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Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion
- GenresFashion
224 pages, Paperback
Published August 1, 2025
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 17, 2025
4.5
McQueen, Westwood, Kawakubo, Margiela, Chalayan, Prada, Gvasalia, Findikoglu, torn up skirts, unpleasant bodies, disregarded materials, buried textiles, sensuality, falsehood, rebellion, climate, colonialism and hope. This was a great read, tons of interesting voices, great imagery, wonderful layout, and the custom font itself looking like dragging your finger through mud tells me the editors did not come to play.
The curated essays does a great job at both delivering accurate markers in the fashion timeline, and much to my delight, uplift critical voices. Stefania Consonni writes in Mud Mood how some high-fashion brands capitalizes on their wealthy clients wish to dress in a ‘lived in’ and ‘worker class’ aesthetic. Producing new clothing - made to look used without care - so clients can pay to look filthy without having the inconvenience of getting dirty hands. And on the final pages of the book, Sandra Nielsen and Sara Arnold writes about the extreme footprint of the fashion industry. In it you are met with the crushing admission of the faulty fashion system. They introduces us to their organization Fashion Act Now (FAN) where they advocate for the ‘defashioning’ of the current industry. It was this essay that sparked in me some hope for the future. Showcasing alternate ways, looking back at a time before the current system, and inviting designers to use their innovative creative skills to not only dig up a new sweater, but excavating a new chain of creation. The last part of the book is a conversation between Sunny Dolat and Bubu Ogisi, reflections on ancestry and design’s link to land. I especially want to highlight this comment from Dolat after Ogisi explained her difficulty putting into words her feeling of belonging to land; “I experienced this profoundly while developing work in Sao Tomé - It made me think differently about the phrase ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’, and how in death we return to the earth. Over time, our ancestors become the soil. The land itself is an ancestor.” It was this perspective that personally for me lifted the book up from just being a superb muddy fashion encyclopedia, to an excellent deep dive into the core of why fashion is so keen to emulate dirt. The relationship, not only with dirtiness (hard work, sex, femininity) but with time and lineage, speaking to the ephemeral quality of both clothing and life.
McQueen, Westwood, Kawakubo, Margiela, Chalayan, Prada, Gvasalia, Findikoglu, torn up skirts, unpleasant bodies, disregarded materials, buried textiles, sensuality, falsehood, rebellion, climate, colonialism and hope. This was a great read, tons of interesting voices, great imagery, wonderful layout, and the custom font itself looking like dragging your finger through mud tells me the editors did not come to play.
The curated essays does a great job at both delivering accurate markers in the fashion timeline, and much to my delight, uplift critical voices. Stefania Consonni writes in Mud Mood how some high-fashion brands capitalizes on their wealthy clients wish to dress in a ‘lived in’ and ‘worker class’ aesthetic. Producing new clothing - made to look used without care - so clients can pay to look filthy without having the inconvenience of getting dirty hands. And on the final pages of the book, Sandra Nielsen and Sara Arnold writes about the extreme footprint of the fashion industry. In it you are met with the crushing admission of the faulty fashion system. They introduces us to their organization Fashion Act Now (FAN) where they advocate for the ‘defashioning’ of the current industry. It was this essay that sparked in me some hope for the future. Showcasing alternate ways, looking back at a time before the current system, and inviting designers to use their innovative creative skills to not only dig up a new sweater, but excavating a new chain of creation. The last part of the book is a conversation between Sunny Dolat and Bubu Ogisi, reflections on ancestry and design’s link to land. I especially want to highlight this comment from Dolat after Ogisi explained her difficulty putting into words her feeling of belonging to land; “I experienced this profoundly while developing work in Sao Tomé - It made me think differently about the phrase ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’, and how in death we return to the earth. Over time, our ancestors become the soil. The land itself is an ancestor.” It was this perspective that personally for me lifted the book up from just being a superb muddy fashion encyclopedia, to an excellent deep dive into the core of why fashion is so keen to emulate dirt. The relationship, not only with dirtiness (hard work, sex, femininity) but with time and lineage, speaking to the ephemeral quality of both clothing and life.
Displaying 1 of 1 review