Why desire shouldn’t be shaped by male whims
Fantasy outfits and a $1m bra are just the stuff of escapism during Paris fashion week, writes Sophie Donaldson
AS you read this, the ateliers of Paris are going into overdrive ahead of couture fashion week, which starts tomorrow.
There are many anticipated dates on the fashion calendar, but none garners the same reverence and regard as the week in which the most fantastical creations by the world’s most revered houses are shown. It offers us a glimpse into the elite world of couture, a sphere that remains out of reach for even some of the most rich and famous.
As the week unfolds, expect to see the word fantasy deployed multiple times as onlookers describe the lavish clothing, the eye-popping detail on the garments, the outof-this-world sets (particularly at Chanel), the beautiful crowd and the astronomical cost of the clothing.
As well as using it to convey the escapism of fashion, the industry also has a habit of employing the notion of fantasy as a way of justifying some of its more questionable practices. If a model appears to be unhealthily thin, a piece of clothing prohibitively expensive, a design offensive to a culture or a show cast with exclusively skinny white models, we are reminded that fashion operates in the realm of fantasy and is not tethered to the rules that govern reality.
Fashion can provide escapism but the concept of fantasy has become a byword for elitist, exclusionary and privileged. Fashion as fantasy is only applicable to those very rich, very thin or very young — and this is no more apparent than at couture fashion week.
As Jo Ellison writes in the Financial Times: “Designers repeatedly talk about how haute couture is an expression of the ‘dream’. The clothes are meant to embody a fantasy of womanhood to which we all aspire. But too often in Paris, the fantasy was weirdly eroticised, and barely balancing on spindle heels.”
It is not just couture designers who like to rationalise tasteless decisions under the umbrella term of fantasy. In December, Prada was forced to pull a range of keychains from stores after public outcry about the racist implications of the design — small, black monkey-like creatures with inflated red lips. Initially, the luxury fashion house defended the Pradamalia keychains by describing them as “fantasy charms composed of elements of the Prada oeuvre”. It was only after calls for a boycott that Prada apologised and removed the offensive items.
It’s not just high fashion houses that are guilty of subverting our own ideas of fantasy. Ask any woman to design her ideal bra, and chances are she’d request something that gave her the cleavage of a Wonderbra but that looked and felt like a sports bra. It is unlikely she would request a bra that had been laboured over for 93 hours, that was embellished with 2,100 labhandbags, grown diamonds and cost $1m. And yet, this exact bra is what lingerie giant Victoria’s Secret is shelling as its latest Fantasy Bra. As an unwilling member of Victoria’s Secret’s core demographic, I can attest that the only thing I would fantasise about when it comes to this contraption would be taking it off after a long day.
The only person who would fantasise about this bra is somebody who would never wear it, perhaps along the lines of a middle-aged straight man like Ed Razek, chief marketing officer of Limited brands, Victoria’s Secret’s parent company. In late 2018, Razek told Vogue that Victoria’s Secret would never cast transgender models in its lingerie fashion show because the show is a fantasy.
As with its bra and show, it is unclear whose fantasy is being referred to. Who wants to see skinny 16-year-olds in achingly expensive clothing? And whose fantasy sees women yearn for $10,000 or a $1m bra?
At couture fashion week there are 31 fashion houses on the schedule. Of the creative directors, seven are women and 24 are men. This is not to say that designers must create for their own gender, but the vacuous fantasies crafted for women are so often fuelled by the whims and desires of men.
The wonderful thing about fantasies is that everybody — no matter age, location, sexuality, gender, wealth or appearance — can indulge in them. They are the free democracy of the mind, and of our own making. To try and sell a fantasy is beside the point because these are visions born of our own free will. They are our own desires and aspirations, not the concoction of a faceless brand representative or marketing officer.
‘Vacuous fantasies for women are so often fuelled by the men’