In a diverse world, anyone can be a model
MUCH of what Gucci designer Alessandro Michele does goes against the grain and then becomes the standard.
Last month, he didn’t characterise his new collection, which marked the brand’s 100th anniversary, as one for autumn or spring. He was showing 94 new ensembles on 94 models.
For years, Michele has looked to the farthest extremes of human appearance for his models. “I analysed all the strange faces, the freaks I placed on the catwalk, on the set,” he said. “The strangeness sends a signal. It makes you turn somehow. And I really went in-depth there. I (dissected) all the forms of strange beauty.”
In its marketing, Gucci embraced ugly ducklings, the jolie laide and the faces only a mother could love – decisions that influenced other brands.
But for this presentation, Michele made a more daring, evolved choice. “I tried to find what would define ordinary beauty,” he said. “The faces that you see in the film, the beautiful faces of many people you come across in the street, that beauty has its own life.”
With many miles and layers of technology separating us, something that felt real also felt valuable; the ordinary, in other words, is enough. Dressed in Gucci’s sparkles and marabou and velvet, regular people, too, have the capacity to deliver fashion.
For generations, the modeling world was reserved for women and men with a certain élan and traditional Western appeal. Models were of a standard height: tall but not distractingly so. They were young and thin and had symmetrical facial features. And mostly they were white.
But the ranks of models are different from a decade ago. Classic models are more racially diverse. Models are also more varied by ethnicity, size, age and disability. Change is manifest in octogenarian author Joan Didion serving as the brand ambassador for Céline, model Halima Aden wearing a hijab and burkini in Sports Illustrated and African-american poet Amanda Gorman on the cover of the magazine’s American edition. In today’s fashion ecosystem, an amputee pinup pouts from the pages of a swimsuit calendar and a woman with Down syndrome stars in a Gucci beauty campaign.
Everyone can be a model. We can be airbrushed influencers in our own Instagram stories, mini pitchmen on Tiktok and street-cast character actors in advertisements for mass-market brands like Dove and Third Love or high-end labels such as Rick Owens and Balenciaga.
Model agencies, these days, pride themselves on signing virtually anyone who wants to be a model. Fashion models are no longer an embodiment of exclusivity. They are, instead, a reflection of the mundane and the gloriously imperfect.
The impetus for the fashion industry to rethink its exclusive ways is coming from frustrated agitators wanting to upend the system and stakeholders who want to reinvigorate it. It’s coming after a year of racial unrest, a year in which so many of us have been forced to sit with our presumptions and stereotypes – and reconsider them.
Whom the industry welcomes into that spotlight – and when – tells us about politics, economics and social clout. Models are intellectual arguments about identity made real. They exist at inflection points in society. For years, black models have been the human battleground over black femininity – their visibility or invisibility a sign of the culture’s discomfort with allowing them to represent a privileged ideal. The ranks of models are changing as the decision-makers and image-makers change. A new guard of editors (such as British Vogue’s Edward Enninful), business owners (such as Alexandra Waldman, co-founder of the clothing brand Universal Standard), unconventional photographers and model agents recognise that people of all backgrounds have a hankering for edgy brands and status logos.
The expansion of modelling has gone much further than the welcoming of historically marginalised groups into an exclusive club. And the definition of a model has changed also because of technology.
“In the past, having a portrait taken was an event, particularly in marginalised communities. With the introduction of social media personal photography transformed. The culture exploded with platforms like Instagram and all the places where you were asked to put pictures of yourself online,” says Antwaun Sargent, author of The New Black Vanguard, a survey of contemporary photographers of colour. “That changed some of our expectations around who gets to be seen and how those representations are appreciated in relationship to desire… beauty…and identity.”
The definition of a model is also being altered by a new generation of photographers who are more aware of the urgencies of autonomy and personal narrative. If anyone can be in front of a camera, what makes someone stand out and draw others in is their visual story, their realness .
The impossible dreams of fashion are now being peddled to us by us. Average, everyday people are selling us toiletries and underwear, designer handbags and fanciful frocks. They are part of the system that frustrates, demoralises, bewilders and on rare and marvelous occasions, makes us gasp with delight. And if we have any complaints about the beautiful lies or the unvarnished truths, we will have to look among ourselves when seeking someone to blame. | The Washington Post