Fabulous Folds: Revolutionary Costumes in Grey Gardens (1975)
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Journal of Aesthetics & Culture ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/zjac20 Fabulous folds: revolutionary costumes in Grey Gardens (1975) Ilona Hongisto & Katve-Kaisa Kontturi To cite this article: Ilona Hongisto & Katve-Kaisa Kontturi (2020) Fabulous folds: revolutionary costumes in GreyGardens (1975), Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 12:1, 1840087, DOI: 10.1080/20004214.2020.1840087 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2020.1840087 © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 26 Nov 2020. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=zjac20 JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE 2020, VOL. 12, 1840087 https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2020.1840087 Fabulous folds: revolutionary costumes in Grey Gardens (1975) Ilona Hongisto a,b and Katve-Kaisa Kontturi c,d aInstitute of Art and Media Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway; b Department of Media, Communication, Creative Arts, Language and Literature, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; cSchool of History, Culture and Arts Studies, University of Turku, Turku, Finland; dVictorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY This essay discusses the material agency of clothing in the celebrated documentary classic Received 6 April 2020 Grey Gardens (David and Albert Maysles, USA 1975). Drawing on the extraordinary relation Revised 15 October 2020 ship between the protagonists, their clothing, the filming location, and the filmmakers, the Accepted 16 October 2020 essay shows how the protagonists of the documentary “think up” costumes that enable them KEYWORDS to temporarily exceed difficult living conditions. The essay names the thought-up costumes Documentary film; clothing; fabulous folds and accounts for the ways in which costumes activate novel possibilities in the fashion; fold; collaboration; body’s relationship to its environment. participation; materiality; agency; performance In a 2013 episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race, one of the a day. She calls her inventive outfits “revolutionary queens wins the infamous Snatch Game challenge costumes” and points out that she has “to think these with a celebrity impersonation of Little Edie of Grey things up” (see figures 1–2). Contrary to general expec Gardens. Unparalleled in camp perfection, Jinkx tations of documentary films of the time, the film Monsoon takes the stage clad in a headscarf, fur makers actively encourage Little Edie’s parade of coat and heritage jewelry, sporting a magnifying costumes and participate in it. It is as if the presence glass and speaking in an exaggerated cultured accent of the filmmakers and the editing of the film pushed about cats, her mother and famous acquaintances. Little Edie’s dreams of being a performer to actualize.1 Four years prior, in a 2009 HBO feature titled Grey In this essay, we are interested in the documentary’s Gardens, Drew Barrymore plays the role of Little Edie energetic performative bursts that come about in the wearing coats, scarves, and pins, albeit in a more dynamic relationship between the protagonists, the loca housebroken manner. A year before, John Galliano tion, the costumes and the filmmakers. For us, it is pre fills the runway of his Spring 2008 ready-to-wear cisely the singular energy in these moments that collection with luxurious headpieces, swathed cardi continues to attract performers, filmmakers, fashion gans, knotted skirts, hair pins and brooches. The designers, musicians and fans even after both the prota collection is inspired by the eccentric cat-loving aris gonists and the filmmakers have passed away.2 Our focus tocratic decay that Monsoon’s celebrity impersona will be specifically on Little Edie’s revolutionary costumes tion and the HBO feature reference directly. Little and the “relational field” they fashion in the documen Edie’s clothing and accessories, her unconventional tary. We locate Edie’s costumes within the unique parti poise and style of communication have circulated in cipatory dynamics of the film and discuss the conditions, popular culture and media for almost half a century. connections and possibilities the costumes bring about. Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale (1917–2002) and We name the costumes Edie thinks up fabulous folds with her mother Edith “Big Edie” Ewing Bouvier Beale the intention of highlighting their performative scope as (1895–1977) became cultural icons after appearing in well as the relations they articulate. Albert and David Maysles’s documentary Grey Gardens Conceptually, the terms “fabulous” and “fold” connect (USA 1975). In the documentary, the mother and our discussion to specific debates in Fashion Studies. We daughter talk about their lives and perform for the take our first cue from madison moore (2018) who camera while dealing with social seclusion and poverty defines fabulousness as a queer aesthetic with which in an East Hamptons mansion that is falling apart. The marginalized people and social outcasts can regain their documentary is edited into a non-linear “crystal forma creativity and sense of self. Our usage of “fabulous” tion” (Robson 1983) to the effect that Little Edie seems follows this line of thought in that we see the importance to change dresses, scarves and brooches several times of the film being precisely in giving the two women CONTACT Ilona Hongisto [email protected] Professor Ilona Hongisto, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Institute of Art and Media Studies, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 2 I. HONGISTO AND K.-K. KONTTURI Images 1–2. A revolutionary costume. Frame enlargements of video. a stage to surpass seclusion. The filmmaking process The Maysles and fashion makes space within the squalid mansion for the women to enact fabulousness. Our use of the term “fold” enters Grey Gardens is interesting in the Maysles’s body of into conversation with debates on the agency of clothing. work because it comes with a transition from observa We draw inspiration from Gilles Deleuze’s (1993) defini tional cinema to a more participatory style of filmmak tion of the fold as a pleat the extends the scope of the finite ing as well as fosters a sensibility to art, performance and body and approach revolutionary costumes in Grey fashion that has not typically been seen as a key ten Gardens as fabulous folds that extend the everyday pos dency in their films. Instead, the Maysles have been sibilities of the Beales. Here, we share Anneke Smelik’s written into film history through their genre-defining (2014) view of the fold as a relational formation that observational documentaries on celebrity culture regulates the relationship between the interiority and (What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A, 1964; exteriority of a body. In Grey Gardens, this translates Gimme Shelter, 1970) and the struggles of American into how revolutionary costumes regulate the relation families (Salesman, 1968; The Burks of Georgia, 1978). ship between internalized traumas and the social envir Grey Gardens rearticulates these parameters and opens onment. Finally, our focus on fabulous folds contributes a fresh pathway in scholarship dedicated to the Maysles. to re-readings of the Maysles’s body of work as well as re- Just before the making of Grey Gardens, the Maysles evaluations of the documentary impulse in Grey Gardens. documented the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude erect By intertwining Fashion Studies with Film Studies, we ing a curtain between two Colorado mountains. Christo’s hope to shed new light on both the documentary and its Valley Curtain (1973) follows the course of the art project revolutionary costumes. as it entangles with engineering, building permissions JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS & CULTURE 3 and forces of nature, and captures the passage from Fabric”—about town creating outfits and interior original sketches to the heavy, meticulously pleated designs. Known for her idiosyncratic mixture of haute orange curtain that flutters dangerously in the wind. couture and flea market finds, Apfel’s combinations of Christo’s Valley Curtain is a precursor to Grey Gardens, bright colors, bulky jewelry and eclectic glasses paved her where the material folds of fabric relate to human bodies way to mainstream fame in 2018 when she, at 96, became instead of mountains. Although the films are different in the oldest person to be turned into a Barbie doll. Both topic, aims and focus, they share an interest in the pro Grey Gardens and Iris bring out the processual nature of cesses of “thinking these things up” and the material “thinking these things up” and the productive role of the pleats that emerge as a result. pleats thought up by their subjects. For both Little Edie Of the thirteen films Albert and David Maysles and Iris Apfel, the documentary films contend, revolu made, the documentary of the two aging reclusive tionary costumes are much more than mere clothes; they socialites remains the most controversial and the are a manner of being, of exploring the limits of one’s most loved. Despite contemporary consensus on the body. remarkability of Grey Gardens, the filmmakers were accused of taking advantage of the two women when Enabling constraints the film first came out. For many, the eccentric out fits, erratic behavior, and various states of physical At first glance, however, it would be easy to define Grey and psychological undress were signs of the women’s Gardens as a documentary about multiple restrictions— incapability to represent themselves properly.