A Review of The MET 2021 Gala and other Ideological Moments: Fashion as Ideology, Part 2
Image: Noonday News
Caveat lector. Reader beware. This is not a standard review. I neither attended the MET 2021 Gala (read: was not invited, could not afford, nor would attend even if I could afford or was invited). Let me rephrase: this is not a review. In genre, it is closer to an essay. In tone, its flavor is polemic, a battle of words. and its content aims to address — using the MET Gala as a venue and revue — (the) fashion (industry) as ideology. Part of that ideology can be seen typographically in the previous sentence, by the use of parentheses. To explain: even when downplaying itself as a singular industry wherein varieties of clothes and divergent fashion houses are presented as signs of free market competition and differences in taste, fashion remains today an industry. As an industry, it has access to and encompasses a wide range of institutions. We speak of individual fashions, and yet nowhere more on display is an industry attempting to hide its “industry status” than the fashion industry. Part and parcel of the hoodwinking trick to see fashion as anything but an industry is also the attempt to claim fashion is either innocuous or non-, or post-, ideological. As a “review” of what I’ve called above a revue, the MET 2021 Gala, this piece also acts as the second and concluding part to my earlier piece, “For They Know Not What They Don: Fashion as Ideology, Part 1”.
In that piece, I playfully diagnosed our contemporary fashion desires as our Cruella Complex. This complex was named after the eponymous Disney villain and puppy murderer, Cruella de Vil. I claimed that her attitude towards her fur coats was our relationship to our clothing. In a phrase, it is encapsulated by Cruella’s claim that she lives for, and worships, furs. I had concluded the piece by saying that the phrase “I live for X”, where we can substitute for X anything we actively and passionately engage in, is our fashion desire par excellence. Even if it goes unsaid, the form that phrase takes, provides an insight into our ideological commitments. We do not even need to say that phrase. Our clothing styles and behaviors — what I am tempted to call, after “body language”, our “clothing language” — already indicate, signal, in short say that. The reason for this is we dress ourselves in a manner that befits our identities, desires, self-images, and political and ethical commitments. For examples of this, we need only think: Lady Gaga’s meat dress from the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards; Dan Levy’s outfit from the 2021 MET Gala that was identified as the outfit for a gay superhero; or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Tax the Rich” dress, to name a few more explicitly politically and socially motivated fashion choices.
“The MET Gala sends a particular message: that the only fashion of the future worth discussing is a fashion that embraces socially progressive issues without addressing political-economic concerns, civil rights and equal rights issues, or global ecological crises. ”
To answer some possible pushback or critical questions. I am first not criticizing what people wore, their aesthetic and fashion decisions, or indeed the important social effects and potential political consequences of such representations. The point of the ideological critique is not to demonize or criticize individuals — nor is it to exalt them in a cult of celebrity or personality — but rather to see how the fashion choices individuals make and that we, more or less, may agree with have questionable conditions of possibility and existence, alongside having consequences that run counter to the very ideas expressed.
And one other possible criticism, expressed in three questions: is it legitimate to reduce the fashion industry to the MET 2021 Gala? Is it not unfair to read the MET Gala as a representative for all of fashion (as ideology)? And, is it even accurate to claim fashion is an ideology and an industry? To these, I can only now respond in the following manner. First, the timing and situation of the MET Gala was one that coincided with a number of particular instances, both pre-pandemic practice, pandemic-era desires and hopes, and other surrounding political economic events. First, during the summer of 2020, a number of months into the pandemic’s presence in the U.S., much was written about the lack of diversity and lack of representation (of difference) in the fashion industry. Webinars and discussions were held that both emphasized this lack while claiming to make changes that would address and redress the lack. As noted in a follow-up by The New York Times, there has been little evidence that such steps were indeed taken. Second, the MET Gala, aimed to send a message that it would be back, better than ever. The MET Gala sends and, indeed, sent a particular message: that the only fashion of the future worth discussing (and which discusses worth and value) is a fashion that embraces socially progressive issues without addressing political-economic concerns (the never old enough warfare between capital and labor-power, issues related to production, distribution, and consumption), civil rights and equal rights issues (whether equal pay, equal access to employment), or global ecological crises (climate crises related to clean water, clean air, and increasing temperatures).
We are, in any case, presented with fashionable capitalism, capitalism with an emoji face. If one was gastronomically repulsed by Lady Gaga’s fashion choice in 2010, one cannot but be economically disgusted by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s fashion choice in 2021. We continue to slaughter animals for our food or clothing today, just as we continue to not tax the super-wealthy. Democrats, as Robert Reich recently noted, have not only confirmed their inability to tax the super-rich but also (un)ironically wear such inability as advertisement.
To summarize: the ways in which fashion is represented today, whether in the media (the so-called fourth estate), one’s social media platform (an area that is less and less a virtual public sphere and instead a digitally policed privatized arena), or even imaginatively (in the available cultural products around us) embodies a certain ideology. This is an ideology that weds industry and capital with an ethics and individualized politics that leaves uninterrogated, continuing exploitative, inegalitarian, and unjust practices. Further, as an ideology it is not reducible to intelligence, know-how, or facts at one’s disposal. It extends beyond individual knowledge to encompass individual desires and socially disciplining behaviors. The fashion ideology is not something we can simply correct by disproving fake news and alternative (read: incorrect) facts. While that may be helpful, what is ultimately going to combat such ideological instances is a sustained critique of the means by which problematic practices in the production, distribution, and consumption of our clothing behavior continue.
Let’s make one thing clear. We are not that different from Cruella. Our fashion tastes, at the level of content and choice of clothes, might be different. Hopefully, at least. Our fashion desires, however, at the level of form are identical with hers. This is significant, but also a difficult issue. The Cruella Complex affects us all, yet for each of us in a specific manner. So granted that we cannot simply rely on wearing only our birthday suits — or at least that is not the argument I am making here — what is left for one to combat the Cruella complex?
“Fashion is not, from the perspective of one’s lifeworld and participation in social and political institutions, an unimportant or innocuous part. It addresses social and economic injustices, gender norms, and racial inequities.”
We might first address such complexes by falling back on right and duty of self-expression. After all, clothing is not just an extension of our bodies, but an extension of ourselves. Clothing is a prosthetic of our souls. Indeed, that is how and why individuals choose to wear the clothes they do or, just as adamantly, avoid wearing the clothes society or specific institutions dictate they wear. We should not assume that individuals, especially those individuals with a significant amount of social or capital power, are disingenuous in their clothing choices. To ascribe to those individuals any false sense, a disingenuous attitude, or a sophistry bordering on Machiavellian manipulation is cynical. More importantly, it does not address the underlying features of the ideological edifice. That is to say, such a cynical attitude relies upon the old style — or old fashioned! — account of ideology: ideology as false consciousness. In this case, it is not the false consciousness of the wearer of such clothing, but instead the false consciousness of the people that support or criticize such clothing. Such a reading equates consciousness with knowledge, and simply waits for correct knowledge, adequate facts, or true statistics. Or it relies upon a sensational and spectacle-like appearance to interrupt people’s participation in unethical or unjust practices. The cynical attitude that reduces ideology to false consciousness — on the part of the recipient or participant, viewer and supporter or person that wears such clothing — thinks it can correct such consciousness, or rid the world of ideology, simply by providing more correct information. Such a cynical posture, ultimately a self-satisfied elitist attitude, does very little to enact long-lasting structural and meaningful change.
Another response is quite similar to the first one. While it appears ethical, it is ultimately ideologically naïve: to vote with our wallets. This tenet of free market capitalism, extolled by Milton Friedman among others, holds that we can simply elect, by way of purchasing power, the companies we choose to participate with, to ultimately play a role in deciding which companies should be in existence. That not everyone’s purchasing power is equal, however, already signals the limitation of such a view.
One more possible response is education of and for ideology critique. Earlier I had mentioned the limitation of claiming to educate people to break their ideological attachments. This does not mean education is to be avoided. My point is that while ideology is not to be reduced to simply an equation with one’s knowledge, there is still a lot education can do to contribute to ideology critique. This requires a more sustained and thoughtful discussion on education practices, textbook formation, and the institution of trade-based courses alongside the usual humanities-based curriculums. Fashion is not, from the perspective of one’s lifeworld and participation in social and political institutions, an unimportant or innocuous part. It addresses social and economic injustices, gender norms, and racial inequities. One lesson of how one can critique the fashion ideology and imagine the education of such ideology critique was demonstrated recently on TikTok by two high school students highlighting the sexist nature of dress codes. This TikTok lesson is not to be read lightly and we should take notes.
The other side of phrasing the question of how to oppose the Cruella Complex, and thus push back on fashion as ideology, is not to imagine some non-ideological fashion industry — the move of ideology par excellence, according to Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalyst, and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek — but rather to imagine, create, and support a fashion that engages in ideology critique. [1] One must fashion ideology critique. The test for such critique should remain German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno’s claim from his Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life: one must “deny…the ideological misuse of one’s own existence.” [2] Ideology is that: the misuse of one’s own existence. That we participate in this misuse is our Cruella Complex. To deny the misuse of one’s own and another’s existence is the first step to addressing our Cruella Complex and undermining fashion as ideology.
Notes
[1] See, among his many writings, the introduction to his edited volume Mapping Ideology (Verso: New York, 2012).
[2] Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, section 6 “Antithesis”, page 27 (Verso: New York, 2005).
