor, the certain je ne sais quoi, can get away with the plain, unadorned aesthetic of normcore. It is a status symbol for the truly beautiful, i.e., someone whose appearance is not, in fact, normal.

What that standard of normcore beauty is exactly has not yet been defined.

Normcore is an introspective mode that forces its adopters to approach fashionability in a new manner. Within former fashionable tastes, ideals of beauty could be achieved with tools to achieve a desired physical aesthetic, but normcore did not identify a single trait that exemplified its standard of elegance. The goal of normcore was to not to achieve a specific standard, but to reach “normality,” and that, too, was an undefined concept.

What is Normal?

Historically, the idea of a normal condition was a nebulous theory used as a panacea against the anxieties of the time. In 1920, Warren G. Harding won the presidential election by a landslide on a campaign based on a “return to normalcy.” The full context of his campaign promise, delivered in a speech in Boston on May 14, 1920, was a series of oppositions:

America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but

serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.54

“Normalcy,” a malapropism of “normality,”55 was an oppositional solution to the political reformations of the time. Following the exhaustion and anxiety of World War I, the influenza pandemic of 1918, and major social and political reforms, Harding’s promise of “normalcy” was as refreshing an antidote as normcore was to Menkes’s

“circus” of fashion.

Aesthetic representations of normality have also appeared in popular culture commentaries. On September 17, 2008, cartoonist Ryan Estrada released a collection of guest strips for a number of online comics.56 His contribution for the Templar, AZ comic included a reference to a “dangerously regular” normcore character who “dresses only in

T-shirts and jeans” (fig. 13). Estrada’s joke poked fun at the fictional world of the comic, where outward appearances are clues to layers upon layers of subcultures and specialties.

Estrada explained, “there are so many bizarre subcultures that the only thing that would freak them out is an ‘ordinary person.'”57 In the spring of 2004, Canadian artists

Simon Wilkinson and Jeremy Stuart created The Grey Sweatsuit Revolution, an art project-cum-satirical social experiment that attempted to sabotage the fashion system and force a birth of a trend. Wilkinson and Stuart dressed in nothing but plain, grey

54 Michael Martin Cohen, Live from the Campaign Trail: The Greatest Presidential Campaign Speeches of the Twentieth Century and How They Shaped Modern America (New York: Walker Publishing Company, 2008), 73. 55 Harding was derided for his inconsistent speaking style. The term “normalcy” was not a neologism created by Harding, although after his campaign the word became widely associated with him and accepted as a synonym for “normality.” First recorded in the 1850s, “normalcy” had been used primarily in a mathematical sense. Charles Davies and William G. Peck, Mathematical Dictionary and Cyclopedia of Mathematical Science, (New York: A.S. Barnes & Co, 1857), 386. 56 Ryan Estrada, “I’m Sorry, I Accidentally Invented Normcore,” Medium.com, November 22, 2014, https://medium.com/@ryanestrada/im-sorry-i-accidentally-invented-normcore-42e4f34732af (accessed January 8, 2015). 57 Ryan Estrada, email to author, January 8, 2016.

23 sweatshirts and sweatpants and invited others to do the same.58 By limiting participants’ visual identity to a codified, unadorned uniform, Wilkinson and Stuart strove to battle the fashion system, which “operates as a parasite on the body of authenticity [and] feeds off cultures and subcultures,” among a host of their other complaints. In their view, common fashion imposes an artificial persona on the wearer, and the blandness and anonymity afforded by the sweatshirt underscores their belief that the “ultimate rebellion is to be generic and very comfortable.”59 In 2014, Aimee Farrell linked normcore to the 2003

William Gibson novel Pattern Recognition,60 where the protagonist reacts to corporate branding like an allergen and wears “a small boy's black Fruit of the Loom T-shirt, a thin gray V-neck pullover purchased by the half-dozen from a supplier to the New England prep schools, and a new and oversized pair of black 501's, every trademark carefully removed."61 Pattern Recognition is a post-apocalyptic novel that questions the search for meaning in random data, where the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 mark the beginning of a new era.

Undoubtedly, new modes of normal exist post-9/11. In “The Anxieties of Big

Data,”62 Kate Crawford links normcore to anxiety about widespread government surveillance. According to Crawford, standing out in the era of mass surveillance brings on social punishment like being put on the no-fly list due to a clerical error, or being registered as a participant in a mass riot, a crime punishable by up to fifteen years in prison, for no reason other than using a mobile phone near a protest; evading surveillance

58 Simon Stewart and Jeremy Wilkinson, The Grey Sweatsuit Revolution, https://web.archive.org/web/ 20041123031849/http://www.thegreysweatsuitrevolution.com/manifesto_01.html (accessed August 31, 2016). 59 Ibid. 60 Farrell, “Meet Norma Normcore.” 61 William Gibson, Pattern Recognition (New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 2003), 2. 62 Kate Crawford, “The Anxieties of Big Data,” The New Inquiry, May 30, 2014, http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-anxieties-of-big-data/ (accessed August 31, 2016).

24 was a tool used by Occupy Wall Street protestors, who encouraged participants to choose clothing and accessories that are typically milquetoast attire worn by unassuming tourists in order to evade police suspicion (fig. 14). Therefore, Crawford argues “the rapid rise of the term normcore is an indication of how the cultural idea of disappearing has become cool at the very historical moment when it has become almost impossible because of big data and widespread surveillance.”63 In her essay “The Normcore of ‘Boy Kings’,”64

Kara Van Cleaf rebuts this and states that normcore is not, in fact, about blending in, but about standing out: “normcore represents the age-old practice in fashion of copping the styles of those at the top—the Kings and Queens, or in today’s parlance, the 1%. Today our kings are Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, SV coders, hackers and nerds.”65

Inevitably, fashion will forever find favor with a select few, and those left behind will attempt to fit in with the fashionable set. But normcore was a different type of fashion movement. Normcore was about finding a stillness in time, a pause to consider ideas of normality and beauty and an adjustment with the new global condition in the twenty-first century. “Normcore” was a finalist for the Oxford English Dictionary’s 2014

Word of the Year, and invited discussion of a wider acceptance of different types of bodies and general.66

63 Ibid. 64 Kara Van Cleaf, “The Normcore of ‘Boy Kings’,” Fashioning Sociology, March 15, 2015, https://fashioningsociology.com/2015/03/15/the-normcore-of-boy-kings/ (accessed August 31, 2016). 65 Ibid. 66 Maya Singer asked, “Are we ready for the normcore body?” referencing the actresses of the 1990s, “who were exceedingly attractive and quite slim and who nevertheless didn't come off like people who spent all their time and mental energy on their appearance.” Conversely, author and advocate for disabled people, Cat Smith, called out normcore as promoting a normal body, which is an impossible ideal for the physically disabled to attain: “blending in is a privilege only available to a few. Not being judged for your appearance is reserved for fewer yet. The ‘look of nothing’ is never going to be available to those who are marked as ‘other’ because the world has already placed identifiable markers on us.” Maya Singer, “The Big Ask,” Vogue.com, August 25, 2014, http://www.vogue.com/13290022/082714-fashion-week-preview-spring- 2015/ (accessed January 5, 2015); Cat Smith, “Normcore is Bullshit,” TheStyleCon.com, March 3, 2014, http://www.thestylecon.com/2014/03/03/normcore-bullsht/ (accessed August 16, 2016).

In the grand scheme of postmodern fashion, normcore could easily be considered simply another turn in the carousel of nostalgic revivals that had been taking place since the 1960s. The ingredients that make up normcore style are easily traced to the 1990s, but are not so easily combined to create a truly fashionable appearance. The normcore style became a contrived ordinariness that was crushed under the weight of its own recognizance. It was a concept that spread like wildfire in nuance, but stalled in specifics when its aesthetic and perceived intent did not match. However, the normcore style provoked intense debate and discussion, and evoked a variety of interpretations of what it meant for the true self to shine through.

CHAPTER 2

NORMCORE AND “THE PATH TO A MORE PEACEFUL LIFE”67

K-HOLE is a collective of five members, Greg Fong, Sean Monahan,

Emily Segal, Chris Sherron, and Dena Yago, who started the company in 2010 after graduating from Rhode Island School of Design (Fong, Monahan, and Sherron),

Columbia University (Yago), and Brown University (Segal) with varied degrees such as comparative literature and fine arts.68 Having found themselves heavily educated yet unemployable in their chosen fields, they took a series of mundane jobs in public relations, law firms, and graphic design. Inspired by a corporate trend forecasting report, they decided to create one for themselves, a passion project that blurred the line between an art project, a corporate parody, and a genuine reflection of their own cultural observations. They branded themselves as K-HOLE, a name derived from the slang term for the psychedelic experience caused by the drug ketamine. “K-HOLE is a dissociative state where signs and symbols are detached from what they’re necessarily supposed to mean and are reassembled in different ways,”69 describes Monahan, echoing postmodern theorist Jean Baudrillard’s analysis of the postmodern era’s abstraction of signs and symbols. This state of derealization is a metaphor for the disillusionment experienced by

67 K-HOLE, Youth Mode: A Report on Freedom, Khole.net (accessed November 18, 2014), 36. 68 Zak Stone, “Trendcasting Reinvented As Conceptual Art About The Power Of Consumerism,” Fastcoexist.com, February 21, 2013, http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681417/trendcasting-reinvented-as- conceptual-art-about-the-power-of-consumerism (accessed January 8, 2016). 69 Danielle Sacks, “That’s a Total K-Hole Thing To Do,” Fast Company, June 2015, Issue 196, http://www.fastcompany.com/3045744/most-creative-people-2015/thats-a-total-k-hole-thing-to-do (accessed December 2, 2015).

26 27 young Millennials, like the members of K-HOLE, who find themselves forging their way in a capitalistic world that does not serve them. Drawing from their experiences of having to negotiate earning a living and embracing their artistic desires, the members of

K-HOLE created a series of hip PDF publications, available for online download, which imitate—and almost celebrate—the model of corporate trend forecasting reports.

Their first report, FragMOREtation: A Report on Visibility, introduced a marketing strategy that “reintroduces discretion into marketing and consumption by refocusing marketing strategies on individuating products.”70 Segal explains: “We were somewhat humorously playing with these neologisms, making up a word…to name a phenomenon. But we were [also] earnestly describing a principle playing out in the world of branding.”71 Over the next two years, three more reports would follow.

Prolasticity: A Report on Patience, which outlined a strategy to “de-emphasize consumption and instead seek perpetual consumer engagement,”72 continued K-HOLE’s

Shakespearean penchant for invented language to describe actual business trends. Next,

The K-HOLE Brand Anxiety Matrix, a “tool for describing anxiety’s different vibes,”73 added a focus on anxiety as a catalyst for change. Explains Segal, “We [were] looking at emergent behavior, trying to make conceptual connections between things that exist in order to elucidate a current structure.”74

At first, K-HOLE’s reports had a cult following, mostly from the art world. In

2013, Segal and Yago participated in a panel discussion in Germany, which brought

K-HOLE to the attention of corporate executives. Their on-point message, delivered in

70 K-HOLE, FragMOREtation: A Report on Visibility, Khole.net (accessed November 18, 2014), 8. 71 Sacks, “That’s a Total K-Hole Thing To Do.” 72 K-HOLE, Prolasticity: A Report on Patience, Khole.net, (accessed November 18, 2014), 9 73 K-HOLE, The K-Hole Brand Anxiety Matrix, Khole.net, (accessed November 18, 2014), 12. 74 Sacks, “That’s a Total K-Hole Thing To Do.”

28 the familiar corporate white paper format, strengthened their validity as a viable brand consulting practice. Segal stated: “This is not just a performance of business”, and in bridging the divide between business and art, “K-HOLE hopes to demonstrate that neither is an invalidation of the other.”75 K-HOLE’s fourth report, Youth Mode: A Report on Freedom, where the Normcore concept was introduced, was produced in collaboration with Box 1824, a São Paulo-based market research company which targets youth consumers from the eighteen to twenty-four age range. Youth Mode continued an examination of anxiety and its consumerism antidote. Youth Mode, a study of the nuanced push-pull between individuality and compliance as relates to age and consumer habits, is image-heavy and forty pages long. Stock photos, press images, editorial shoots, celebrity photographs, and marketing advertisements accompany short, succinct bursts of texts in configurations that imply a preoccupation with a visually pleasing layout instead of symbolic correlations, like a “moderately sophisticated corporate

PowerPoint presentation.”76 The photography style, imagery, and visual themes of the illustrations are varied, seemingly incongruent, and rarely underscore the accompanying text.

Ironically, Youth Mode begins with a powerful contradiction to the very demographic that Box 1824 serves. Whereas Box 1824’s name expresses the reduction of a segment of the populace based on age, K-HOLE asserts that in matters of self- identification, age is no longer a defining factor. “It used to be possible to be special—to sustain unique differences through time, relative to a certain sense of audience…the

75 Fiona Duncan, “Trend Forecasters K-HOLE On Individualism, #NORMCORE, & What It Means to Be Free,” Bullett Media, October 25, 2013, http://bullettmedia.com/article/trend-forecasters-k-hole-on- individualism-normcore-and-freedom/ (accessed June 24, 2016). 76 Mark Sladen, “Mark Sladen on K-Hole and the Nuance of ‘Normcore’,” Art Review, Summer 2014, https://artreview.com/opinion/summer_2014_opinion_mark_sladen/ (accessed December 16, 2015).

29 assertion of individuality is a rite of passage, but generational branding strips youth of this agency.”77 Individuality based on chronological age is impossible; the expectation that social mores and age will correlate are no longer relevant. In current American social conditions, the average age for first marriages and births is at an historic high, and the economic recession of 2008 has introduced the term “boomerang generation” to describe the prolonged transition into adulthood by American youth. Young adults find it impossible to start and build a career, and despair of even being able to retire. Traditional conventions associated with age are continuously challenged, and therefore marketing to an age-based demographic is futile. Generational divides inevitably and indelibly exist

(K-HOLE uses the analogy “you’re a Scorpio whether you believe in astrology or not”78 to support this), but the fluidity between age groups is bonded by K-HOLE’s term

“youth mode.”

To K-HOLE, youth is not age, it is freedom.79 It is about being “youthfully present in any given age. Youth isn’t a process, aging is.”80 By breaking away from social expectations based on age, youth mode allows a person to be present in the moment, to define his or her own relationship with the world, to write one’s own life story free from the constraints of generational branding and social expectations based on age. Yago says, “such social limits include ‘you stop being a teenager when you’re financially independent,’ or ‘you enter into later life when you go onto your pension.’”81

Explains Segal, “The ‘death of age’ is a response to the breakdown of those cultural

77 K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 4-5. 78 K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 5. 79 K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 8. 80 K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 7. 81 Duncan, “Trend Forecasters K-HOLE On Individualism, #NORMCORE, & What It Means to Be Free.”

30 scripts…We’re in a trans moment in culture right now and we need to actually acknowledge that there are these dated scripts that need to be rewritten or discarded.”82

Therefore, “youth mode” is a social condition in this current transitional era, and is best understood when studied in relation to the conditions that preceded it. K-HOLE explains the cultural paradigms that have led to the advent of youth mode, which they call

Alternative, Mass Indie, Acting Basic, and Normcore. At the end of Youth Mode, the authors offer a helpful diagram that illustrates these cultural fluctuations. These concepts lie in a chart crisscrossed with axes of rebellion, tolerance, indifference and empathy, and are connected by poles of evasion, celebration, sameness and difference (table 2).

Alternative

The first cultural climate addressed in Youth Mode is Alternative, a reference to a culture on the fringes of mainstream; more specifically, to the 1990s Alternative counterculture movement. Alternative is illustrated as the evasion of sameness along the axis of rebellion (table 2). Unsurprisingly, K-HOLE does not delve into a deeper description of 1990s Alternative in Youth Mode; they themselves were born in the late

1980s and hardly experienced the era. K-HOLE are “digital natives,” inheriting the remnants of the post-Alternative world, following a cultural path paved by those who lived before the advent of the internet. In the 1990s, belonging to an “alternative” culture—being dissatisfied with and different from mainstream society—was a way of validating oneself as being more authentic. Explains Segal:

The emergent modes we’re proposing, like Normcore, are about moving away from a twentieth century version of adolescence that was all about being misunderstood: the binary where you had your real truth and then there was society or “mom and dad” who misunderstood you, where that misunderstanding was a trauma that you had to overcome by speaking your truth in a better way, by

82 Ibid.

holding onto your authenticity. That’s the twentieth century story of adolescence, that’s Rebel Without a Cause.83

The authors imply that the 1994 death of Kurt Cobain marked the end of the

Alternative era.84 Cobain was the lead singer of the band Nirvana, whose passionate performances resonated with counterculture youth. As described by Nevermind album producer Butch Vig: "What the kids are attracted to in the music is that he's not necessarily a spokesman for a generation, but all that's in the music—the passion and [the fact that] he doesn't necessarily know what he wants, but he's pissed.”85 This angry, aimless rebellion was represented in fashion by the “grunge” subculture. Grunge youth favored threadbare flannel button-down shirts, torn jeans, thrift store rescues, and a disregard for conventional notions of sexuality, status, and other social signifiers, although “true” grunge subculture, as exemplified by Cobain, reached for these items not to make a fashion statement but because poverty required an indifference to the garment at hand and a predilection of layers for warmth and to mask thinness caused by hunger.86

Cobain often wore women’s dresses and shabby cardigans (fig.15); his wife,

Courtney Love, championed the grunge offshoot “kinderwhore”87 look. These sartorial rebellions defied the mainstream with their intentional upending of fashion structures.

Feeling angry and misunderstood, Alternative youth further challenged society to accept

83 Ibid. 84 “It’s like someone yelled ‘Fire!’ in a crowded movie theater the day Kurt Cobain died and everyone tried to find a different exit” is how K-HOLE describes the advent of the social condition that immediately followed Alternative. K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 14. 85 Michael Azzerad, “Inside the Heart and Mind of Nirvana,” Rolling Stone, April 16, 1992, http://web.archive.org/web/20080109140249/http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/nirvana/articles/story/ 5937982/inside_the_heart_and_mind_of_nirvana (accessed July 1, 2016). 86 Nathalie Atkinson, “Kurt Cobain’s Fashion Choices Were Never About What to Wear, But Rather How to Wear Items on Hand,” Nationalpost.com, April 5, 2014, http://news.nationalpost.com/life/style/kurt- cobains-fashion-choices-were-never-about-what-to-wear-but-rather-how-to-wear-items-on-hand (accessed November 5, 2016). 87 For more on the “kinderwhore” trend and its social implications, see Malcolm Barnard, Fashion as Communication (London: Routledge, 2002), 145-148.

32 their rebellion while making it even more difficult to be understood, as though resigned to forever be outside the norm. This anger became emblematic of the last youth movement of the twentieth century.

With Nevermind’s 1991 release, Nirvana achieved commercial success, and their allegiance to the alternative counterculture model was compromised. Cobain said: “I don't blame the average 17-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout… Maybe when they grow up a little bit, they'll realize there's more things to life than living out your rock and roll identity so righteously."88 In bridging the divide between emotional rebellion and commercial structure, Cobain behaved in line with K-HOLE’s proposed emergent mode that clinging to authenticity as an antidote to being understood had lost its cache (fig. 16). The death of grunge was further exacerbated by Marc Jacobs’s Spring

2013 collection for Perry Ellis, in which he shocked mainstream fashion by drawing inspiration from the grunge movement. “He took plaid flannel shirts he found for eight dollars on St. Mark’s Place and had them shipped off to Italy to be remade in $1,000-a- yard silk. Itchy wool caps from the Salvation Army were remade in slouchy cashmere.

Converse and Birkenstock did runs for him in duchesse satin.”89 Although grunge was eventually co-opted into mainstream fashion, neither the grunge scene nor the fashion industry were pleased with Jacobs’s bridging of the worlds. “The minute grunge showed up on Top 40 radio and in multiplexes an fashion magazines and Urban Outfitters, it was over.”90 Fashion rejected Jacobs’s grunge: his presentation was met with howls of criticism and he was soon fired from Perry Ellis. Grunge, too, rejected Jacobs’s

88 Azzerad, “Inside the Heart and Mind of Nirvana.” 89 Maureen Callahan, Champagne Supernovas: Kate Moss, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen, and the ‘90s Renegades Who Remade Fashion (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), 86. 90 Ibid., 87.

33 fashionable interpretation: Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, having been gifted Jacobs’s collection by Jacobs himself, burned the clothing.91 Alternative was the last youthful movement of the twentieth century, a dissatisfied subculture that rebelled against feeling misunderstood by closing itself off even further, getting nowhere closer to being understood.

Mass Indie

“We live in Mass Indie times,”92 according to K-HOLE. What happened after

Cobain’s death is that “panic subside[d] into ambivalence.”93 Whereas Alternative rebelled en masse against the dominant social order at large, what came next was a narrower, more introspective form of differentiation. Alternative focused on evading sameness, and Mass Indie, the movement that followed Alternative, focused on celebrating difference instead (table 2). In Mass Indie, differences are not antagonizing, but unifying; “being different isn’t always a lonely journey; it can be a group activity…mastering difference is a way of neutralizing threats and accruing status within a peer group.”94 Through Mass Indie, it was possible to fully understand oneself and the infinite, subtle variations in which one could differ from everybody else. Mass Indie has a compounding quality to difference, and is what led to ever-compartmentalized niche specialties. It represented a freedom to pursue a passion, no matter how far from mainstream. Like an “audio equalizer, Mass Indie culture mixes weirdness and normalness until it evens out.”95

91 Ibid., 89-90. 92 K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 14. 93 Ibid. 94 K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 15. 95 Ibid.

Mass Indie can be most closely linked to the “one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally indefinable idea of the ‘Hipster.’”96 The hipster, forever cool-hunting, fervently pursues seeking a connection between self and environment, but these endeavors lead down lonely paths where the best form of self-expression lies in differentiation. The differentiation is merely a co-opting of the revolutions of the past, and “the youth of the West are left with consuming cool rather that creating it. The cultural zeitgeists of the past have always been sparked by furious indignation and are reactionary movements. But the hipster’s self-involved and isolated maintenance does nothing to feed cultural evolution.”97

In fashion, Mass Indie meant the widespread acceptance of anything and everything in pleasing dissonance. Mass Indie follows the “Collage” progression in the

Postmodern Rubric (table 1), where elements are cut from their original contexts, mixed with one another in an increasingly dissonant manner, resulting in entropy, unpredictability, and chaos. Things that were different from each other could exist together, both on a macro and micro level. Fashion in the postmodern era had sustained an unrelenting revival and recycling of symbols, so by the time of Cobain’s death, fashion had settled into a coexistence of multiple codes. Elements of prep, goth, jock, biker, girly, structured, minimalist and so on all had a place in Western fashion structure; there was not one dominant paradigm to follow (fig. 17). Those elements were continuously revisited and recycled until their original meanings were dulled. This fierce juxtaposition of contrasting elements could exist in one person as well; in one of the few

96 Douglas Haddow, “The Dead End of Western Civilization,” July 29, 2008, Adbusters.org, http://www.adbusters.org/article/hipster-the-dead-end-of-western-civilization/ (accessed November 6, 2016). 97 Ibid.

35 direct references to fashion in Youth Mode, K-HOLE notes that Mass Indie is likened to

“an old jean jacket over an evening dress.”98

The Mass Indie concept is not without its challenges. K-HOLE explains:

“There’s a limited amount of difference in the world, and the mainstreaming of its pursuit has only made difference all the scarcer. The anxiety that there is no new terrain is always a catalyst for change.”99 In pursuing uniqueness, uniqueness itself became ubiquitous; mass differentiation has led to near total isolation. K-HOLE continues, “the details that distinguish you are so small that nobody can tell you’re actually different,”100 and “you’re so special nobody knows what you’re talking about”101 are the first two problems brought on by Mass Indie. The problematic layers deepen when “the markers of individuality are so plentiful and regenerate so quickly that it’s impossible to keep up.”102 Mass Indie began as an opposition to imitation and became a compulsive form of differentiation. Fatigue set in, and fighting for uniqueness became unsatisfyingly common, the very ubiquitous normality that Mass Indie had tried to evade.

Acting Basic

To deal with these problems of Mass Indie, K-HOLE introduces the concept of

Acting Basic. When culture is oversaturated with differences, “the truly cool attempt to master sameness…The most different thing to do is to reject being different all together.”103 On the Youth Mode chart, Mass Indie and Acting Basic are connected by a pole of difference, but whereas Mass Indie approaches difference through celebration and

98 K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 15. 99 Ibid., 16. 100 Ibid., 18. 101 Ibid., 19. 102 Ibid., 20. 103 Ibid., 23.

36 tolerance, Acting Basic is an evasion of difference along the axis of indifference (table 2).

Mass Indie and Acting Basic are conversely related; both are “based on difference.

Sameness is not mastered, only approached.”104 Acting Basic does not solve the problems of Mass Indie, it only masks the symptoms. Seeking sameness as an antidote does not solve the demand for differentiation—the driving force in this pursuit is still differentiation. To constantly pursue validation via difference ballooned to a level of anxiety that was greater than the fear of sameness. K-HOLE elaborates: “Only idiot savants are in the right place at the right time without even knowing it... Thus the cargo shorts.”105

It is this concept, Acting Basic, which the fashion press mistook to be normcore— seeking differentiation and sameness in one move. The same non-fashionable types parading in outdated cargo shorts, the chance fashionistas who were modeled as the epitome of style while eschewing fashion altogether, were the accidental sages who falsely represented a refreshing release from the relentless pursuit of differentiation

(fig.18). K-HOLE notes that “sameness is not to be mistaken for minimalism. You gain a temporary mobility and a sense of being unencumbered by making fewer and more considered choices.”106

Christopher Glazek, a journalist and friend of the K-HOLE collective, asked on his Facebook page, “I can’t be the first to point this out, Fiona Duncan, but doesn’t your

NYMag [sic] piece confuse #Normcore with #ActingBasic, a separate K-HOLE concept?

104 Ibid., 25. 105 Ibid., 21-22. 106 Ibid., 24.

Dressing neutral and normy so you don’t stand out is #ActingBasic.”107 Duncan responded to the criticism with relief for a chance to justify her article, noting that “the piece went through many many rounds of drafts, through several editors, each time becoming more & more about fashion…I considered killing the piece every time it came back w [sic] more fashion, less reflection.”108

The same criticisms of Acting Basic are those of the fashion trend normcore—that it is a false sense of normality and a codified uniform as a means of differentiation.

Acting Basic is fraught with issues of class appropriation, as though those in a position of privilege can use the image of the Middle American to elevate their own means, and, to top it off, consider them “idiot savants” as well. Acting Basic assumes that everyone can return to their “boring suburban roots,”109 as if everybody has someplace normal to which they can return, and that this “normal” is the same for everybody. Yet this undefined normality was also at play within the Alternative movement: both Acting Basic and

Alternative have conjured an imagined idea of normality to differentiate against or celebrate.

Normcore

To contrast the Alternative, Mass Indie, and Acting Basic modes that preceded it,

K-HOLE introduces Normcore, an ambiguous concept rooted in new relationships to the notions of difference and sameness, individuation and community. Normcore is about being compliant with innate differences in one’s surroundings rather than rebelling against them, and drawing on human compassion to forge connections with others. Like

107 Christopher Glazek, https://www.facebook.com/christopher.glazek, February 28, 2014 (accessed June 30, 2016). 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid

38 a Venn diagram, Normcore recognizes the existence of boundaries but celebrates overlapping commonalities (fig. 19).

The non-exclusivity of Normcore is a rebuttal against the extreme individuality of

Mass Indie and a contrast to the homogenization of Acting Basic. In regards to the former, K-HOLE links individuality with exclusivity, and the undue pressure and isolation that Mass Indie produced. However, in contrast to Acting Basic, K-HOLE acknowledges the inevitable segmentation of society and the impossibility of mastering sameness, especially when sameness is a tool used to, paradoxically, stand out.

Normcore does not replace Acting Basic and Mass Indie, but responds to those conditions. K-HOLE promises that “Normcore is a path to a more peaceful life,”110 somewhat implying that Normcore is the final step in a four-step process, a hefty promise that the end result will yield greater satisfaction than any of the other three modes. In

Youth Mode, Normcore is a celebration of sameness along the axis of empathy (table 2), but “sameness” is not the same as “normal.” “To be truly Normcore,” K-HOLE writes,

“you need to understand that there’s no such thing as normal.”111 To understand

Normcore is to accept that “normal” is an elusive concept, a notion that is widely understood yet difficult to describe, with more meanings that complement and contradict.

This acceptance of an indefinable normality is the crux of Normcore—it is nothing to rebel against, nor is it a gravitation toward a fabricated idealization. It is an acceptance of simply being and a resistance to conforming to labels.

The virtue of Normcore is a quality of blankness; it is not about being prepared for any given situation because the outcome has been rehearsed, but being ready for any

110 K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 36. 111 Ibid., 28

39 situation because the players are ready to improvise. “You have to respond appropriately, meet every situation head on,” even if every encounter will not go smoothly, because “Normcore capitalizes on the possibility of misinterpretation as an opportunity for connection.”112 At the heart of this is the refutation that Mass Indie, and the Alternative quest for authenticity that preceded it, resulted in a discovery of self- identity. K-HOLE writes: “Once upon a time people were born into communities and had to find their individuality. Today people are born individuals and have to find their communities.”113 A person’s identity is not a mystery to be unlocked by differentiation, and a person is not limited to one community, but is “able to go out into a lot of different communities at once.”114 Normcore doesn’t seek to dissolve communities and subcultures into a one-size-fits-all model, but to move about them freely. “Normcore doesn’t want the freedom to become someone. Normcore wants the freedom to be with anyone… In Normcore, one does not pretend to be above the indignity of belonging.”115

Normcore doesn’t replace Mass Indie or Acting Basic, but builds upon those concepts: “This is why it’s Normcore to be Mass Indie in Williamsburg.”116

Normcore is more concerned with an authenticity pertaining to a situation, not a personality, somewhat like settling into a complacent mode to the set of circumstances at hand. Normcore assumes that an individual is familiar with his own identity, and doesn’t need to telegraph that identity with outward signifiers, but can behave in a manner that is appropriate to his surroundings without compromising himself (fig. 20). K-HOLE

112 Ibid., 33. 113 Ibid., 27. 114 Ted Stansfield, “The Inventor of Normcore on Viral Internet Culture,” Dazed Digital, August 25, 2015, http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/26061/1/the-inventor-of-normcore-on-viral-internet-culture (accessed August 16, 2016). 115 K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 28. 116 Ibid., 33.

40 capitalizes on the concept that it can be easier to change one’s perspective than it is to change a situation.

K-HOLE distills the attributes of Normcore to the following: situational, non- deterministic, adaptable, post-aspirational, unconcerned with authenticity, values empathy over tolerance.117 If these conditions were applied to fashion, it is possible to understand that Normcore does not prescribe a dress code, let alone the bland, unimaginative anti-fashion drawn from Acting Basic as imagined by the fashion press.

Glazek wrote, “the point of Normcore is that you could dress like a NASCAR mascot for a big race and then switch to raver-wear for a long druggy night at the club.”118 This does not eliminate Mass Indie differentiation, but skews it—instead of an individual’s identity determined by the outward portrayal of dress, the nature of the occasion is represented by the dress. However, paradoxically, Normcore also “cops to the situation at hand,”119 dismissing the foundation of situational dressing, that it is necessary to present oneself in a certain way in accordance to one’s environment. For as many types of different situations there might be a different type of dress, although failing to dress in a situationally appropriate manner is not a fatal flaw. With empathy over tolerance, a mutual understanding occurs that any moment of conflict is an opportunity for compassion.

To attempt to translate Normcore into fashion is a futile endeavor. There is no particular Normcore style—the clothing worn in this Normcore period of time is not distinctly different than what was worn in the postmodern era, although fashion still does offer new selections in relation to consumer demand. Normcore has not introduced new

117 K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 30. 118 Glazek, Facebook. 119 K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 28

41 garments, foundation understructures, or silhouettes. What Normcore has done is affect how fashion and clothing are perceived. Fashion has relaxed its rules of conduct. It is no longer necessary to pledge allegiance to one particular situation, or to wholeheartedly pursue a visual representation of one’s personality through dress. Normcore is a mode unique to this particular transitional period in time, and as postmodernism gives way to a new era, fashion will once again find cohesiveness, and Normcore, too, will be démodé.

Youth Mode, although it outlines a path of logical cause and effect, is a loose and ambiguous conceptual work. It glosses over several key rudimentary concepts like

“freedom,” “normal,” and “post-aspirational,” which are open to many different definitions. This opens a gateway to much misinterpretation of the axioms presented, much like the fashion press’s misunderstanding of normcore and linking it to an Acting

Basic-inspired aesthetic. This lack of definition not only leaves Youth Mode vulnerable to the charge of open-ended vagueness, but to outright dismissal and invalidation of the entire work.

In analyzing Youth Mode, and more specifically, Normcore, Kathleen French catastrophized every possible path where Normcore could fail. Although Glazek must have had good intentions in beginning a discussion regarding K-HOLE and Normcore on a social media platform, his comments bring up more room for misinterpretation of the

Youth Mode model. He wrote: “It’s about infinitely flexible, sunny appropriation,”120 followed by

the prototypical normcore gesture is white people pretending to be black; the contemporary update is straight people pretending to be gay. Normcore is about #experimenting…One of the things I find refreshing about #normcore is that it’s

120 Ibid.

simultaneously queer-ish and post-identity politics. Its spiritual grandfather is minstrelsy, but IDGAF.121

Glazek’s flippant unconcern toward loaded topics such as race relations signaled an alarming assumption that this is a post-racist time, and this became the touchstone of

French’s argument, subjecting Youth Mode to an analysis based on the negative implications of cultural and racial appropriation. French writes that “freewheeling appropriation” is something which “Normcore inherently celebrates… If one is to take

Normcore seriously as a theory, then it has to be followed to its logical conclusion and that it is one of rampant cultural appropriation.”122 French uses fashion to exemplify this:

“One need only attend a trendy party in New York City to see white people in tracksuits or with a full head of cornrows, and it’s these kinds of stylistic choices that Normcore not only justifies but celebrates as radical adaptability.”123 To French, this is “not an ignorance of race, class, gender, and sexuality but a willful amnesia.”124

However, the celebration of sameness that identifies Normcore is not a disregard for inherent differences, but a preference for establishing connections. To be certain, “in matters of cultural appropriation not only are community cultures being hijacked, but they’re being re-contextualized, without acknowledging their original foundations.”125

However, K-HOLE is not suggesting that Normcore is an appropriation of cultures that allows for a cherry-picking of styles that please the individual, capitalizing on a “norm”

121 John Leland connects the history of American “hip” culture to the complex relationship between white and black Americans: “Against the larger story of racial oppression and animosity, there was also one of creative interplay…when a maturing America began to stage stories about itself, it created two idioms that reflected exactly this unresolved vortex. The first is the black face minstrel show...the second is the blues. These two forms, nurtured on American soil, are the twined root stems of hip. We live among their branches to this day.” John Leland, Hip: The History (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 19-20. 122 Kathleen French, “Much Ado About Normcore,” Medium, March 21, 2014, https://medium.com/french- amnesty/much-ado-about-normcore-7f9d7e5be01f#.w0n1raoiz (accessed June 30, 2016). 123 Ibid. 124 Ibid. 125 Ibid.

43 that is based on being white and privileged. Notions of privilege and power are permanent fixtures in society, and no theoretical model will completely eradicate them.

In her essay “Wanting to be Normal,” London-based therapist Tania Glyde supposes,

If you took a group of blond, blue-eyed, eighteen-year-old, white young men, all of the same weight and height, all living in the same area of London, with doctor fathers and academic mothers, and all with one younger sister, and put them in a room together, within minutes a hierarchy would form. I wonder if there is any sexual orientation, behavior, culture, ethnicity, or political group in which this stratification could not happen.126

Emergent modes can introduce new ways of viewing social crises and temporarily ease tension, but it is inevitable that marginalization will reoccur. The push-pull between power and subjectivity is permanent, but the specific forces pushing and pulling in either direction are not. By not directly addressing these hot-button issues, K-HOLE is not willfully ignoring them, but rather placing importance on changing an individual’s point of view. This is an opportunity (albeit temporary) to break down power relationships, or at least gain new perspectives.

The problem with French’s critique is that it is justified by Glazek’s comments, not by Youth Mode itself. In Youth Mode, the concept of appropriation is mentioned once: “Normcore moves away from a coolness that relies on difference to a post- authenticity coolness that opts in to sameness. But instead of appropriating an aestheticized version of the mainstream, it just cops to the situation at hand.”127

K-HOLE, in this passage, is specifically addressing the futile endeavor of Acting Basic, which does appropriate from a segment of the mainstream, whereas Normcore does not.

Glazek also used emotionally charged language, as though advocating for an emergent

126 Tania Glyde, “Wanting to Be Normal,” The Lancet Psychiatry 1, no. 3 (August 2014): 180, http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(14)70325-6/fulltext (accessed August 16, 2016). 127 K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 28.

44 social norm described as “minstrelsy” would not be provocative. Glazek is a friend of

K-HOLE, but not an author of Youth Mode, and springboarding off his comments to justify a critique of Normcore is building an argument based on a loose connection.

K-HOLE’s silence on the matter may have been construed as approval and support of

Glazek’s comments.

This is not to say that K-HOLE was not subjected to critique without the influence of Glazek’s social media discussions. Rory Rowan uses Youth Mode to illuminate the crisis of the entire model of post-critical theory. Rowan analyzes the current trends in contemporary philosophy and notes the prevalence of notions of difference and normativity, and subjects Youth Mode to an exhaustive critique. Rowan laments the void in K-HOLE’s logic and failure to account for external forces that shape society and influence the outlined social forces, such as financial crises and race relations. To

Rowan, Youth Mode exists as though in a pop culture vacuum. He writes, “their failure to engage with social forces, even superficially, or to even show an awareness that they exist, is a disappointment.”128 Youth Mode is meant to address issues of community and individuality, but this failure to flesh out other social issues precludes an understanding of community and places the burden of interpretation on the individual. Rowan sees this disparity as a major fault in the work.

However, the underlying reason for K-HOLE’s focus on assessing the individual is that it is the changes in individual makeup that will color society. Further, K-HOLE’s mentions of sociocultural conditions that shape the modes outlined in Youth Mode are cursory because a profound and exhaustive analysis of cultural forces is impossible to summarize in a forty-slide presentation. Youth Mode was not created to be an academic

128 Rowan, “SO NOW!: On Normcore.”

45 study, but a cross between a marketing report and an art project. Generalizations exist in any study involving sociocultural conditions. In discussing the Alternative youth of the

1990s, for example, the authors of Youth Mode do not imply that every young person was

Alternative, and therefore grunge; Alternative is understood as being a driving cultural current. Similarly, in discussing emergent modes like Acting Basic and Normcore, they do not assume that they are a catch-all term for behavior describing every individual; part of the resistance in seeing this behavior emerge is that it is taking place in the current moment. Rowan, French, and other critics make leaps placing K-HOLE’s rhetoric into dominant societies of the past. They assume that sameness is the same as normality,129 and post-authenticity means post-sincerity,130 and find a reverted pathway to a point where “Normcore smuggles in the backdoor an implicit idea of what is normal (white, middle class) even as it shuts the front door on the mainstream.”131 Ironically, the only discourse explicitly stating that the white and middle class is the definition of normal is that of Youth Mode’s critics. If K-HOLE’S rhetoric is “the result of purely internal pop- culture dynamics,”132 then that is merely the extent to which these social currents have currently been seen.

The point of leaving big ideas open-ended is precisely so that they remain open to interpretation. Normcore presents windows of opportunity for connections to be made via inevitable misinterpretations; therefore, it is precisely the convergence of different perspectives that shape society. This misinterpretation is what spiraled Youth Mode into pop culture and created a viral fashion trend, which, although K-HOLE’s version of the

129 Ibid. 130 French, “Much Ado About Normcore.” 131 Rowan, “SO NOW!: On Normcore.” 132 Ibid.

46 term Normcore was misrepresented, opened a discussion about updating the twentieth century models of youth culture. This series of shifts in cultural thought seems to follow a maturation process, which Fiona Duncan addressed in an interview with four members of K-HOLE. The “arc from wanting to be special (Mass Indie) to wanting to be free

(Normcore) is a natural shift that occurs” in the “maturing of an individual mind.”133 This evolution is due to living “in both a country and a world that is ‘older’ (in terms of median age than any before it,”134 according to Monahan, but also “younger,” since young adults are not able to move on to adult responsibilities until later stages in life.

This progression also comes from a new relationship to “technological, economic, physical, and social realities that have really changed,”135 according to Segal.

Youth Mode makes big promises and relies on big concepts to deliver. “In youth mode, you are infinite,”136 and Normcore, the final step of youth mode, is “a path to a more peaceful life.”137 The greatest frustration that critics have with Youth Mode, its inherent abstractness, is also the virtue of the work: it is more inclusive to be ambiguous.

The last youthful movement of the twentieth century, Alternative, was fueled by feelings of being closed off and segregated, and the movement fought these feelings by closing off from mainstream society even further. Normcore, then, is the peaceful protest against the remnants of the Alternative world; the first youthful movement of the twenty-first century is the polar opposite: it resists feelings of isolation with acceptance and hopefulness, and embraces connections. K-HOLE offers a thoughtful, if somewhat truncated, analysis of current sociocultural conditions presented as a tidy package of

133 Duncan, “Trend Forecasters K-HOLE On Individualism, #NORMCORE, & What It Means to Be Free.” 134 Ibid. 135 Ibid. 136 K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 13. 137 Ibid., 36.

Alternative, Mass Indie, Acting Basic, and Normcore, neatly poetic cross-currents of opposing desires having to do with sameness and difference, and community and belonging, operating in a closed ecosystem with little mention of other social forces that are imposed on contemporary culture. These external forces will surely make their mark on new sociocultural modes, but the cultural patterns indicate a new way of thinking, which will go hand-in-hand with a new era of fashion.

CHAPTER 3

THE END OF POSTMODERNISM IN FASHION

Postmodernity means many different things to many different people. It may mean a building that arrogantly flaunts the “orders” prescribing what fits and what should be kept strictly out to preserve the functional logic of steel, glass and concrete. It means a work of imagination that defies the difference between painting and sculpture, styles and genres, gallery and the street, art and everything else. It means a life that looks suspiciously like a TV serial, and a docudrama that ignores your worry about setting apart fantasy from what “really happened.” It means license to do whatever one may fancy and advice not to take anything you or the others do too seriously. It means the speed with which things change and the pace with which moods succeed each other so that they have to time to ossify into things. It means attention drawn in all directions at once so that it cannot stop on anything for long and nothing gets a really closer look. It means a shopping mall overflowing with goods whose major use is the joy of purchasing them; and existence that feels like a life-long confinement to the shopping mall. It means the exhilarating freedom to pursue anything and the mind-boggling uncertainty as to what is worth pursuing and in the name of what one should pursue it.138

Postmodern fashion, too, meant many different things to many different people.

Postmodern fashion was a customizable free-for-all, where clothing flaunted its orders, where styles and genres were defied, where the gaze never stopped to rest on one facet, where whims and fancies changed at lightning speed, where consumerism was a driving force. There was no need to pledge allegiance to decade, time of day, time of year, gender, occasion, social status, or any other typical fashion code. Even the ideal body was questioned, with over- or under-sized scale garments or deconstructed elements reassembled into new silhouettes, as fashion, unsure of what it wanted, flirted with new body shapes. In fashion, this resulted in a clash of colors, a co-opting of cultural

138 Zygmunt Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity (London: Routledge, 1992), vii.

48 49 aesthetics, a play on volume and scale, deliberately ersatz in the form of trompe l’oeil or pastiche, or a disregard for gender. The smaller narratives of the second half of the twentieth century, such as the excessive 1980s and the psychedelic 1960s, were continuously borrowed from and regurgitated, with the result acknowledging both the original and the adapter.

In Youth Mode, K-HOLE proposed a pattern of cultural change, which, when studied against theories of leading voices in philosophical discourse, is indicative of a transition out of the postmodern era. Some scholars believe that postmodernism had, by the turn of the millennium, “gone out of fashion.”139 What followed in its wake were theoretical scenarios like a “modernity raised to the nth power,” as proposed by

Gilles Lipovetsky140; “performatism,” as indicated by Raoul Eshelman141; and

“digimodernism,” as written by Alan Kirby.142 Determining whether or not these theories and predictions are correct is not the aim of this analysis, but these conjectures will be used to find parallels between contemporary currents in the fashion system and the social modes as outlined in Youth Mode. For the purposes of this research, I will concur that the postmodern era began its long, slow death in the 1990s, and the next twenty years are indicative of a transitional phase that has not yet given way to a fully formed new era.

What comes after postmodernism may be any one of the three above posits, or a combination of them all; their merits will be analyzed in relationship with fashion’s position in this transitional phase. Setting fixed start and end dates to major cultural eras is unfeasible, made all the more difficult for trying to analyze a present or too-recent

139 Potter and Lopez, eds., After Postmodernism: An Introduction to Critical Realism, 4. 140 Lipovetsky, Hypermodern Times. 141 Raoul Eshelman, Performatism, or the End of Postmodernism (Aurora, CO: Davies Group Publishers, 2008). 142 Kirby, Digimodernism.

50 point in time without the perspective of the past for assistance, but a pattern of agreement between changes in social thought and a general timeline can be established.

Much like the emergent behavior outlined in Youth Mode, transitions between cultural eras follow a nonlinear trajectory, with some cultural fields, fashion being one of them, sometimes moving more quickly toward a new era and others slower to adopt changes. For the time being, it is possible to substantiate that “postmodernism is inadequate as an intellectual response to the times we live in.”143 Considering

Youth Mode in the light of academic scholarship, it is possible to theorize that the 1990s represented the beginning of the end of the postmodern era in fashion. For digital natives of the Millennial generation, postmodern thought is outdated and cliché. The collective modes of Mass Indie, Acting Basic, and Normcore, currently appearing in varying degrees in contemporary society, represent a transitional period until the next era, whatever it may be, becomes fully formed.

In analyzing David Alderson’s 2004 statement that “though the term

‘postmodernism’ seems to be increasingly out of favor these days its intellectual bearings remain largely in place, all the moreso [sic], indeed, for having become almost a sort of common sense,” Kirby notes that the use of the phrase “common sense” suggests postmodernism will end “not with a coup, but with absorption.”144 Postmodernism will not be undone, but will be incorporated into the next cultural era. The symptoms of postmodernism as demonstrated in the Postmodern Rubric will continue to exist, although their raison d'être and effect will differ. Thus, in fashion, elements of

143 Ibid. 144 Kirby, Digimodernism, 37.

51 postmodernism still linger and will continue to affect fashion until the next era establishes itself more implacably (fig. 21).

It is possible, however, to reflect on contemporary fashion and note how developments in design, business, commerce, and technology align with emergent modes of thinking as outlined by K-HOLE as well as the leading voices in contemporary philosophy. Throughout the course of fashion history, fashion eras have been differentiated from each other by their relationship with revivals, rules, democracy, and a certain fashionable body. Analyzing changes in trends of fashion from the 1990s forward, much of what has happened has shown that fashion is poised to enter a new era, and historical precedents support this theory.

The Fashion Fractal

Fashion has always looked to the past and built upon itself. Nods to historic dress can be spotted throughout the course of fashion history, but when excessive nostalgia is aligned with changes in social culture, it can be indicative of a fashion era transition.

Following the upheaval of the French Revolution in the 1790s, with the Directoire period in place, the era of Enlightenment wore away to Romanticism, and fashion returned to neo-Classicism. The opulence of the eighteenth century gave way to a simplicity in dress that took inspiration from ancient Greece and Rome (fig. 22), like a symbolic return to the origins of civilization, and, vicariously, fashion. What followed over the course of the long nineteenth century was a series of revivals of every major era in chronological order. Elements of the Renaissance, the seventeenth century, and the eighteenth century appeared in fashionable dress. When the century turned, the possibility of a further revival was exhausted, and fashion could not rely on revivalism to keep moving forward

52 into modernity. Fashion once again reverted to Classicism in the form of the

“Directoire Revival” (fig. 23), essentially a revival of a revival, and Antiquity became modern.

Similarly, the postmodern era in fashion was marked by a steady stream of nostalgic revivals of twentieth-century fashion. Throughout the postmodern era, fashion saw little innovation; in writing about postmodernism, Jean-Francois Lyotard lamented that “from every direction we are being urged to put an end to experimentation.”145

These revivals, like all fashion revivals, live in their own space and time. For this reason, although fashion repetitions follow a cyclical nature, fashion is never a true circle, returning to its beginning. Rather, fashion revivals are like a fractal, “characterized by the repetition of similar patterns at ever-diminishing scales.”146 Modes repeat, but the pattern is replicated in another time and place, and it is impossible to reproduce the context in which the original fashion was born. Postmodern fashion revivals clipped along at a much faster pace than those in the long nineteenth century, and were always rooted in postmodernism.

Postmodernism’s preoccupation with the past is one of its most prevailing characteristics. Whereas the modern era marched confidently toward the future, postmodernism reflected on the past, continuously reviving it until its meaning had been forgotten. As Baudrillard stated, “history is our lost referential, that is to say our myth…The great event of this period, the great trauma, is this decline of strong referentials…that open onto an age of simulation.” Simulation, says Baudrillard, “is the

145 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 71. 146 Ron Eglash, African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 4

53 generation by models of a real without origin or reality.”147 Excessive simulation gave way to simulacra, a copy of something that never existed.

Postmodern fashion revivals, although not following a strictly chronological order, have nearly exhausted their nostalgia, and have almost caught up with themselves.

The length of time between the present and the revived period is decreasing with a premature demand for nostalgia of the too-recent past. Simply by virtue of not having formed a more recent past to continue to revive, this pattern is unsustainable. Delving deeper, it is intriguing to see a return to modernism at play. Jean-Francois Lyotard, while analyzing modern art, wrote, “the generations precipitate themselves. A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state.”148 Gilles Lipovetsky continues this theory: “a second modernity, deregulated and globalized, has shot into orbit: it has no opposite, and is absolutely modern.”149 Following this trajectory, it is possible to hypothesize that the future of fashion after postmodernism would include elements of modernity, e.g. an engagement with the future, integrity of design, and adherence to modern design principles. This theory, however, fails to hypothesize fashion’s trajectory as anything more than a pendulum swing, an inevitable return to an already-visited point. A more dynamic and exciting opportunity to engage in a never-before experienced mode of fashion may occur.

147 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 1. 148 Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 79. 149 Lipovetsky, Hypermodern Times, 31.

As Georg Simmel stated: “Fashion is merely a product of social demands,”150 and normcore fashion represented a rejection of the too-isolating modes of postmodernism, and the loneliness brought on by Mass Indie. Lyotard, in analyzing Jurgen Habermas, wrote, “the remedy for this splintering of culture and its separation from life can only come from ‘changing the status of aesthetic experience when it is no longer primarily expressed in judgment of taste,’ but when it is ‘used to explore a living historical situation.’”151 Normcore’s connection to 1990s fashion is simultaneously an exploration of a living historical situation in that the fashionable adopted the aesthetics of the unfashionable, as well a representative shift in judgment of taste in terms of what is and is not fashionable. Should Lyotard and Lipovetsky be correct in their predictions, that after postmodernism there will be a return to modernism, then it is fair to assume that eventually there will be an application of meaning to symbols. In the meantime, postmodern fashion has reached the apex of the possibility of revivals. It would be comforting to think that endless combinations of fashion aesthetics can exist, made all the more possible without the dilution of meaning, and postmodernism could continue indefinitely, writing its symphony of new juxtapositions. But as demonstrated by the social aspect of the normcore trend, it is being demanded that fashion break through to a new era.

The Rules of Fashion

Fashion relies on sets of governing rules to maintain order. Historically, these might have been imposed by higher classes upon lower classes, such as the sumptuary laws of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, legal edicts that dictated which classes were

150 Georg Simmel, “Fashion,” in Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms, ed. Donald N. Levine, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 297. 151 Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 72.

55 permitted to use certain materials at a set level of luxury. During the Tudor era in

England, style of dress and materials used were determined by local custom and technological innovation; a certain unity of dress was understood as being assigned to

English people in the sixteenth century. Within that unity, ranks of society were kept in order with sumptuary laws and an understanding of general class structure, whereby

“clothes are defined by referenced to others in society…clothing was an index to income, household, occupation, and the type of work undertaken by the wearer.”152 The individual defined himself in relation to others in order to know his place in society.

Socially, sets of codes are developed to imbue propriety into types of garments themselves. In the eighteenth century, types of clothing followed a hierarchy of formality. In French women’s fashion, for example, at the upper echelon was the robe de cour, the most formal attire possible, worn on ceremonial occasions at court. The next most formal dress was the robe à la française, which was more formal than a robe à l’anglaise, which was more formal than a robe à la polonaise.153 When the

French Revolution traumatized the fashion system, it went through a transitional period as it rewrote its own rules. In the aftermath of the Revolution, clothing began to be dictated by time of day: morning dress, afternoon dress, evening dress.154 Time of day remained the prevailing classification into the modern era, and within this order, allowances were made for season, activity, and formality.155

152 Ninya Mikhaila and Jane Malcolm-Davies, The Tudor Tailor: Reconstructing 16th-century Dress (Hollywood: Quite Specific Media, 2006), 11. 153 For a description of different types of women’s eighteenth-century dress and their corresponding hierarchies of formality, see “Dress and Etiquette” in Aileen Ribeiro, Dress in Eighteenth Century Europe 1715-1789, rev. ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 167-205. 154 “Night and Day,” Museum at FIT, http://sites.fitnyc.edu/depts/museum/Night_and_Day/ (accessed October 30, 2016). 155 Richard Martin, The Four Seasons (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997); Richard Martin and Harold Koda, Two By Two (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997).

In the postmodern era, rules were broken for the thrill of apposition, and elements that once were considered to clash were paired together because the dissonance was now considered pleasing. Rules pertaining to time of day, season and weather, formality, activity, gender, and so on were dismantled. It is postmodern, for example, to “balance” a flowy skirt with a tailored blazer (a clash of structure), to wear a summer scarf (a seasonally unnecessary accessory), to wear jeans with high heels (a combination of informal and formal), or to produce a sequined T-shirt (a combination of basic and elaborate). Once, these provoking combinations were a way to form a new aesthetic and a way to question the validity of these new representations of emerging social structures.

Over time, the practitioners of postmodern fashion lost any knowledge of the rules that were being broken in the first place, so the impact of their violations diminished and it became “normal” to abuse rules in postmodern fashion.

However, although the rules of fashion may be forgotten, the idea of having a governing set of edicts was not lost, as there still exists a sense of reaction against regulation. In other words, we still expect rules to exist if only because we need to defy them. The assumption is that rules are there to be broken, and magazines and fashion blogs triumphantly declare which fashion rules are for the breaking. These include permission to wear white shoes after Labor Day, to mix navy blue and black, and to wear sequins and metallics during the day.156 These fashion rules have been irrelevant for many years, though. The fashion system still promotes this permission for rebellion (fig.

24), but it has been done so often that it is more like permission to make personal decisions and establishing one’s own set of social dress codes; this is further confirmation

156 See, for example, Chrissy Rutherford, “8 Fashion ‘Rules’ to Break Now,” Harpers Bazaar, June 11, 2014, http://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/trends/g3743/fashion-myths/ (accessed September 8, 2016).

57 that anything goes. Some sartorial norms still exist, such as suits for formal attire, ceremony-appropriate “costumes” such as wedding dresses, clothing that is appropriately functional for athletic activities, and gender-normative clothing, although much of contemporary fashion places even these “norms” in question. For example, the technology boom of the late 1990s contributed to the disruption of standard businesswear. Previously, the ideal image of a leader of a powerful corporation was a man impeccably dressed in a smartly tailored suit; today, the idea of an executive wearing T-shirts and sweatshirts to work is commonplace (fig. 25). According to

Lipovetsky, during the postmodern era “we experienced a brief moment during which social constraints and impositions were reduced: now they are reappearing in the foreground, albeit in new shapes.”157 Situational dressing is not eradicated by normcore.

As the meaning behind signs was forgotten or disregarded, it gave way to a vapid, free association of once-contrasting elements without shock, such as cocktail dresses worn with sneakers or a casually styled tuxedo. “Athleisure” made it acceptable for exercise attire to be worn as streetwear. Styling tips obliterated boundaries between seasons. Whereas a woman may once have had a dress that was appropriate for daytime, and another for evening, at one point it might have been innovative to wear the same dress for both daytime and evening with judicious accessories that would smartly transition the same garment from day to night; today, it is irrelevant to label a dress as appropriate for day or evening, as the same garment can be acceptable for both without the fuss. Continued juxtapositions no longer have the same meaning as they did in the beginning of the postmodern era, but are encouraging new perspectives pertaining to gender, formality, activity, and time of day. Those fashion rules are being rewritten.

157 Lipovetsky, Hypermodern Times, 30.

Democracy

The theme of democracy is prevalent in the fashion press’s coverage of normcore, which has been touted as a fashion that is accessible to everyone. Normcore is a way for the individual to shine through, where character is an important feature of a fashionable person. This is also the central tenet of dandyism, which flourished in the early nineteenth century in the aftermath of the French Revolution. According to

Roland Barthes, “the idea of democracy produced a form of clothing which was, in theory, uniform, no longer subject to the stated requirements of appearances but to those of work and equality.”158 In dandyism, the streamlined tailoring of the suit allowed the man to distinguish himself, not to be upstaged by his attire (fig. 26). A dandy’s attire was marked by simplicity and austerity, but nonetheless dandyism cultivated sartorial indications of social differences. “The superiority of status, which for democratic reasons could no longer be advertised, was hidden and sublimated beneath a new value: taste, or better still, as the word is appropriately ambiguous, distinction.”159 It is this same class distinction based on privilege for which normcore was scrutinized.160

Further back in history, the individual was celebrated in other shifts in fashion. In

Tudor England, royalty was indicated by dress of incredible opulence. King Henry VIII and his successor, Queen Elizabeth I, both had themselves represented lavishly dressed in portraiture. The fashionable silhouette in the sixteenth century widened, like a mural, to allow for a greater surface area on which to display immense wealth in the form of

158 Roland Barthes, The Language of Fashion, trans. Andy Stafford (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 65. 159 Ibid., 66. 160 Alice Gregory, “All Hail the New Hipster,” Elle.com, June 22, 2014, http://www.elle.com/fashion/ a14488/old-lady-dressing/ (accessed August 15, 2016); Kristin Iversen, “Why Having Good Taste Is Really Just Code for Being Rich,” BKmag.com, June 23, 2014, http://www.bkmag.com/2014/06/23/why-having- good-taste-is-really-just-code-for-being-rich/ (accessed August 15, 2016).

59 embroidery, jewels, and expensive textiles. The body was seen as a collection of different parts, and was dressed in clothing that was as segmented as a suit of armor.161

Each feature could be adorned separately and elaborately. In both men and women, silhouettes widened to distorted proportions, with masculine silhouettes puffed and pronounced to emphasize broad shoulders and round bellies, and women’s dresses emphasizing the hips and sleeves. Throughout the sixteenth century, Elizabethan fashion continued to be starched, wired, and puffed to an apex of artificiality.162

In a change of course, King Charles I succeeded Tudor glamour with a streamlined, down-to-earth personal style (fig. 27). It was not his jewels that signified his royalty, but his attitude. The fashionable silhouette softened and collapsed, coming closer to the natural form. The body was seen as a total organism, and ensembles harmonized. Surface decorations faded away to keep the eye concentrated on the person as a whole; fashionable fabrics were plain yet luxurious silk satins; and hair was worn long, loose, and wild. The symbolic fashionable ideal went from the monarch to the courtier. Over a century later, Marie-Antoinette would continue this idealization of the informal and the pastoral in response to the pressures of court life.163

The normcore fashion trend also idealized the image of a particular class: the disappearing American middle class, suffering from a destabilized economy and social

161 For a detailed tracing of the progression of the fashionable body’s segmentation, including how sumptuary laws, construction techniques, adoption of uniforms, and resistance to change all affected this evolution, see Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340- 1365 (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1980), 2-5. 162 Janet Arnold, “The Pursuit of Fashion” in Queen Elizabetb’s Wardrobe Unlock’d (Leeds: Maney, 1988), 110-162. 163 Marie-Antoinette’s love for simplicity led her to the Petit Trianon, her modest palace retreat on the grounds of Versailles; in fashion, this propensity was represented by her preference for the chemise à la reine, a scandalously casual dress that was a radical departure from mainstream fashion of the time. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, “The Chemise à la Reine,” in Fashion Victims: Dress at the Court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 172-199.

60 hierarchy, as its orderly way of life is under threat of extinction. Normcore’s irrefutable connection with the middle class spurred the nostalgic appropriation of its dress, like a symbolic resistance to its demise.

The urgent need of our age is not individual self-actualization…it is to hold on to that middle-class society the counterculture thought was so soulless and unfulfilling. All the signifiers have changed. Today corporate managers routinely declare themselves to be disruptive and revolutionary fellows, while average, uncool workers fight desperately to hang on to their pensions and healthcare benefits.164

The destruction of the middle class, with its promise of upward mobility, is a foreboding threat to democracy. Normcore was shortly preceded by events like the Occupy Wall

Street protest, which brought attention to economic and social inequality.

Normcore can also be seen as the first purely media-driven fashion trend.

Building on a foundation of a minimalist code set by Céline, an intriguing report by

K-HOLE, and a provocative article by Fiona Duncan, it was the voices of ordinary people who made normcore go viral. Bloggers and internet journalists, who do not necessarily have power as individuals, contributed to the spread of normcore. One of the chief characteristics of postmodernity, according to Bauman, is a “permanent and irreducible pluralism of cultures.”165 The complex relationship between different classes has been forever altered in the decades leading up to the advent of normcore, particularly through the use of technology. Normcore, as both the K-HOLE concept and a viral fashion trend, is clearly rooted in the cause for unification and building connections, in finding more similarities among the world’s individuals rather than highlighting barriers between collective groups.

164 Thomas Frank, “Hipsters, They’re Just Like Us,” Salon.com, April 27, 2014, http://www.salon.com/ 2014/04/27/hipsters_they%E2%80%99re_just_like_us_normcore_sarah_palin_and_the_gops_big_red_stat e_lie/ (accessed January 5, 2015). 165 Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity, 102.

The Fashionable Body

Anne Hollander wrote: “Changes in fashion alter the look of clothes, but the look of the body has to change with it.”166 For six centuries Western fashion “has perpetually re-created an integrated vision of clothes and body together.”167 The idealized female figure in the Postmodern era is thin and androgynous, first popularized by Twiggy in the

1960s. With some variations, in the following decades women would continue to be held up to this standard. In the 1980s, a healthy, athletic ideal was exemplified by supermodels like Cindy Crawford, and in the 1990s, a frail, “heroin chic” “waif” like Kate Moss was in vogue. The very thin figure is still fashionable, with slim limbs and a flat belly, and the simplicity of contemporary clothing contributes to this shape. Without artifices like corsets and bustles to fluff, expand, and cinch a silhouette to a point of idealization, the fashionable body is achieved not by adding, but by shedding: exercising for weight loss, surgery for sculpting. When all else fails, digital manipulation is used for polishing an image.

Contemporary fashion still challenges notions about the fashionable body, continuing the postmodern practice of juxtaposing disparate elements. Acne Studios cast an eleven-year-old boy to head its Fall 2015 women’s wear campaign (fig. 28). Creative director Jonny Johannson said,

I’ve seen this new generation’s attitude to fashion where the cut, the shape and the character of the garment is the crucial thing, rather then seeking approval from society or to follow set norms… I wanted to portray that feeling of first experiences with fashion, like a kid is experimenting with their look for the first

166 Anne Hollander, Seeing Through Clothes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 85. 167 Ibid.

time, without any preconception… This person is not looking for approval, there’s no nerves or political statement.168

Dressing for self-expression as opposed to social conformity has traditionally been a hallmark of anti-fashion, but Johannson’s eagerness to highlight this excitement comes at a time when a new era is emerging. For The Row’s Pre-Fall 2014 lookbook, designers

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen exclusively cast models over the age of thirty-nine (fig. 29).

Vogue described the collection as “anti-fashion, except that fashion has lately been coming around to items like these.”169 This fluidity between generations parallels

Lipovetsky’s notion that today’s social condition “has multiplied divergent temporalities

[such as] the ability to choose your time, the time of youth.”170 The obliteration of youth as a provisional mode is the first promise made by K-HOLE, “the death of age,” which set the stage for Normcore.

Style guides have long urged women to dress for their bodies, accentuating their best features with belts, ruffles, and particular hemlines. In postmodern fashion, because multiple silhouettes are fashionable and acceptable, it is possible for a woman to find her preferred silhouette and rely on a specific cut to emphasize individual strengths; with the ethos that “anything goes,” a favored silhouette would remain reliably in fashion.

Around the time that normcore went viral, a curious trend appeared in red carpet displays worldwide. Women were dressed in sheer net dresses with nothing but a thong, or perhaps strategically placed embroidery and embellishment, for modesty (fig. 30). These dresses changed the onus of beauty from the dressmaker, who could once rely on

168 Emma Hope Allwood, “Why This Designer Put His 11-Year-Old Son in a Campaign,” Dazed, September 1, 2015, http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/26166/1/why-this-designer-put-his-11- year-old-son-in-a-campaign (accessed October 1, 2016). 169 Nicole Phelps, “The Row,” Vogue.com, January 7, 2014, http://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/pre-fall- 2014/row (accessed October 1, 2016). 170 Lipovetsky, Hypermodern Times, 35.

63 judicious tailoring and cutting techniques to emphasize positive traits and camouflage what they wanted to hide, to the wearer, whose uncompromised body is on display.

Further continuing this pushing of boundaries towards nudity, another intriguing red carpet trend involves skirts with hemline slits reaching past the pubic bone (fig. 31).

Between these dresses and “thigh gap,” the dangerous obsession with having legs so slim that the thighs don’t touch, the gaze has been fixated on the female erogenous zone.

Historically, nudity behaved like a sartorial reset button. In the aftermath of the

French Revolution, the merveilleuses reacted to the chaos around them by dressing à la sauvage, regressing to an implied naked savagery by wearing thin, sheer dresses, without shifts, and flesh-colored knit stays171; they used their implied nudity to shock and rebel against the old regime.172 In 1971, Yves Saint Laurent used nudity to challenge conventions of masculinity. Shortly after his scandalous Libération collection, he posed nude for his perfume Pour Homme (fig. 32). Saint Laurent, and fashion, were naked and ready to be born into the new postmodern era.

The Fashion System

“The most interesting thing about the whole normcore viral phenomenon was that it gave us a somewhat harrowing but very educational front seat to the way information circulates on the internet,” said Emily Segal.173 The misinterpretation of the Youth Mode term Normcore into a fashion trend entered public consciousness and went viral at lightning speed, as information, both erroneous and factual, became associated with the

171 Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion in the French Revolution (London: B.T. Batsford, 1988), 124-127. 172 In the exhibition “Au Temps des Merveilleuses,” held at the Musée Carnavalet in Paris in 2005, the curators question whether the post-Revolutionary penchant for transparent dresses was a reflection of the quest for a more transparent society. Thierry Lemoine, ed., Au temps des merveilleuses: la société parisienne sous le Directoire et le Consulat (Paris: Paris Musées, 2005), 127. 173 Stanfield, “The Inventor of Normcore on Viral Internet Culture.”

64 term. This rapid pace is reflected in consumer relationships with consumption, both of information and products, and fast fashion, which has been pushed to an unsustainable pace. In the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution led to advancements in ready- made clothing production, creating a model where fashion was made more accessible.174

This model has swelled and accelerated to unprecedented levels of reach and response that have pushed the limits of the fashion system from the past one hundred and fifty years, compromising human and natural resources. Mass market retailers restock supply in a short turnaround time, with new goods arriving daily, and source production from far reaches of the globe; at higher levels of fashion, designers are not immune to the increasing demands of a rapid-pace world, either, working quickly and producing more seasons per calendar year. With consumption at high levels, quantity is more important than quality, with clothing expected to last only until the next trend so it stays, like an exotic fruit, fresh. Fueling the cycle to increase production at lower costs and faster rates, this need for disposable clothing creates a perpetual cycle of pollution and poor working conditions for the nameless, faceless laborers who produce clothing. Textile waste is discarded at the rate of millions of tons per year, forgotten schmattas with no connection to their previous owners and wearers.175 Designers, the artists whose medium is fashion and whose aesthetic guidance is needed, are disconnected from their work. Technology has taken over the fashion industry, at the cost of human connection.

174 Kate Abnett, “Fashion’s Fourth Industrial Revolution,” Business of Fashion, August 16, 2016, https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/fashion-tech/fashions-fourth-industrial-revolution-2 (accessed August 16, 2016). 175 Alden Wicker, “Fast Fashion Is Creating an Environmental Crisis,” Newsweek.com, September 1, 2016, http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/09/old-clothes-fashion-waste-crisis-494824.html (accessed September 14, 2016).

This system is anathema to the Normcore model in Youth Mode. Not only are human connections lost, but frivolous consumerism is the driving force leading to isolation and anonymity, much like Mass Indie led to alienation. “Consumption has never been a chance for self-actualization,” and fast, disposable fashion is not the route for establishing one’s identity. The state of the fashion system is exhausted, leading to designer burnout.176 In the past twenty years, fashion has seemed to change at a frenetic hustle. In truth, fashion has been at a stalemate, with no radical innovation, and its commercial side has been operating at hyper speed and producing disposable clothing, which shortens the lifespan of garments and increases turnaround rates. This hyperactive dance, celebrating the latest fad to get absorbed and quickly discarded, has altered the fashion cycle. The stages of the fashion cycle, introduction, rise, apex, decline, and obsolescence, are often depicted in a symmetrical bell curve. The fashion cycle has been disproportionally focused on adoption, where the newest trend is accepted but not allowed a gradual decline, resulting in a steep drop-off to obsolescence. This focus on adoption creates an atmosphere of aspiration, which, in the consumer-driven nature of the

Mass Indie cultural model, leads to experimental self-branding. K-HOLE considers

Normcore to be “post-aspirational,”177 as if signifying a resistance to the continuous distraction of the next shiny trend. This will not upset the natural push-pull of introduction, adoption, and decline of the fashion cycle, but will perhaps slow down the pattern of consumerism, bursting the bubble of fast fashion. In the fast fashion system, garments are made with no end user in mind. Ready-to-wear was a great innovation of the nineteenth century, a way to make fashionable clothing for everyone. But it has

176 WWD Staff, “Overheated! Is Fashion Heading For a Burnout?” WWD, October 27, 2015. 177 K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 30.

66 evolved into making clothing for no one. Normcore is intended to be a transcendent fashion, belonging to every situation regardless of social barriers. Creating clothing to an individual’s needs and desires will give a purpose to each garment made and forge a stronger connection between maker and user of fashion.178

Technological advances created the fast fashion model, and technology will also be harnessed to disrupt the current fashion system. Kirby has proposed digimodernism as the paradigm to displace postmodernism. In the digimodernism model, technological advances are the foremost cause of altered communication methods, and in fashion, this has led to a more collaborative process. With e-commerce sites such as Eshakti.com and

Mysuit.com, consumers are part of the design process, selecting size, cut, fabric, and detail options to the individual’s satisfaction. One of the most radical changes is the

“See Now / Buy Now” model introduced during the September 2016 New York Fashion

Week. In this model, products are available immediately for purchase following runway presentations, instead of filtering through the funnels created by store buyers and production wait times. By having select items available for immediate purchase, designers are providing a form of instant gratification to consumers, who no longer need to either wait six months to own and wear the next season’s fashions, or to support fast- fashion industries that provide quick knock-offs. The See Now / Buy Now model furthers the democratization of fashion, letting consumers themselves purchase from the runway without relying on buyers to select for them. See Now / Buy Now is embraced mostly by American designers; European designers remain steadfast to the old ready-to- wear production model. The old system is criticized for its incongruity with the seasons,

178 “Michael Kors On the Future of Fashion,” Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2014, http://www.wsj.com/articles/michael-kors-on-the-future-of-fashion-1404765374 (accessed January 5, 2015).

67 as Fashion Week presentations typically happen six months before clothes are meant to be purchased; additionally, the potential for raw creativity could be diminished, as runway presentations become even more focused on commercial success. See Now / Buy

Now is not a solution to the current fashion system, but is rapidly becoming a new reality.

It highlights the immediacy of fashion, and makes the old fashion system seem immediately out of date.

Digimodernism is a dual pun; in addition to acknowledging the digital era, the

“digi-” portion of the portmanteau also references the digits of the hand. With personal, hand-held technology, fingertip communication is commonplace. When Alber Elbaz was honored by the Fashion Group International in October, 2015, in his acceptance speech he noted a poignant change that had happened during recent runway presentations: nobody applauded at the end. Audience members were so busy filming and sharing on personal devices that they did not, or could not, communicate with Elbaz, via clapping, their pleasure for the show.179 Although the presentation could be shared instantly with millions of people worldwide, in the immediate moments following the show, the designer was left alone. This connects with Eshelman’s proposed mode of performatism, which includes as a key element the idea of operating within a dual frame. The outer frame is “the work construct itself,” and the inner frame is “an ostensive scene or scenes of some kind.”180 In the world of rampant social media, the outward persona displayed by the individual becomes the outer frame, within which lie the inner frames of shareable events. These dual frames create a new type of reality, one in which the frames close off

179 Bennett Marcus, “Alber Elbaz on the Relentless Pace of Fashion,” The Cut, October 23, 2015, http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/10/alber-elbaz-on-the-relentless-pace-of-fashion.html (accessed October 1, 2016). 180 Eshelman, Performatism, 36-37.

68 the rest of the world and the events within the frames become the only reality. It is in this scenario that audience members can communicate their pleasure over Elbaz’s show to their thousands of followers, but none can communicate directly with Elbaz.

The transmission of fashion via personal devices has flattened fashion. As identified in the Postmodern Rubric, “flat” is the culmination of the increasing confusion of postmodernism. In an era of rampant social media, when fashion images are easily shared and viral trends can appear overnight, fashion suffers from a near-constant state of novelty. In this scenario, the three types of clothing as outlined by Barthes are compromised: the image-clothing, the written clothing, and the real clothing have adapted to these new realities. The prevalence of digital images has placed greater emphasis on the image-clothing, which has shrunk to a palm-size image. Eshelman’s performatism frame has shaped the real clothing, which, although transmitted as image- clothing, is used as a performative tool in transmitting the message. Therefore, whereas

Barthes considered the real clothing to unite the image-clothing and the written clothing,181 performatism has altered the reality in which the real clothing exists. Even the real clothing suffers from a lack of reality.

In Youth Mode, K-HOLE states: “Normcore knows your consumer choices aren’t irrelevant, they’re just temporary…Making one choice today and a conflicting choice tomorrow doesn’t make you a hypocrite…Consumption has never been a chance for absolute self-actualization.”182 Social preferences for permanent consumer choices are fading away. The old model of the fashion industry puzzling out which colors will be on- trend in two years is outdated; fashion is compulsive and utterly of the moment, with

181 Roland Barthes, The Fashion System, trans. Matthew Ward and Richard Howard (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, Inc., 1983), 4. 182 K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 34.

69 myriad sources of influence. The continuous regurgitation of fashion is strengthened by society’s altered relationship between products and consumerism. With the rising popularity of companies built on the platform of sharing, access has become more important than possession. This attitude of living without being weighed down by possessions reflects a growing resistance to putting down roots and living a more nomadic life—or, as K-HOLE described it, the individual recognizing the need to find a community. In the years since the beginning of the end of postmodernism in the 1990s, technology has made the world smaller and more connected, but has also forced society to face its own fears. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, a new reality of living in fear has taking hold—and “terrorism is always that of the real,”183 according to

Baudrillard. It is on this stage that fashion is taking on a new life. Normcore is not the next era in fashion, but is setting the stage from which the next ideas will spring.

Conclusion

In March, 2016, British Vogue released a brief video as part of a series titled “The

Future of Fashion with Alexa Chung,”184 in which Chung interviewed Greg Fong and

Emily Segal on the normcore phenomenon. Fong and Segal gave a brief history of

K-HOLE and Normcore, from the creation of their first PDF reports “in the spirit of fan fiction,” to their reflection on the youth values that led to Normcore, which “didn’t really have to do with clothes. It had to do with imagining a new form of coolness that was about being as slippery and adaptable as possible.” When asked why they thought the fashion industry gravitated to them and their PDFs, Fong answered, “I think most of it

183 Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 47. 184 British Vogue, “Alexa Chung: How PR Works & Normcore,” “The Future of Fashion with Alexa Chung,” Season 2 Episode 2, British Vogue YouTube channel, https://youtu.be/xtaaPlgt-QI (accessed March 15, 2016).

70 has to do with the fact that it sort of revolved around a neologism. It’s a word that doesn’t mean anything…it defeats itself in its own linguistic existence.” Segal continued,

“People needed more vocabulary for fashion…There weren’t that many new words or ways to describe the way that people were dressing.” At the end of the interview, somewhat tone-deaf to the more metaphorical aspect of K-HOLE’s Normcore, Chung pertly asked, “What comes next? I think it’s really big sleeves.”

The fundamental differences between normcore, the bland fashion trend, and

Normcore, the K-HOLE concept, were lost on Chung. The contents of Youth Mode, including Normcore, were not intended to be a prescription for fashion. K-HOLE’s rhetoric presented an abstract definition of Normcore, and it is fashion’s job to translate the idea into material culture. Chung wasn’t incorrect in her prediction, as sleeves began to take on interesting volume and shapes in 2016 (fig. 33), but accurately “hedging a bet” on what will be the next fashion trend is not the same as gauging the bigger picture of where fashion is heading. The future of fashion is not to be determined by the size of a sleeve, the cut of a coat, or the height of a hemline. It is the duty of a fashion designer, as an artist, to reflect on the fluctuating temperament of society and respond through new design. How fashion is evolving, not to what it is evolving, is the crux of Normcore.

In the summer of 2014, shortly after normcore went viral, K-HOLE worked with the magazine 032c to create a report on the topic of creative leadership.185 In their opening statements, K-HOLE noted: “creativity and innovation are auspicious words.

They recognize that we don’t really know where new things come from…Portrayals of the creative process formulate a managerial logic for the creative class.” The hurdle in looking to other successful so-called “creatives” as role models in the hopes of finding a

185 K-HOLE, “What is Creative Leadership?” 032c, Summer 2014, 49-59.

71 similar pathway to success, however, is that there is no exact formula for success in a creative field—if there were, then creative success would be abundant. K-HOLE’s 032c dossier examines unorthodox pathways to creative success, and they note: “Creativity no longer has an antonym. Once upon a time the opposite of creativity was destruction…

Today we think in terms of creative destruction. Creativity disrupts and it innovates, it cleaves and it fills.”

This disruption of creativity is evident in Normcore’s place in fashion. The old system of fashion is undergoing an organic overhaul, and normcore was, indeed, a “final frontier” in 2014, as it embodied a triad of fashion facets simultaneously. Normcore was fashion: it rode in on the coattails of a revival of 1990s fashion, a timely resurgence of a passé period in line with the postmodern revivals. Normcore was also anti-fashion: it co-opted outmoded dress and expressly contradicted the prevalent mode around it.

Normcore, finally, was also non-fashion: fashionable dress, for the first time, was dictated by basic, functional, and bland sartorial products. This triumvirate indicates that the fashion system is taking a new turn.

Fashion is as slippery to capture as the formula for creative success. This is a parallel to the current vogue for multi-hyphenates who find themselves in positions of influence and power. Influencers in fashion are models, stylists, hosts, bloggers, designers, and more, in varying combinations. As people create their own new career paths in fashion, it makes sense that fashion would also find new pathways for inspiration and reinvention. Studying the historical precedents of changes in fashion is not a way to identify a change, but to find the cues that historically have triggered and teased fashion

72 into entering a new era. From themes of democracy to finding a new body, fashion serves to embolden a different segment of the population at any given time.

Normcore became the sum of its parts: equally important are the K-HOLE concept and the way the fashion trend was perceived, accepted, and rejected by the general public. As a fashion trend, normcore has come and gone, and is but a blip in the grand narrative of twenty-first century fashion. It resonated with the public because it granted permission to live a story versus telling a story. Instead of ascribing to prefabricated fashion recipes, which no longer accurately reflected the wearer’s internal makeup, normcore placed emphasis on a person’s inner workings regardless of their exterior representations. The meaning behind postmodern symbols was eradicated, and person-to-person connections were rooted in status signifiers of a more intangible nature.

This seeking of connection is apparent in the work of Hot and Cool magazine editor Alice Goddard, finding inspiration and connection by means of Google Earth

(fig. 34), and photographer Hans Eikelboom, who captures serendipitous patterns of sartorial choices in a concentrated slice of space and time (fig. 35). A new, post- postmodern fashion will not be a revolution, but an evolution from the old. A concrete closing of the door on the postmodern era is yet to happen, and the catalysts that will permanently drive fashion into its new era are yet to be determined, but the changes in social currents that led to Normcore and normcore are evidence that this break is on the horizon. Symptoms of postmodern fashion have included contrast simply for the sake of contrast; its antithesis, finding unity in spite of these differences, is a newer frontier.

Figure 1. Designer Phoebe Philo’s minimalist style seen during Fall 2012 Paris Fashion Week is considered one of the first widely recognized normcore looks. Phoebe Philo at the end of the Céline Fall 2012 ready-to-wear presentation on March 6, 2011, AP Photo/François Mori.

Figure 2. For younger people, the Libération collection was exciting and new; for those who had lived through World War II, the collection was tone- deaf to the atrocities of a time they would rather forget. A model shows an ensemble from Yves Saint Laurent’s Spring 1971 Libération collection, Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent. 75

Figure 3. Kate Moss’s raw and youthful appearance helped steer fashion away from the oversaturation of the 1980s and toward the minimalism of the 1990s. Kate Moss by Corinne Day, 1990.

Figure 4. On a typical, middle aged man like Larry David, easy attire like a relaxed jacket and trousers are a simple nonfashion; on an of-the-moment internet personality like Preston Chaunsumlit, the same sartorial formula signals a fashion-forward statement. Left, Larry David, ca. 2013, REX; right, Preston Chaunsumlit, ca. 2013, Tumblr.

Figure 5. Street style darlings Elena Perminova (model), Michelle Harper (omnipresent fashion personality), Natalie Joos (casting agent and stylist), Miroslava Duma (entrepreneur and fashion investor), Anya Ziourova (editor and stylist), Anna Dello Russo (fashion journalist) and Giovanna Battaglia (fashion editor) pose for photographers. Tommy Ton, street style during the Spring 2013 New York Fashion Week. 78

Figure 6. Chanel’s Fall 2014 collection was presented on an elaborate set designed to look like a supermarket stocked with Chanel-branded goods. A model pushes a supermarket cart at Chanel’s Fall 2014 presentation, Getty Images.

Figure 7. A model is photographed out of focus and from an unflattering angle, without the polish of proper makeup and neat hair—does this help her true, authentic self shine through? Nicolas Coulomb, “New Faces by Nicolas Coulomb,” Novembre, October 2013.

Figure 8. The Alexander McQueen “Bumster” trousers, first shown on the runway in 1993, featured a severely lowered waistline that elongated the torso. The low-slung waistline would be the dominant trouser silhouette for the next twenty years. Kate Moss in Alexander McQueen’s Fall 1996 Ready- to-Wear collection, Condé Nast Archive.

Figure 9. Before they were imbued with the stigma of being unsexy, relaxed-fit, light-wash jeans were worn by supermodels. Peter Lindbergh, “Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford,” January 1990.

Figure 10. Hanes, purveyor of no-frills undergarments, cheekily updated one of its advertisements from the 1950s to capitalize on the normcore trend. Hanes, “We were #normcore before #normcore was #normcore,” Twitter, April 10, 2014.

Figure 11. A Dior coat is the most expensive item pictured in the “Banal Plus” editorial; priced at $61,000, it is hardly representative of an indifference to fashion. Craig McDean, “Banal Plus,” W Magazine, September 2014.

Figure 12. Sharon Stone fashionably paired a Vera Wang silk satin skirt with a Gap button-down shirt from her then- husband’s closet. Sharon Stone at the 1998 Academy Awards, Getty Images.

Figure 13. In the fictional world of Templar, AZ, the most bizarre and dangerous person is not the one who belongs to an outrageous subculture, but the one who is “dangerously regular.” Ryan Estrada, guest strip for Templar, AZ, September 17, 2008.

Figure 14. A dress-to-blend-in approach was a tactic used by Occupy Wall Street, echoing the anonymous aesthetic the normcore trend promoted. Occupy Wall Street, “‘Civilians’ Spring Training,” March 29, 2012.

Figure 15. Kurt Cobain’s unorthodox approach to clothing included breaking gender binary rules. David Sims, “Kurt Cobain,” The Face, September 1993.

Figure 16. Kurt Cobain straddled the generational divide by embodying the parent and the rebellious child at once. Stephen Sweet, “Kurt Cobain with his daughter, Frances Bean,” 1993, REX Images.

Figure 17. To illustrate the concept of Mass Indie, K-HOLE used this image of Cara Delevingne wearing a highly compartmentalized “skater” inspired fashion, where her pose, clothing, and skateboard telegraph in no uncertain terms what the wearer’s niche preferences are. Matt Irwin, “Cara Delevingne,” K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 15.

Figure 18. This model is dressed to represent normcore fashion trend, but more accurately embodies the Acting Basic mode. Nicolas Coulomb, “Ona by Nicolas Coulomb,” Novembre, December 5, 2013.

Figure 19. To illustrate the Normcore concept, K-HOLE chose a viral image of a woman who was widely ridiculed on the Internet for her funny tan lines, but who actually represents an important tenet of Normcore: she can exist equally as a lady in a bikini, as well as a focused athlete in a swim suit. Woman with tan lines, K-Hole, Youth Mode, 32.

Figure 20. David Bowie, who famously used costume and dress to highlight different aspects of his personality, was considered an “invisible” New Yorker, roaming his SoHo neighborhood dressed for the situation at hand, which did not require a performative costume, and looking particularly normcore. David Bowie in SoHo, ca. 2015, Spokeo/W.E.N.N. 93

Figure 21. A clash of colors, a trompe l’oeil effect, and an exaggerated silhouette are all elements of postmodernism that still linger in contemporary fashion. Gucci, Fall 2016 Ready-to-Wear, Yannis Vlamos/ Indigital.tv. 94

Figure 22. Contemporary dress at the turn of the nineteenth century was like a blank white page, evoking Classical dress in its styling, although maintaining the technical construction of dress from the previous century. Jacques-Louis David, Mme Recamier, ca. 1800, Musée de Louvre, Erich Lessing/Art Resource, N.Y.

Figure 23. Throughout the nineteenth century, fashion experienced a series of sequential revivals until it caught up with its own self- references, and fashionable dress in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries began with a return to Antiquity. Left, evening dress, British, ca. 1810, Victoria and Albert Museum; right, Paul Poiret, “Eugenie” dress, ca. 1907, Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

Figure 24. In an ad for Calvin Klein, rapper Young Thug poses in women’s dress; the campaign features a phrasal template superimposed on the photograph, and the supplemented verb for this image is “disobey,” acknowledging that there still exists a clear set of gender binary rules against which Young Thug is revolting. Young Thug for Calvin Klein, Fall 2016, Instagram.

Figure 25. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, shared a photo of his closet showing an orderly series of identical grey T-shirts and sweatshirts. Mark Zuckerberg, “First day back after paternity leave. What should I wear?” January 25, 2016, Instagram.

Figure 26. In the eighteenth century, an overabundance of color and detail was the hallmark of splendid dress; with the rise of dandyism in the early nineteenth century, sartorial subtlety allowed for social cues to be redirected to measures of class, grace, and distinction. Left, fashion plate, Magasin des modes nouvelles, françaises et anglaises, décrites d'une manière claire & précise, & représentées par des planches en taille- douce, enluminées, 1786, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Gallica; right, Robert Dighton, Beau Brummell, 1805, University of California, San Diego. 99

Figure 27. In the sixteenth century, power was demonstrated with overt displays of physical wealth; in the seventeenth century, power was exuded through the gaze. Left, Hans Holbein the Younger, Henry VIII, ca. 1540, Galleria nazionale d'arte antica, Rome, SCALA, Florence/Art Resource, N.Y.; right: Anthony Van Dyck, Charles I, King of England, During a Hunting Party, ca. 1636, Musée de Louvre, Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/Art Resource, N.Y.

100

Figure 28. Criticism for Acne Studios’s gender-bending casting centered on the argument that the ideal woman’s body shape should not be a prepubescent boy. Viviane Sassen, advertisement for Acne Studios, Fall 2015.

101

Figure 29. Sixty-five-year-old model Linda Rodin was the breakout star of The Row’s Pre-Fall 2014 campaign. Linda Rodin, The Row lookbook, Pre-Fall 2014. 102

Figure 30. Beyoncé’s gossamer ghost of an evening gown is reminiscent of the merveilleuses’s provocative nude dresses after the French Revolution. Beyoncé at the Met Gala in a custom dress by Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy, May 4, 2015, Lucas Jackson, Reuters.

103

Figure 31. Daring dresses with extreme double-slits have gained popularity on red carpet circuits worldwide. Kendall Jenner at the MuchMusic Awards in a dress by Fausto Puglisi on June 15, 2014, Getty Images.

104

Figure 32. Naked and Christ-like, Yves Saint Laurent starred in the campaign for his own perfume. Jeanloup Sieff, Yves Saint Laurent for Pour Homme, 1971.

105

Figure 33. Sleeves of exaggerated length and volume were on display during the Fall 2016 runway shows. Left, Sies Marjan, Fall 2016 Ready-to-Wear, Vogue.com; right, Giambattista Valli, Fall 2016 Couture, Yannis Vlamos/ Indigital.tv. 106

Figure 34. Blurry in quality yet crystal-clear in authenticity, using Google Earth for snapshots of true “street style” captures ordinary people in accurate, natural situations, outside a performative state. Alice Goddard, “Street Style,” Hot & Cool Issue No. 5, Spring 2013.

107

Figure 35. In one geographic location over a 30-minute span of time, fifteen people of different ages, genders, and social classes are seen making the same sartorial choice, showing how clothing creates a connection that transcends social barriers. “15 Nov 1996, Arnhem, NL, 14:45-15:45” from Hans Eijkelboom, People of the Twenty-First Century, (London: Phaidon Press, 2014).

108

Table 1. “Postmodernism Practice and Style: A Rubric,” compiled by the Special Topics 2014 Seminar Participants, Fashion Institute of Technology M.A. Program in Fashion and Textiles Studies,http://docs.google.com/document/d/17MOwhEHxQBDjRSUdYx6pcUs69 _DLeaHzcz1wWbudhsQ/edit.

109

Table 2. The closed-circuit model between Alternative, Mass Indie, Acting Basic, and Normcore, K-HOLE, Youth Mode, 37.

110

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abnett, Kate. “Do Fashion Trends Still Exist?” Business of Fashion, January 9, 2015. https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/fashion-trends-still-exist (accessed June 20, 2016).

Ackley, Camilla. “Normcore and Sartorial Self Expression.” Into the Fold, February 4, 2015. http://www.intothefoldmag.com/2015/07/normcore-and-sartorial-self- expression/ (accessed June 20, 2016).

Adams, Erika. “The Grand Total on W Magazine’s Normcore Story? $356k.” Racked.com, July 14, 2014. http://www.racked.com/2014/7/14/7586843/ normcore-w-magazine-shoot (accessed August 17, 2016).

Adamson, Glenn and Jane Pavitt, eds. Postmodernism: Style and Subversion, 1970-1990. London: V&A Publishing, 2011. Published in conjunction with the exhibition “Postmodernism: Style and Subversion, 1970-1990” shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Allwood, Emma Hope. “Why This Designer Put His 11-Year-Old Son in a Campaign.” Digital, September 1, 2015. http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/ 26166/1/why-this-designer-put-his-11-year-old-son-in-a-campaign (accessed October 1, 2016).

Aran, Isha. “Gap’s Blah ‘Dress Normal’ Campaign Doesn’t Get the Irony of Normcore.” Jezebel, October 22, 2014. http://jezebel.com/gaps-blah-dress-normal-campaign- doesnt-get-the-irony-o-1649345286 (accessed January 5, 2015).

Arnold, Janet. Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d. Leeds: Maney, 1988.

Atkins, Robert. Art Speak: A Guide to Contemporary Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords. New York: Abbeville Press, 1990.

Atkinson, Natalie. “Kurt Cobain’s Fashion Choices Were Never About What to Wear, But Rather How to Wear Items on Hand.” Nationalpost.com, April 5, 2014. http://news.nationalpost.com/life/style/kurt-cobains-fashion-choices-were-never- about-what-to-wear-but-rather-how-to-wear-items-on-hand (accessed November 5, 2016).

Azzerad, Michael. “Inside the Heart and Mind of Nirvana.” Rolling Stone, April 16, 1992. http://web.archive.org/web/20080109140249/http://www.rollingstone.com/ artists/nirvana/articles/story/5937982/inside_the_heart_and_mind_of_nirvana (accessed July 1, 2016).

Barnard, Malcolm. Fashion as Communication. London: Routledge, 2002.

111

Barthes, Roland. The Fashion System. Translated by Matthew Ward and Richard Howard. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, Inc., 1983.

____. The Language of Fashion. Translated by Andy Stafford. Oxford: Berg, 2006.

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Bauman, Zygmunt. Intimations of Postmodernity. London: Routledge, 1992.

Bernard, Katherine. “What Comes After Normcore?” Vogue, March 10, 2014. http://www.vogue.com/866532/what-comes-after-normcore/ (accessed January 5, 2015).

Beusman, Callie. “W Magazine’s ‘Normcore’ Story Involved $356K Worth of Designer Clothes.” Jezebel, July 15, 2014. http://jezebel.com/w-magazines-normcore- story-involved-356k-worth-of-desi-1605288688 (accessed August 17, 2016).

British Vogue. “Alexa Chung: How PR Works & Normcore,” Future of Fashion, Season 2 Episode 2. British Vogue YouTube channel. https://youtu.be/xtaaPlgt-QI (accessed March 15, 2016).

Britt, David, ed. Modern Art: Impressionism to Post-Modernism. London: Thames and Hudson, 1974, 1975, and 1989.

Callahan, Maureen. Champagne Supernovas: Kate Moss, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen, and the ‘90s Renegades Who Remade Fashion. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Cerulo, Erica. “Is Normcore Really a Thing?” Vanity Fair, March 30, 2014. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/daily-news/2014/03/normcore-fashion (accessed January 5, 2015).

Chrisman-Campbell, Kimberly. Fashion Victims: Dress at the Court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.

Cohen, Michael Martin. Live from the Campaign Trail: The Greatest Presidential Campaign Speeches of the Twentieth Century and How They Shaped Modern America. New York: Walker Publishing Company, 2008.

Collins, Josephine. “Normcore: When Being Ordinary Becomes a Fashion Statement.” The Conversation, September 18, 2014. http://theconversation.com/normcore- when-being-ordinary-becomes-a-fashion-statement-31608 (accessed December 10, 2015). 112

Craik, Jennifer. The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion. London: Routledge, 1994.

Crawford, Kate. “The Anxieties of Big Data.” The New Inquiry, May 30, 2014. http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-anxieties-of-big-data/ (accessed August 31, 2016).

Dalbow, Tara Anne. “Life After Normcore.” Footwear Plus Magazine. February 3, 2015. http://footwearplusmagazine.com/2015/02/special-report/life-after- normcore/ (accessed December 16, 2015).

Davies, Charles and William G. Peck. Mathematical Dictionary and Cyclopedia of Mathematical Science. New York: A.S. Barnes & Co, 1857. deCarufel, Laura. “Enter Normcore, a Totally Predictable, Totally Depressing Fashion Trend.” Elle Canada, March 4, 2014. http://www.ellecanada.com/blog/2014/03/ 04/enter-normcore-a-totally-predictable-totally-depressing-fashion-trend/ (accessed December 16, 2015).

Deleon, Jian. “10 #Normcore Essentials Every Man Should Have*.” GQ.com, February 27, 2014. http://www.gq.com/story/10-normcore-essentials-every-man-should- have (accessed December 16, 2015).

Doonan, Simon. “Beware of Normcore.” Slate.com, April 7, 2014. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/doonan/2014/04/normcore_the_new_fashion_tr end_and_its_perils.html (accessed January 5, 2015).

Doxc, Edward. “Postmodernism is Dead.” Prospect: The Leading Magazine of Ideas. July 20, 2011. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/postmodernism-is- dead-va-exhibition-age-of-authenticism (accessed June 24, 2016).

Duggan, Leeann. “Why Dressing Like Your Dad is Suddenly Cool.” Refinery29.com. February 27, 2014. http://www.refinery29.com/2014/02/63461/normcore-fashion (accessed December 16, 2015).

Duncan, Fiona. “Normcore: Fashion for Those Who Realize They’re One in 7 Billion.” The Cut, February 26, 2014. http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/02/normcore-fashion- trend.html (accessed January 5, 2015).

____. “Trend Forecasters K-HOLE On Individualism, #NORMCORE, & What It Means to Be Free.” Bullett Media, October 25, 2013. http://bullettmedia.com/article/ trend-forecasters-k-hole-on-individualism-normcore-and-freedom/ (accessed June 24, 2016).

Eglash, Ron. African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999. 113

Eijkelboom, Hans. People of the Twenty-First Century. London: Phaidon Press, 2014.

Escobar, Samantha. “Here’s Hoping the ‘Normcore Body’ Trend Means My Love Handles Are Finally In for Fall.” Style.com, August 28, 2014. http://www.thegloss.com/beauty/normcore-body-trend-2015-style/ (accessed January 5, 2015).

Eshelman, Raoul. Performatism, or the End of Postmodernism. Aurora, CO: Davies Group Publishers, 2008.

Estrada, Ryan. “I’m sorry, I accidentally invented normcore.” Medium.com, November 22, 2014. https://medium.com/@ryanestrada/im-sorry-i-accidentally-invented- normcore-42e4f34732af#.x38upxwhd (accessed January 8, 2016).

Farrell, Aimee. “Meet Norma Normcore.” Vogue UK, March 21, 2014. http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2014/03/21/normcore-fashion-vogue---definition (accessed June 30, 2016).

Frank, Thomas. “Hipsters, They’re Just Like Us.” Salon.com, April 27, 2014. http://www.salon.com/2014/04/27/hipsters_they%E2%80%99re_just_like_us_nor mcore_sarah_palin_and_the_gops_big_red_state_lie/ (accessed January 5, 2015).

French, Kathleen. “Much Ado About Normcore.” Medium, March 21, 2014. https://medium.com/french-amnesty/much-ado-about-normcore- 7f9d7e5be01f#.w0n1raoiz (accessed June 30, 2016).

Gibson, William. Pattern Recognition. New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 2003.

Glyde, Tania. “Wanting to Be Normal.” The Lancet Psychiatry 1, no. 3 (August 2014): 179–180, http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215- 0366(14)70325-6/fulltext (accessed August 16, 2016).

Gonsalves, Rebecca. “’Normcore fashion: Blending in is the new standing out in latest catwalk non-trend.” The Independent, September 20, 2014. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/features/normcore-fashion- blending-in-is-the-new-standing-out-in-latest-catwalk-non-trend-9738736.html (accessed January 5, 2015).

Gregory, Alice. “All Hail the New Hipster.” Elle.com, June 22, 2014. http://www.elle.com/fashion/a14488/old-lady-dressing/ (accessed August 15, 2016).

____. “Meh Head.” New York Times, February 4, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/ 02/04/t-magazine/meh-hairstyle.html?_r=0 (accessed February 4, 2015).

114

Haddow, Douglas. “The Dead End of Western Civilization.” Adbusters.org, July 29, 2008. http://www.adbusters.org/article/hipster-the-dead-end-of-western- civilization/ (accessed November 6, 2016).

Hoare, Jo. This is Normcore: A Guide to Normcore and the Joys of Stylized Blandness. London: Dog ‘n’ Bone Books, 2015.

Hollander, Anne. Seeing Through Clothes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Iversen, Kristin. “On Normcore: Why Only Beautiful People Can Get Away With Dressing Ugly.” BKmag.com, February 28, 2014. http://www.bkmag.com/ 2014/02/28/on-normcore-why-only-beautiful-people-can-get-away-with-dressing- ugly/ (accessed August 15, 2016).

____. “Why Having Good Taste Is Really Just Code for Being Rich.” BKmag.com, June 23, 2014. http://www.bkmag.com/2014/06/23/why-having-good-taste-is-really- just-code-for-being-rich/ (accessed August 15, 2016).

Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.

K-HOLE. FragMOREtation: A Report on Visibility. Khole.net (accessed November 18, 2014).

K-HOLE. The K-Hole Brand Anxiety Matrix. Khole.net (accessed November 18, 2014).

K-HOLE. Prolasticity: A Report on Patience. Khole.net (accessed November 18, 2014).

K-HOLE. “What is Creative Leadership?” 032c, Summer 2014.

K-HOLE. Youth Mode: A Report on Freedom. Khole.net (accessed November 18, 2014).

Kirby, Alan. Digimodernism: How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and Reconfigure our Culture. New York: Continuum Publishing Group, 2009.

Kliest, Nicole. “Your Guide to Dressing Normcore This Fall.” Whowhatwear.com, October 3, 2014. http://www.whowhatwear.com/normcore-fall (accessed January 11, 2015).

Lange, Maggie. “Sorry We’re Delighted We Alerted You to Normcore.” The Cut, March 6, 2014. http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/03/sorry-were-delighted-we- alerted-you-to-normcore.html (accessed December 16, 2015).

115

Leach, Alec. “What Does the Death of Normcore Tell Us About the Future of Youth Culture?” Highsnobiety.com, March 4, 2015. http://www.highsnobiety.com/ |2015/03/04/normcore/ (accessed August 15, 2016).

Leland, John. Hip: The History. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

Lemoine, Thierry, ed. Au temps des merveilleuses: la société parisienne sous le Directoire et le Consulat. Paris: Paris Musées, 2005. Published in conjunction with the exhibition “Au temps des merveilleuses: la société parisienne sous le Directoire et le Consulat” shown at the Musée Carnavalet.

Lewis, Casey. “The Meteoric Rise and Painfully Slow Death of Street Style.” Racked.com, February 12, 2015. http://www.racked.com/2015/2/12/8020721/ street-style-history-nyfw-fall-2015 (accessed October 31, 2016).

Lipovetsky, Gilles. Hypermodern Times. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005.

Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Magnúsdóttir, Áslaug. “‘Buy Now, Build Now’ is the Real Revolution.” Business of Fashion, April 5, 2016. https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/opinion/op- ed-buy-now-build-now-is-the-real-revolution (accessed October 1, 2016).

Marcus, Bennett. “Alber Elbaz on the Relentless Pace of Fashion.” The Cut, October 23, 2015. http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/10/alber-elbaz-on-the-relentless-pace-of- fashion.html (accessed October 1, 2016).

Marsh, Graham and Paul Trynka. Denim From Cowboys to Catwalks. London: Aurum Press Limited, 2002.

Martin, Richard. The Four Seasons. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997. Published in conjunction with the exhibition “The Four Seasons” shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Martin, Richard and Harold Koda. Two By Two. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997. Published in conjunction with the exhibition “Two By Two” shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Mead, Rebecca. “Sole Cycle.” New Yorker, March 23, 2015. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/23/sole-cycle-rebecca-mead (accessed June 29, 2016).

116

Menkes, Suzy. “The Circus of Fashion.” New York Times, February 10, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/t-magazine/the-circus-of-fashion.html (accessed December 10, 2015).

Erin Meyer, “‘W’ Magazine Normcore Photo Spread Proves High-Fashion Still Doesn’t Get the Non-Fashion Trend,” Bustle.com, July 15, 2014, http://www.bustle.com/ articles/31760-w-magazine-normcore-photo-spread-proves-high-fashion-still- doesnt-get-the-non-fashion-trend (accessed August 17, 2016).

“Michael Kors On the Future of Fashion.” Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2014. http://www.wsj.com/articles/michael-kors-on-the-future-of-fashion-1404765374 (accessed January 5, 2015).

Mikhaila, Ninya and Jane Malcolm-Davies. The Tudor Tailor: Reconstructing 16th- century Dress. Hollywood: Quite Specific Media, 2006.

Mower, Sarah. “Kate Middleton is the Duchess of Normal.” Vogue.com, April 15, 2014. http://www.vogue.com/868918/kate-middleton-normcore-london-calling/ (accessed January 5, 2015).

Newton, Stella Mary. Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340- 1365. Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1980.

“Night and Day.” Museum at FIT. http://sites.fitnyc.edu/depts/museum/Night_and_Day/ (accessed October 30, 2016). Published online in conjunction with the exhibition “Night and Day” shown at the Museum at FIT.

O’Connor, Maureen. “The Full-Bush Brazilian: ‘Having It All’ With Pubes.” The Cut, April 3, 2014. http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/04/full-bush-brazilian-having-it-all- pubes.html (accessed August 31, 2016).

O’Reilly, Lara. “The Gap’s Sales Go Into A 3-Month Slide Following Its 'Dress Normal' Ad Campaign Failure.” Business Insider, December 5, 2014. http://www.businessinsider.com/gap-november-sales-down-4-percent-2014- 12#ixzz3VL1HRAnU (accessed January 5, 2015).

Orlean, Susan. “Why Mom Jeans?” New Yorker, May 23, 2011. http://www.newyorker.com/culture/susan-orlean/why-mom-jeans (accessed August 15, 2016).

Ostler, Catherine. “‘Normcore,’ Where Being Off-Message Is On-Trend.” Newsweek, April 11, 2014. http://www.newsweek.com/normcore-where-being-message- trend-245942 (accessed January 5, 2015).

117

Pendergast, Sara and Tom Pendergast. Modern World Part II: 1946-2003. Vol. 5 of Fashion, Costume and Culture: Clothing, Headwear, Body Decorations, and Footwear Through the Ages. Detroit: UXL, 2004.

Pfeiffer, Alice. “Etre Blank: French Women on the New Normcore.” The Guardian, November 11, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/fashion- blog/2015/nov/11/etre-blank-french-women-on-the-new-normcore (accessed November 11, 2015)

Phelps, Nicole. “The Row.” Vogue.com, January 7, 2014. http://www.vogue.com/ fashion-shows/pre-fall-2014/row (accessed October 1, 2016).

“Postmodernism Practice and Style: A Rubric,” compiled by the Special Topics 2014 Seminar Participants, Fashion Institute of Technology M.A. Program in Fashion and Textiles Studies. http://docs.google.com/document/d/17MOwhEHxQ BDjRSUdYx6pcUs69_DLeaHzcz1wWbudhsQ/edit (accessed January 5, 2015).

Potter, Garry and Jose Lopez , eds. After Postmodernism: An Introduction to Critical Realism. London: The Athlone Press, 2001.

Prescod, Danielle. “How Adidas Sneakers Became a Fashion Girl ‘Thing’.” Elle.com, February 19, 2014. http://www.elle.com/fashion/news/a15316/adidas-originals- sneakers-trends/ (accessed January 5, 2015).

Read, Max. “Is Obama Too Normcore to Defeat Putin?” Gawker, March 4, 2014. http://gawker.com/is-obama-too-normcore-to-defeat-putin-1536067479 (accessed January 5, 2015).

Ribeiro, Aileen. Dress in Eighteenth Century Europe 1715-1789. Rev. ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

____. Fashion in the French Revolution. London: B.T. Batsford, 1988.

Rowan, Rory. “SO NOW!: On Normcore.” e-flux journal, no. 58 (October 2014). http://www.e-flux.com/journal/so-now-on-normcore/ (accessed January 5, 2015).

Rutherford, Chrissy. “8 Fashion ‘Rules’ to Break Now.” Harpers Bazaar, June 11, 2014. http://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/trends/g3743/fashion-myths/ (accessed September 8, 2016).

Sacks, Danielle. “That’s a Total K-Hole Thing To Do.” Fast Company, June 2015, Issue 196. http://www.fastcompany.com/3045744/most-creative-people-2015/thats-a- total-k-hole-thing-to-do (accessed December 2, 2015).

118

Satran, Rory. “How Did the Adidas Stan Smith Become the Ultimate Fashion Shoe?” i-D, May 26, 2015. https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/how-did-the-adidas-stan- smith-become-the-ultimate-fashion-shoe (accessed November 18, 2015).

Schmitz, Maddie. “Welcome to Normcore: Why Ugly Clothes Are Cool.” Boston College Her Campus, March 31, 2014. http://www.hercampus.com/ school/bc/welcome-normcore-why-ugly-clothes-are-cool (accessed January 5, 2015).

Seymour, Benedict. “Notes on Normcore.” Mute, May 29, 2014. http://www.metamute.org/editorial/fifth-column/notes-normcore (accessed January 5, 2015).

Shannon, Joshua. The Disappearance of Objects. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.

Shapouri, Beth. “More Evidence the Normcore Trend Has Extended to Nails.” Glamour, July 14, 2014. http://www.glamour.com/story/more-evidence-the-normcore-tre (accessed August 31, 2016).

Sherman, Lauren. “Stan Smiths Are Even More Ubiquitous in Paris Than They Were at NYFW.” Fashionista.com, March 4, 2014. Accessed January 5, 2015. http://fashionista.com/2014/03/stan-smiths-paris-fashion-week.

____. “Why the ‘Normcore’ Phenomenon Is a Fraud.” Elle.com, March 4, 2014. http://www.elle.com/fashion/news/a15307/probably-cant-pull-off-normcore/ (accessed January 5, 2015).

Simmel, Georg. “Fashion.” In Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms, edited by Donald N. Levine, 294-323. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.

Singer, Maya. “The Big Ask.” Vogue.com, August 25, 3014. http://www.vogue.com/ 13290022/082714-fashion-week-preview-spring-2015/ (accessed January 5, 2015).

Sladen, Mark. “Mark Sladen on K-Hole and the Nuance of ‘Normcore.’” Art Review, Summer 2014. https://artreview.com/opinion/summer_2014_opinion_mark_ sladen/ (accessed December 16, 2015).

Sloan, De Villo. “The Decline of American Postmodernism.” SubStance 16, no. 3, issue 54 (1987): 29-43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3685195 (accessed October 29, 2016).

119

Slowey, Anne. “What Happens If Fashion Changes to the See Now/Buy Now Model?” Elle.com, May 24, 2016. http://www.elle.com/fashion/trend- reports/news/a35721/fashion-changes-see-now-buy-now/ (accessed October 1, 2016).

Smith, Cat. “Normcore is Bullshit,” TheStyleCon.com, March 3, 2014. http://www.thestylecon.com/2014/03/03/normcore-bullsht/ (accessed August 16, 2016).

Stansfield, Ted. “The Inventor of Normcore on Viral Internet Culture.” Dazed Digital, August 25, 2015. http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/26061/1/the- inventor-of-normcore-on-viral-internet-culture (accessed August 16, 2016).

Stephens, Doug. “The Future of Retail is the End of Wholesale.” Business of Fashion, February 5, 2015. https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/opinion/future- retail-end-wholesale (accessed February 5, 2015).

Stephens, Madison. “Rethinking the Mom Jean.” XOJane.com. May 23, 2014. http://www.xojane.com/clothes/rethinking-the-mom-jean (accessed August 16, 2016).

Stone, Zak. “Trendcasting Reinvented As Conceptual Art About The Power Of Consumerism.” Fastcoexist.com, February 21, 2013. http://www.fastcoexist.com/ 1681417/trendcasting-reinvented-as-conceptual-art-about-the-power-of- consumerism (accessed January 8, 2016).

Sweeney, Glynnis. “Fast Fashion Is the Second Dirtiest Industry in the World, Next to Big Oil.” EcoWatch, August 17, 2015. http://ecowatch.com/2015/08/17/fast- fashion-second-dirtiest-industry/ (accessed June 20, 2016).

Stewart, Simon and Jeremy Wilkinson. The Grey Sweatsuit Revolution. https://web.archive.org/web/20041123031849/http://www.thegreysweatsuitrevolu tion.com/manifesto_01.html (accessed August 31, 2016).

Tonchi, Stefano. “The New Normal.” W Magazine, September 2014.

Torrez, Christia. “Proenza Schouler breathes new life into ‘normcore’ for Spring 2015.” The Examiner, September 14, 2014.

Van Cleaf, Kara. “The Normcore of ‘Boy Kings’.” Fashioning Sociology, March 15, 2015. https://fashioningsociology.com/2015/03/15/the-normcore-of-boy-kings/ (accessed August 31, 2016).

Wasserman, Todd. “David Fincher’s Gap Ads Are Black and White and Enigmatic All Over.” Mashable.com, August 28, 2014. http://mashable.com/2014/08/28/david- finchers-gap-ads/#Wlkt3QZ_9Eqp (accessed January 5, 2015). 120

Wicker, Alden. “Fast Fashion Is Creating an Environmental Crisis.” Newsweek.com, September 1, 2016. http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/09/old-clothes-fashion- waste-crisis-494824.html (accessed September 14, 2016).

Williams, Alex. “Normcore: Fashion Movement or Massive In-Joke?” New York Times, April 2, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/03/(fashion/normcore-fashion- movement-or-massive-in-joke.html (accessed January 5, 2015).

Williamson, Eugenia. “The Revolution Will Probably Wear Mom Jeans.” The Baffler, no. 27 (Winter 2015). http://thebaffler.com/salvos/revolution-mom-jeans (accessed August 15, 2016).

Woolf, Jake. “We Found the Birth of Normcore (And It’s Older Than You Think).” GQ.com, August 5, 2014. http://www.gq.com/story/we-found-the-birth-of- normcore-and-its-older-than-you-think (accessed January 5, 2015).

WWD Staff, “Overheated! Is Fashion Heading For a Burnout?” WWD, October 27, 2015.

Zaleski, Luke. “10 Reasons You, Normcore Guy, Are An Idiot.” GQ.com, February 27, 2014. http://www.gq.com/style/blogs/the-gq-eye/2014/02/normcore-fashion-is- for-idiots.html (accessed January 5, 2015).