Screening Fashion and the Virtual Commons, Part 1

Aug 24

Aug 24 Screening Fashion and the Virtual Commons, Part 1

With more than half of 2020 behind us, we have witnessed a variety of creative responses to the necessities of being quarantined, self-isolated, and working virtually. The various responses have assumed — depending on the business one works in, one’s own personal situation, and even the city one lives in — a number of forms. Universities went virtual at the drop of a hat, prior to the future virtual drop of graduating seniors’s caps. Office buildings in major cities closed for business, opting instead for employees to work from home. Those working from home had to additionally provide care for their elders as well as their children, thus wearing not just many but all hats: parent, caregiver, educator, employee, and so much more.

It is truly remarkable to see the creative extent that individuals go to, not just for themselves but for those around them, during these uncertain and chaotic times. We are able to see, in real time, stories of success and failure, individuals confessing their failures (and receiving words of encouragement and support in return), while also sharing their triumphs. What we witnessed and continue to witness is the potential for a virtual commons — in a time when net neutrality is up for debate, this is not an incidental concern. [1] A virtual commons, the hopeful product during these times, offers solace and consolation, community and belonging, precisely when people are physically isolated and remote from one another.

We’ve also had front row seats, albeit virtually, to witness how effectively and ineffectively companies were in dealing with going virtual, both in terms of the products they provided their customers as well as the safety and support they provided employees. We saw how aware and responsive, or not, various companies and businesses were in addressing the demands of the times.

“This political disappointment is, of course, nothing new. High-end fashion has always been politically suspect, when not outright collaborationist with authoritarianism.”

The same concerns and interests were directed to the world of fashion, in particular the world of high fashion. June 8th saw the unveiling of Chanel’s virtual fashion show for 2020/2021, entitled “Balade en Méditerranée” — a ride on, or cruising, the Mediterranean. [2] The virtual show, comprised of photos and a video of a fashion show with the catwalk as the beach and a balcony overlooking the sea — we’re in Capri, virtually, you see. The collection comprised over 50 looks and showed models individually — for social distance reasons, one imagines — showcasing the various pieces of the ensemble. [3]

With this virtual fashion show, we are being shown how high-end fashion conducts a fashion show virtually. So much, then, for the end of fashion as Teri Agins once wrote. [4] Or is it? Not so, according to that Chanel virtual fashion show. The show was launched at a time when many around the world took to the streets to protest ongoing police violence and systemic racist practices of the criminal justice system — declaring in the same moment a right not just to the streets but to the city itself. Chanel’s virtual show, according to the New York Times review, disappointed, as it failed to acknowledge ongoing civil and social unrest, providing a poor ersatz of an escape.

This political disappointment is, of course, nothing new. High-end fashion has always been politically suspect, when not outright collaborationist with authoritarianism. So, it strikes me that the criticism of the show as being escapist and unable to address contemporary unrest does not go far enough. The criticism does not reveal, as it were, anything new about the particular features and fundamental characteristics of these times, and high-end fashion’s response. That high fashion can, in its already limited understanding of escapism, disappoint for being unable to deal with contemporary issues is nothing new. What is new, rather, is the form that such failure took, being shot, produced, edited and revealed on a virtual platform. This virtual show revealed itself as an actual failure.

Failure can be instructive; not just for those that fail, but for others as well. My concern is not at all what lessons other fashion houses will learn take from Chanel’s virtual fashion show, but rather the lessons of this show for others not involved in high-end fashion yet who already work in fashion today, who work to be recognized as participating in a world that is larger than the optics of private interests would lead one to believe, for the creators of fashion who already create and aim for their designs and creations to be seen by others. What are the lessons that this virtual show has for them? One lesson is: the possibility for anyone and everyone to participate in and create their own virtual fashion show, to collaborate with friends and colleagues, while remote physically, online, and constitute the very virtual commons of a fashion show currently lacking. Rather than focusing on how certain trends and companies miss the mark, it is time to focus on those who already had a virtual platform to present their work, those who are already influencers and influencers-to-be, those that create the vibrant creative fabric of a virtual commons appropriate for fashion shows of today and tomorrow, aware and responsive to the world in which they find themselves.

“As psychoanalysis claims: only in exaggerations does the truth reveal itself. What truth about (high-end) fashion, then, was revealed by these exceptional circumstances? ”

It sometimes takes exceptional circumstances to render explicit that which is implicit, to make manifest aspects that were until then just as present but latent. As psychoanalysis claims: only in exaggerations does the truth reveal itself. What truth about (high-end) fashion, then, was revealed by these exceptional circumstances?

The virtual fashion show operated in a manner that I call “screening fashion.” Screening fashion refers, first, to the act of screening, of blocking out, obfuscating, and marginalizing. It is the phenomenon of the world of high-end fashion to use its resources to present a view of fashion, the creation of garments (under who knows what circumstances), that blocks out other events taking place in the world. Rather than presenting the resilience of models, fashion-house directors, and the resourcefulness of a company to entertain and lighten the mood, it precisely presented a view of how resilient high-end fashion could be not in spite of what went on but precisely because so many other things were going on.

The second meaning of ‘screening fashion’ refers to the gate-keeping mentality of high fashion. That somehow, only high-end fashion can provide the realized ideal of beauty (of models of clothing, etc.) even when we all know it not only never did, but that it could not even achieve the goal it had set for itself. Not for nothing, it still tried. It is this attempt, however, that shows precisely the truth of the exaggeration and the open secret it would like all to avoid seeing: that anyone — and I mean anyone and everyone — can provide their own virtual catwalk show, whether it be as couturier, set-designer, model, colleague, photographer, video editor, and so on. Almost anyone with a phone, internet connection, and a minimal amount of space together with friends can create a virtual fashion catwalk show. This possibility has always, to an extent, existed. What the virtual show made evident was that this possibility could no longer be avoided or hidden.

In the second part of “Screening Fashion and the Virtual Commons,” I will provide another meaning of “screening fashion,” one that contributes to the very virtual commons that is to be constructed, along with an additional lesson stemming from the failure of Chanel’s virtual fashion show.