Letting the images do the talking
Fashion expert Lynne Coleman introduces her latest book ahead of a night of friendship and feminism, revealing what inspired her visual document of 2018
The last 12 months have been rather noisy. It’s been hard to cut through the detritus and see things clearly. Everyone appears divided on a range of issues that no-one is an expert on – from the cabbie getting me around Edinburgh to politicians across the world. In an age of algorithm-controlled information, opinion has trumped fact.
I have spent the last year on maternity leave, watching the months unfold from the sidelines, like a moviegoer viewing a salacious film, shrouded in darkness on the back row. Each day, as I scrolled through my phone, a surreal sense of denial would sweep over me. I struggled to believe that we were, and are, living in a world so divided by anger, hate, fear and stupidity. The online algorithms brought up both horrifying headlines and vacuous products. Real murder contrasted with smiley faced online-assassins paid to hawk their wares on social media. Oh, and do you want a side of ‘inspirational quote’ with that?
I am a visual vulture.
I’d spend my time flitting between breast feeding and scrolling through imagery pretending I didn’t miss making it. You see, my life before babies was about creating pictures for newspapers and brands. Curating images for storytelling is boundlessly rewarding. Once that shot is taken, it can say more than a million words. That’s the bit I absolutely love.
My latest book The Fashion Annual employs a set of snaps to tell the stories of 2018-19, using fashion and photography as the pen and paper. Over the years I have been fortunate enough to accumulate the most incredible bunch of creative friends. Together, we set about storytelling the topics that have resonated with us over the last 12 months.
From our bare-faced inability to ban single use plastics in Plastic: We’re Programmed Not To See It , to The Colour Cult, where we discuss how mental health issues perpetually plague people who, from the outside, look like they are having all the fun, it struck me that social media is to us what the tobacco industry was to people in the 1960s as they tried to cover up its dangers to ensure its survival – this stuff needs to come with a serious health warning. And so, I wanted the images to do the talking.
As we planned the book, the word algorithm kept arising – from election fraud on a global scale to small businesses scared to watch fictitious followers fluctuate each time an IOS update was released.
People’s reactions to being stripped of a couple of thousand followers was like watching brokers balking as the stock market plummeted on Wall Street.
How can it be that important, we ask? Well, if your livelihood, political freedom and financial security relied upon having followers, wouldn’t you be worried? It is important and yet, it seems, we care not a jot.
Someone said to me once that having a large social media following was akin to being rich in Monopoly money. It’s not real. It’s a game.
But this is our lives – and we are all currently up to our necks in coping with code.
Because of that I took the word algorithm and spun it out – using it as the framework of the book.
In Theatre of Lies I wanted to showcase the sinister side of growing up in an age where the hand-held device in your pocket is so powerful it can answer any question instantly – and, although this incredible piece of machinery has the ability to enlighten, with no teacher present to instil the importance of fact-checking, it can rapidly become a very dangerous tool for propaganda.
In The Mathematics of the Face, I wanted to show age, gender and race diversity to counterbalance a world of Photoshop, face tuning and fillers. Through We’ve All Got to Eat the tales of extreme poverty and excessive wealth came tumbling out of Manhattan.
In Conversation with Osman about the ferocious cycles of fashion and the speed at which they hurtle became bitter-sweet after hearing the sad news of Kate Spade taking her own life.
Fear was primarily about the feelings evoked by the word algorithm – we played around with the most commonly documented phobias and set about cementing them. What came back from that day transcended our theme, trivialising these concerns, as fashion influencer Howey Ejegi’s powerful presence in front of the lens spoke volumes about the injustices happening to black men around the world.
I remember thinking how much of a privilege being frightened of a spider in the safety of your own home would be in comparison to the fear felt by men being shackled into slavery or shot by police just because of the colour of their skin. Fearing
“People’s reactions to being stripped of a couple of thousand followers was like watching brokers balking as the stock market plummeted on Wall Street.”
for your freedom and your life in 2018/19 – that’s the stuff of nightmares.
Midway through shooting the project, it was time for me to get brutally personal. Spellbound by Christina Ricci’s portrayal of Zelda Fitzgerald I devoured her first season of Z: The Beginning of Everything like a full-cheeked hamster stockpiling nuts. Her story was always one that resonated with me; she and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh have been huge sources of inspiration and fascination. The patriarchy and #metoo came flooding in as I revisited these sensational women who stood beside iconic husbands and yet were arguably more talented than either of them.
This paved the way for
The Emancipation of Motherhood, exploring the impact that childbirth has on us as a gender, and the self imposed slavery we go through while caring, nurturing, feeding and clearing up after people who don’t pay us, who never give us breaks or holidays and expect us to be there 24 hours a day. Although this is something we exhaustedly do with love, the empathy from society is comparable to “couldn’t give a flyingduck you brain-dead moron”. Cheers guys, kiss your mother with that mouth?
To wet the book-baby’s head Harvey Nichols will play host to an evening of conversation and celebration tonight as I discuss the book’s themes with Forever Yours Betty blogger Sheri Scott who is featured in the tome. We are dubbing the night “Support your Sister, even if she’s from another Mister” as I hand over this very personal project to the world for the first time.
I pray the book provokes thought. But, most importantly, I can’t wait to look back on this annual in a decade and see the positive changes that came out of a year that felt so upside down.
● The Fashion Annual 2018-19 is published by Luath Press at £20 and is on sale exclusively in Harvey Nichols from today. It will be on general sale from 1 November.
● For tickets (£10) to tonight’s launch event at Harvey Nichols at 6.30pm, see www.eventbrite.co.uk