Status Updates From Dress Code: Unlocking Fashi...

Beauty is now ethical and moral! Good food or bad habits, letting oneself go is a failure, refusing dessert makes you good

“But one status symbol has merely been exchanged for another; the "ideal" appearance is just as much of a luxury good as the ideal wardrobe, maybe more so. After all, which is more unattainable, a red-carpet dress or the body that wears it?”

“Somehow, many of us still want to get in on those fads despite knowing they mark us as fashion lemmings. They may be appealing because, in a world of broken connections, they offer a tenuous link to other people, a way to participate in something, like the Oscars or a World Cup match or a pep rally, that feels bigger than ourselves despite its inherent lameness.”

“But the concept of ‘dressing for yourself’ is, ultimately, a vexed one. Can fashion really exist in a vacuum, or does it depend on a reaction?”

“Style is self-expression, but it's also a way to communicate. And something is lost when there's no one on the other end of the conversation.”

Much more of what I expected: “reform dress” or “Bloomerism” was a fashion moment that spoke to the political movements and feminist advances. Freedom of dress and the statements being made. But just like now, men got “emotional“ and saw it as a threat to their masculinity.

“Women who dress completely for themselves are truly rare—most of us have an audience in mind, whether that is men, other women, or some permutation of both. Generally speaking, though, another woman is more likely to be attuned to the vagaries of fashion, to appreciate the footnotes behind your outfit, to start a dialogue with you because of a ‘conversation piece’ you're wearing.“

“Our reactions to women's courtroom style mirror our reactions to women in general: Too much excess and egotism is evidence of guilt. To appear truly innocent, you need to cloak yourself…”

Or women defending themselves in court: need to be believable. Not a victim but “hapless powerlessness” cute enough to be attracted to but not “asking for it”

“Justice may be blind, but juries are not.”

Three prominent women who dressed to make a statement at their trials: Anna Delvey, Elizabeth Holmes, Marie Antoinette (ragged black dress vs executed in style), Linda Kasabian from the Manson Family

“But the influencers still have power of a kind. In looking to them to "use their platform," we were acknowledging the importance of having one. In chastising them for not doing enough, we confirmed their power. After all, you wouldn't care enough to cancel someone who didn't matter.”

“self-care, a term that has strayed far from its origins in radical Black feminism, when Audre Lorde, writing in A Burst of Light, declared that ‘caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.’ Now, we're expected to care for ourselves photogenically, in the form of the perfect sheet-mask selfie or of a photo of feet emerging from a bubble bath.“

“Her insistence on being seen was her way of fighting back against the invisibility of disability”

I did not know Frida Kahlo had a prosthetic leg, polio, a brace, etc. The reason she wore the colorful skirts and shawls and flower crows—drawing eyes to what she wants to distract. It was a bus accident, a metal pole to ruin the ability to have children, and she painted a fetus to the corset too

“Caviar on a Potato Chip” felt like too many concepts rushing into one essay, all eager to be discussed, but just running into each other. Trickle down trickle up, conspicuous consumption, cultural capital in fashion, stealth wealth, “acting as if”, masstige (mass population & prestige), premium mediocre

That is the storyline of the essay but lacking the story

“As with military motifs and outdoors clothing, workwear represents a reality many of its wearers have long since become disconnected from: farm work, factory jobs, and other working-class pursuits. To wear it is, on some level, to cosplay as someone who is "just like us" via a bourgeois version of a recognizable, generic, or generic-looking uniform item.”

The trench coat: WW1 usefulness, battlefield status, given away to the British population, detective symbolism, sleazy flashers, Columbine shooters, Trenchcoat Mafia, and then a banned item in high schools (“amending gun laws might have been a more pragmatic protective move, but such is the symbolic power of fashion that the coat stood in for some unknowable menace”)

“If we all worked less and had free health care, we'd probably be more beautiful and relaxed. too. But that is a less glamorous conversation that doesn't sell lipstick and boyfriend jeans.”

The first two essays confuse me more than anything