Of the Very Serious Boundary Between Fashion and Ridicule
The boundary between fashion and ridicule appears blurred, as it is demarcated on the one hand by taste – good or bad – and on the other by the passage of time. In literature, ridicule and fashion have represented and still represent a couple of similar terms, on which to reason and from which to draw inspiration for the construction of the public image.
How many times have we been grateful to fashion for its ephemerality, for the short duration of objects that seem to be made to offend our good taste, at the sight of which we are condemned for a period that, although transitory as a summer can be, gives the impression to last a century. The waist of the trousers is so low as to show the underwear, the triple down jacket and the t-shirt with a shirt sewn on, the wooden clogs, with or without fur, by Gucci, the various items of clothing cut- out, that is, with ventilation holes located in correspondence with very peculiar parts of the body, from the breasts to the buttocks. Are they worn because they are particularly elegant, comfortable or necessary for a certain sociability? Perhaps, but the truest explanation is more trivial: they are in vogue.
The verdugale, or guardinfante, is a complex petticoat, used from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, composed of a structure with concentric circles aimed at exaggerating the volume of the female hips, doubling their size, forcing the women who wore it to clumsy movements, especially to sit down and get up, becoming the object of mockery of the male sex, guilty of having them caged in such complex structures. Men, in fact, convinced that the exaltation of female beauty went hand in hand with that of works of art, favored the pedestal as an ideal display mode, in this case the lower part of the body, whose greatness was magnified for support the bust and face in the best possible way. Although women were continually forced to become a caricature of themselves, the dominant aesthetic canons made the ridiculous a logical sequence of balances and counterpoints, aimed at obtaining consensus. The out of fashion has no definitive value, on the contrary, it equals the transience of being in vogue. You don’t have time to heal the wounds caused by a burning irony, hiding in the back of the closet the objects of the public mockery, which you must immediately roll up your sleeves and retrieve them again.
For now we are in the regime of negligible ridicule, to enter the more “serious” one must introduce topics that go well beyond design, solemn issues that incorporate fashion and ridicule into the sphere of culture.
The controversial attempt at cultural appropriation by Kim Kardashian West, a wealthy socialite and entrepreneur, who first chose to call her solution wear brand is an exemplary case – up-to-date way to designate the shaping underwear – “Kimono”. Since these are more comfortable and flexible sheaths than those in circulation, any resemblance to the traditional Japanese garment is unlikely, but an awkward, or rather ridiculous, attempt at self-celebration given that the root of the term Kimono coincides with that of the celebrity’s first name US. Kardashian’s egomania provoked a popular uprising, which resulted in, in addition to a wave of insults on social media, a petition and a public statement by the Japanese Minister of Commerce who publicly called for a review of the brand name. Public outrage prevailed and Kardashian announced a change of direction called SKIMS. The ridicule here concerns a very serious question, the secular traditions of a people, its characterizing traits, engulfed by the colonialist impetus of personal branding at any cost, especially in a historical era where the number of followers is proportional to the authority, and Kardashian West is the sixth most followed person in the world.
The ridiculousness of the Kimono operation lies in wanting to impose at all costs – or that of a containment body – one’s vision of the world and of the world, compulsively labeling all objects with one’s name, as a child would do on the first day of school. Fashion, precisely because of its ephemeral nature, cannot go only in one direction, but must range between the cultures with which it comes into contact and make them dialogue, giving rise to transformative innovations in the systems of reference and belonging.
Fashion and ridicule relate on three dimensions: temporal, cultural and passionate, and the latter falls on the feeling conveyed by objects. Behind the lapses of style or laughable marketing campaigns, there is a continuous process of mixing the significant elements in a given historical moment, which helps to shape the existing culture, contributing to its global dynamism.
The core of the meanings of a culture is reflected in the outfit, in the image propagated by the total look: from now on when in the subway, on the street, at the post office, a person will pass in front of us wearing something that we will mentally classify as ridiculous, the our mocking smile, when we leave our face, will take on a melancholy turn because by now we know that tomorrow we will be able to wear something like this too. The spirit of the times will decide for us.