I really, really like the designs. By contrast, some of the advertising choices leave me feeling uncomfortable.
See? On the one hand, really quite fly, in terms of the designs themselves. That deconstructed pinstriped jacket with wrap-tie is swoon-worthy. And the embellished, pleated gray mini? With the coordinating blazer, and pink graphic tee? Awesome and adorable at the same time. Byron Lars is outfitting some very specific fantasies of mine with this collection. I even like the model, with her ethnically-blended appearance - that hair, with those eyes.
But what -- and this question stands for always, for every fashion shoot moving forward, okay? -- what is the model doing in a ... what is that even called? That bamboo, rice-paddy hat?
I’ve been to China, and in China, those hats are prevalent and useful. True.
But in the US, I’m pretty sure they’ve been a racist symbol, a symbol of otherness throughout an American history that includes the exploitation of workers on the transcontinental railroad, the abuses of the Japanese-American internment camps, and a long history of proscriptions on Asian immigration.
I know better than the hat.
But given that two well-educated acquaintances recently asked me what I meant by the word “diaspora”, of all things, I was prepared to think maybe Lars doesn’t know better than the hat.
There’s a whole world of words and images associated with any given people and/or their struggles, and outsiders -- no, most of us aren’t always terribly well-educated about these things. That’s unfortunate, and it needs to change, but for the moment, it’s a fact. Meanwhile, one result of this informational disconnect is that lots of people don’t know the full weight of what they’re evoking when they use certain cultural symbols (see: “ironic” blackface, for example). I understand that, and I’m generally inclined to give folks a break.
Plus, I wanted to like the jacket. The jacket is fly. I didn’t want the jacket encumbered with the racial and political shit that is heaped upon it with the addition of the coolie hat. I just wanted to sit back and enjoy the fashion.
So I was going to give you the hat, Mr. Lars. I was going to let the hat slide. I had decided to hope the hat was an anomaly.
Then, as I continued browsing the lookbook, I saw the rice paddy hat again, but in conjunction now with 1940s-style pumps and a dangling rope that was evocative at once of both a stripper pole and an emergency airlift.
What are you doing to me, man?
Seriously.
Part of me wants to give Mr. Lars the benefit of the doubt: surely he has some kind of explanation or description or position statement somewhere to accompany this promotional concept (though I didn’t see one). Because he must want us to reflect on something. He can’t think that it’s okay to evoke the history of foreign peoples and their struggles casually and solely for the purpose of hawking his latest fashions.
And don’t tell me it’s “art”. Is it art if you didn’t think about it? Is it art if you don’t know what you’re doing? A toddler unintentionally making swastikas with finger-paints might say, “Look at the pretty designs”, but the rest of us don't have to go along with that. Fashion, or fashion as art, anyway, should aim for better. “Art” without informed consideration, “art” that aims for evocation without signification, isn’t great art.
It might be inflammatory, it might be commercially successful. But, to the critical viewer, it ends up feeling underdeveloped. And tasteless. It also tends to be insensitive.
Which is not to say that the “position statements" that get served up by fashion corporations when they take heat for this kind of ”artistic expression" offer any real satisfaction. Their statements are not reliably intellectual, and they tend not to evince any real political consciousness. Sometimes their statements are as ignorant and misinformed as their imagery.
But I think if designers and/or their advertisers are going to appropriate these symbols, then they have a responsibility to say what they meant by it. A lot of people are going to be offended or confused by this imagery, and if the designer and/or the advertising team doesn’t care, I’d like them to go public with why they don’t care.
I might not like what they have to say, but I’d probably respect them more for saying it.
Meanwhile... *sigh* ...I truly like the jacket, Mr. Lars, and so much else. Good work on that. I’ll be interested to see what comes next.
See? On the one hand, really quite fly, in terms of the designs themselves. That deconstructed pinstriped jacket with wrap-tie is swoon-worthy. And the embellished, pleated gray mini? With the coordinating blazer, and pink graphic tee? Awesome and adorable at the same time. Byron Lars is outfitting some very specific fantasies of mine with this collection. I even like the model, with her ethnically-blended appearance - that hair, with those eyes.
But what -- and this question stands for always, for every fashion shoot moving forward, okay? -- what is the model doing in a ... what is that even called? That bamboo, rice-paddy hat?
I’ve been to China, and in China, those hats are prevalent and useful. True.
But in the US, I’m pretty sure they’ve been a racist symbol, a symbol of otherness throughout an American history that includes the exploitation of workers on the transcontinental railroad, the abuses of the Japanese-American internment camps, and a long history of proscriptions on Asian immigration.
I know better than the hat.
But given that two well-educated acquaintances recently asked me what I meant by the word “diaspora”, of all things, I was prepared to think maybe Lars doesn’t know better than the hat.
There’s a whole world of words and images associated with any given people and/or their struggles, and outsiders -- no, most of us aren’t always terribly well-educated about these things. That’s unfortunate, and it needs to change, but for the moment, it’s a fact. Meanwhile, one result of this informational disconnect is that lots of people don’t know the full weight of what they’re evoking when they use certain cultural symbols (see: “ironic” blackface, for example). I understand that, and I’m generally inclined to give folks a break.
Plus, I wanted to like the jacket. The jacket is fly. I didn’t want the jacket encumbered with the racial and political shit that is heaped upon it with the addition of the coolie hat. I just wanted to sit back and enjoy the fashion.
So I was going to give you the hat, Mr. Lars. I was going to let the hat slide. I had decided to hope the hat was an anomaly.
Then, as I continued browsing the lookbook, I saw the rice paddy hat again, but in conjunction now with 1940s-style pumps and a dangling rope that was evocative at once of both a stripper pole and an emergency airlift.
What are you doing to me, man?
Seriously.
Part of me wants to give Mr. Lars the benefit of the doubt: surely he has some kind of explanation or description or position statement somewhere to accompany this promotional concept (though I didn’t see one). Because he must want us to reflect on something. He can’t think that it’s okay to evoke the history of foreign peoples and their struggles casually and solely for the purpose of hawking his latest fashions.
And don’t tell me it’s “art”. Is it art if you didn’t think about it? Is it art if you don’t know what you’re doing? A toddler unintentionally making swastikas with finger-paints might say, “Look at the pretty designs”, but the rest of us don't have to go along with that. Fashion, or fashion as art, anyway, should aim for better. “Art” without informed consideration, “art” that aims for evocation without signification, isn’t great art.
It might be inflammatory, it might be commercially successful. But, to the critical viewer, it ends up feeling underdeveloped. And tasteless. It also tends to be insensitive.
Which is not to say that the “position statements" that get served up by fashion corporations when they take heat for this kind of ”artistic expression" offer any real satisfaction. Their statements are not reliably intellectual, and they tend not to evince any real political consciousness. Sometimes their statements are as ignorant and misinformed as their imagery.
But I think if designers and/or their advertisers are going to appropriate these symbols, then they have a responsibility to say what they meant by it. A lot of people are going to be offended or confused by this imagery, and if the designer and/or the advertising team doesn’t care, I’d like them to go public with why they don’t care.
I might not like what they have to say, but I’d probably respect them more for saying it.
Meanwhile... *sigh* ...I truly like the jacket, Mr. Lars, and so much else. Good work on that. I’ll be interested to see what comes next.
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