Statement dressing goes mainstream.
Statement dressing now extends far beyond the runway.
New York — At New York Fashion Week, designers continued to grapple with messaging — how to communicate social and political statements through the optics of clothing. In some ways, it was a replay of last year’s fall shows, just weeks after the inauguration of President Trump.
Designer Prabal Gurung, after helping revive the message T-shirt trend with his feministslogan-wearing final parade of models in 2017, ended his fall 2018 fashion show earlier this month with a group of models carrying white roses rather than with the traditional thumping music. Tom Ford celebrated women’s empowerment by emblazoning shoes and purses with the glittering words Pussy Power. Designer Ricardo Seco’s fashion week presentation included knitwear featuring the words Dreamer Force and DACA, referencing the current immigration debate in Washington, D.C.
But in the year since last year’s shows, such coordinated messaging has traveled far beyond the runway. From black dresses on red carpets to white pantsuits in politics, in 2018 fashion is increasingly being used to convey social, political and personal views. Whether it’s Hollywood actresses, politicians or the masses expressing themselves via color choices, specific garments or group dressing, clothing has been endowed with greater meaning that is easily read by the audience.
How did fashion become the billboard for political statements?
“People have no qualms about expressing their feelings now, either way they lean,” says Roseanne Morrison, fashion director for New York trend analysis firm the Doneger Group. “We see it with online (expression). The Pandora’s box has been opened, and now fashion is the vehicle.”
So far, the year has seen the red carpet blackout at the Golden Globe Awards in January, where women (and some men) dressed in black to protest sexual harassment and inequality in Hollywood as part of the #MeToo movement and “Time’s Up” initiative; the wearing of white roses at the Grammy Awards later that month supporting the same cause; and another round of women’s marches where the pink knit pussyhat was again ubiquitous after making its debut at marches the year before.
“Fashion is a communication vehicle about your own values and linking yourself with others,” said Lynda Grose, California College of the Arts fashion department chair. How that manifests itself in each generation may be different.
“In the ’80s it was Katharine Hamnett’s Save the World T-shirts,” she said. “In these times, for me, it came up with the pink (pussy) hat, which is a strong visual. Clothing is part of projecting not only beliefs but identity in 2018.”
The coordinating African-inspired formal wear worn by the cast (as well as many attendees) of the new superhero movie “Black Panther” at the film’s purple carpet premiere Jan. 29 was observed by many on social media as an extension of the story’s Afro-empowerment ethos and was called a “kaleidoscopic display of regal, Africa-inspired fashion,” by Lesley McKenzie of the Los Angeles Times.
More sartorial statement dressing was on display in a very different arena the next night. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus attending Trump’s first State of the Union address wore brightly colored yellow, green and black Ghanaian kente cloths created by artisan
“It’s a time of meaningful fashion again, fashion with a purpose. You can start a revolution with your outfit — you can give a statement.” Bernd Kroeber, BCBG creative director
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symbolic meaning during a period of wide political and social disagreement. Morrison cited Malcom McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s punk aesthetic of 1970s London as another moment where fashion was strongly in conversation with politics and society. The women’s suffrage movement of the early 1900s also used the wearing of white and white roses as a part of its symbolic narrative, which was picked up by Hillary Clinton and her supporters with the white pantsuit.
“The white suit as a feminist statement now says, ‘Hillary didn’t make it, but her ideas and values made it,’ ” says Morrison. “All these feminist messages on the runway — the red carpet, white suits, black dresses, even the pink hats — on a wider level tell us things are happening. The fashion is almost a grassroots movement taking off alongside” the political movement.
What, then, to make of first lady Melania Trump wearing a dressy white Christian Dior pantsuit to the State of the Union? It inspired much speculation as to its meaning, given her separate arrival at the speech from her husband following recent accusations of an affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Was it her way of reclaiming, or rebutting, a potent symbol of feminism most recently associated with Clinton? According to Bloomberg columnist Michael Lewis, former White House adviser Steve Bannon is said to have commented: “She’s wearing suffragette white. Suck on that,” as she entered the House chamber without the president.
But in fashion, can all this symbolic messaging be bad for business? Morrison says that yes, designers who become too strongly associated with certain statements do take a risk.
“Sometimes it can turn off a whole segment,” she said. For example, Morrison found Tom Ford’s purses to be accessories carrying “messages that were a little over the edge of what was polite.”
“But overall, I think it’s just beginning,” Morrison said. “When there’s a feeling of injustice socially, people will continue to express themselves in movements in different fashion ways. We’ve seen it at the high level with celebrities and politicians, and now it’s hitting mass level. To be continued.”