by Merel van der Toorn

Salò, Dazed & Confused, photographer: Norbert Schoerner (cruaute.tumblr.com)

Fashion photography is often criticised for presenting visually disturbing images as eye candy, and, as Caroline Evans has pointed out in Fashion at the Edge, undercurrents of violence or pornography has regularly been seen in both fashion advertising and editorials since the 1990s. In her book Powers of Horror: an Essay on Abjection, philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva explains how matter such as dead bodies, food, vomit, blood, skin and bones are able to both disturb the order of the norm, while simultaneously enabling complex feelings of violent pleasure.

Kristeva uses the term ‘abject’ to describe something that is neither object nor subject. Being an in-between state it exists in a pre-symbolic order, triggering human reactions filled with confusion about the distinction between the self and the other. A potent example of this is the reaction we encounter when faced with the human cadaver; as Kristeva points out a subject without life becomes an object, something that triggers trauma by reminding us of our own mortality. Other less extreme though highly unsettling examples apt to create similar reactions are all types of bodily fluids, human or animal, such as blood, vomit or urine. [1]

The abject has been explored in films like Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, the Wife and her Lover from 1989, Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter from 1974 and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom from 1975, all of which have since inspired innumerable fashion editorials. One of the arguably most poignant examples of how the abject has been used in fashion imagery is the editorial Salò published in the September 2001 issue of Dazed & Confused. Taking its cue from Pasolini’s film, the fashion story created by photographer Norbert Schoerner and stylist Katy England and art directed by Alexander McQueen seemingly has little to do with fashion as commonly represented in mainstream magazines, focusing instead on the abject and the relationship between domination and repression.

It could be argued that these images deal with power because they challenge social and moral boundaries, but also because they are, to borrow a term made famous by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, associated with ‘jouissance’. According to Lacan jouissance is what we encounter when we attempt to go beyond what Freudians call ‘the pleasure principle’, the drive to attain pleasure and avoid pain. Jouissance is then the transgression of this pleasure principle, a futile attempt to arrive at increased pleasure that instead results in pain or trauma. For instance, pleasure is what we get when we eat when we’re hungry. Jouissance on the other hand would be compulsive eating, or eating that doesn’t cease though it causes both pain and discomfort. Though not knowingly aware of it and most likely not consciously desiring it, we nevertheless strive for the convoluted emotions evoked by the moment of jouissance. These sensations embody a painful attraction, similar to what Kristeva describes as a ‘blind passion’. [2]

As Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle maintained that we are irrationally drawn to trauma (repetition compulsion) and Lacan argued that jouissance continuously compels us to violate the prohibitions imposed on our pleasure, Kristeva similarly argues that, despite the close connection to repulsion, we are constantly and repetitively drawn to the abject. According to Freud humans are simultaneously driven by both life and death instincts, and consequently Kristeva’s abject is experienced through both irrational pleasure and unremitting disgust. With their highlighting of the grotesque and evocation of glamour, the images from Salò in Dazed & Confused could be said to induce a similar response. Young and nubile body parts, stylish corsets and Chanel shoes are mixed with insinuations of vomit, zoophilia and suicide – this might just be the most fashionable the abject will ever get.

An extract from the 2003 novel ‘Pattern Recognition’ by science fiction writer William Gibson. Set in 2002, the book follows Cayce Pollard, a marketing consultant in London who has a psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols. In the following passage, Gibson describes the tiers of the fashion industry through a sci-fi lens, which, at the heart of it, is a metaphor for the dynamic between human sensitivity and corporate power.

By William Gibson

‘She’s gone to Harvey Nichols and gotten sick.

Should have known better.

How she responds to labels.

Down into menswear, unrealistically hoping that if anyone might have a Buzz Rickson’s it would be Harvey Nichols, their ornate Victorian pile rising like a coral reef opposite Knightsbridge station. Somewhere on the ground floor, in cosmetics, they even have Helena Stonestreet’s cucumber mask, Bernard having explained to her how he’d demonstrated his considerable powers of persuasion on the HN buyers.

But down here, next to a display of Tommy Hilfiger, it’s all started to go sideways on her, the trademark thing.

Less warning aura than usual. Some people ingest a single peanut and their head swells like a basketball.

When it happens to Cayce, it’s her psyche.

Tommy Hilfiger does it every time, though she’d thought she was safe now. They’d said he’d peaked, in New York. Like Benetton, the name would be around, but the real poison, for her, would have been drawn. It’s something to do with context, here, with not expecting it in London. When it starts, it’s pure reaction, like biting down hard on a piece of foil.

A glance to the right and the avalanche lets go. A mountainside of Tommy coming down in her head.

My God, don’t they know? This stuff is simulacra of simulacra of simulacra. A diluted tincture of Ralph Lauren, who had himself diluted the glory days of Brooks Brothers, who themselves had stepped on the product of Jermyn Street and Savile Row, flavoring their ready−to−wear with liberal lashings of polo knit and regimental stripes. But Tommy surely is the null point, the black hole. There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul. Or so she hopes, and doesn’t know, but suspects in her heart that this in fact is what accounts for his long ubiquity.

She needs out of this logo−maze, desperately. But the escalator to the street exit will dump her back into Knightsbridge, seeming somehow now more of the same, and she remembers that the street runs down, and always her energy with it, to Sloane Square, another nexus of whatever she suffers these reactions to. Laura Ashley, down there, and that can get ugly.

Remembering the fifth floor, here: a sort of Californian market, Dean & Deluca lite, with a restaurant, a separate and weirdly modular robotic sushi operation humming oddly in its midst, and a bar where they served excellent coffee.

Caffeine she’s held in reserve today, a silver bullet against serotonin−lack and big weird feelings. She can go there. There is a lift. Yes, a lift: a closet−sized elevator, small but perfectly formed. She will find it, and use it.

Now.

She does. It arrives, miraculously empty, and she steps in, pressing 5. “I’m feeling rather excited,” a woman says, breathily, as the door closes, though Cayce knows she’s alone in this upright coffin of mirror and brushed steel. Fortunately she’s been this way before, and knows that these disembodied voices are there for the amusement of the shopper. “Mmmmm,” purrs the male of the species. The only equivalent audio environment she can recall was in the restroom of an upscale hamburger joint on Rodeo Drive, years ago: an inexplicable soundtrack of buzzing insects. Flies, it had sounded like, though surely that couldn’t have been the intent.

Whatever else these designer ghosts say, she blocks it out, the lift ascending miraculously, without intermediate stops, to the fifth floor.

Cayce pops out into a pale light slanting in through much glass. Fewer lunching shoppers than she remembers.

But no clothing on this floor save on people’s backs and in their glossy carrier bags. The swelling can subside, here.’

High fashion, in its constant pursuit of the ‘new’ is often irreverent, smuggling inspiration wherever possible with little regard for political correctness. A boiling point of sorts was reached according to many with John Galliano’s controversial Homeless Chic for Dior spring/summer 2009, but in more recent seasons designers seem again to be looking to the ‘street’ for inspiration in a new dynamic of power inversion. Examples like Jil Sander’s ‘plastic bag’ bag could less violent interpretation of the lower echelons of the fashion system, referencing mass-produced ephemera of pound stores and supermarkets, but what does this practice suggest on a broader scale? Are we perhaps becoming more comfortable with the dualities of rich and poor, cheap and expensive? Or perhaps this is merely a new source of inspiration, new ground to cover? Or maybe this reflects a sort of ‘leveling out’ or globalisation of the industry, and a nod to the lower rungs of the fashion system? However you want to interpret it, there are always profound questions raised in the event of appropriation. While fashion corporations are keen to crack down on illegal copying, it’s interesting to note that the ever-fine line between appropriation and copying in high fashion continues to be toed for effect. Whether this is a knowing nod to the methods of ‘inspiration’ that fashion designers often employ (such as Maison Martin Margiela’s ‘Replica’ line) or simply a result of the postmodern bricolage aesthetic, or just plagiarism, it is always illuminating as it reveals the complex tensions of power in the hierarchical fashion system. It is with this in mind that the Jil Sander bag becomes so (arguably) ironic: after all it is still economic value that is the crucial aspect of what differentiates high fashion from its cheap counterparts. This ‘aesthetic back and forth’ that fashion designers continuously engage in ultimately questions the values we attach to certain aesthetics, and what looks ‘expensive’, or ‘luxury’, so becomes increasingly difficult to decipher. In the instance of appropriation, examining the aesthetics, as well as the specific examples, further reveal a broader, more profound picture of the fashion industry.

Louis Vuitton spring/summer 2007

Jil Sander autumn/winter 2011

Celine autumn/winter 2013

Following up on the recent Vestoj post on perfume advertising, we take a more critical look at the body in advertising; in the fourth instalment to her documentary series ‘Killing Us Softly 4‘ (2012), author and film maker Jean Kilbourne looks at the portrayal of women in print advertising. Kilbourne, a contributor in the upcoming ‘Fashion and Power’ issue of Vestoj, talks specifically about examples where dis-membered bodies and erogenous parts are used in advertising. Hyper-idealized and sexualised parts pf the body – breasts, legs, bottom – become completely separated in the transition from the real human body to a fetishized object without a face. A pair of legs is a commodity, no longer part of the body as a whole, but a separate, animated entity, often elevated to the point of surrealism insofar as their portrayal is highly unrealistic. We pulled out some particular examples across various product types in the following photo series of found images from head to toe.

Considering the theme of our upcoming issue, Fashion & Power, we have been thinking a lot about the power dynamics of the fashion industry over at Vestoj HQ. On that note we thought we’d share an excerpt from a very poignant piece by Robin Givhan, Pulizer-prize winning fashion reporter and one of the contributors to the coming Vestoj issue 4. This meditation on the smoke and mirrors that have become so integral to the fashion business was published in New York Magazine’s The Cut back in February when fashion weeks were still in full swing.

Don’t Take It Personal — It’s Just Fashion

by Robin Givhan

The perfume and cosmetics advertising industry (and fashion as well for that matter) has not evolved a great deal in the last thirty or so years, still the same flirtation with fictional scenarios and imagery, with desire and seduction playing a central role in the advertising for these key luxury brands at the pinnacle of the market. However, these advertisements are a sensual, cinematic experience; and a complete indulgence in twenty-odd seconds of fantasy. Here are a few that stand out in this respect – or perhaps for their sheer absurdity – in a distilled moment of art and commerce. Within this formula, we can trace the ideals of beauty from era to era, as these adverts are many ways these represent the epitome of the aesthetics of luxury branding.

Jean Paul Gaultier ‘Le Male’ 2002

Chanel ‘Egoist’ 1990, directed by Jean-Paul Goude

Jean Paul Gaultier ‘Espirit’ 1995, directed by Jean Baptiste Mondino

Yves Saint Laurent ‘Opium’ 1992, directed by David Lynch

‪Calvin Klein ‘Obsession’ 1993, directed by Mario Sorrenti

Dolce & Gabanna ‘Parfum’, 1997

by Laura Gardner, Web Editor, Vestoj

Advertising, or more specifically, branding works with a currency of space, visibility, and therefore exposure. The effectiveness of branding will relate to the size and potential impact of such a space. Branding in sport is perhaps the first direct facilitator of corporeal branding, the space for a capitalist identity on the body. Despite a long history of endorsement from famous figures, in film and music for example, the use of the body in sport is an inverse of this relationship, and a more recent phenomena.

Michael Jordan and Spike Lee for Nike, 1991

The most successful of the early ‘collaborations’ between athlete and brand could be attributed to the one between basketballer Michael Jordan and sportswear company Nike [1]. The partnership has worked dually in launching Jordan’s career as an individual sportsman and super brand. Then, the highest-paid sportsman in the business, the alliance unfolded into the sportsman’s own clothing and footwear brand ‘Air Jordan’, for which the early eighties imagery of the sportsman mid-flight, suspended in ‘air’ formed the template for the logo of the brand (one only has to type ‘Michael Jordan Nike’ into a Youtube search facility to see the extent of the Nike/Jordan output). The spirit of this long running partnership between Jordan and Nike continues in a new global system of branding alliances and stakeholders. More recently Nike closed a $250 million, 10-year contract with golf champion Rory McIlroy. A weighty financial and time commitment that reflects how lucrative this industry has become, the 24-year old, who juggles Nike with his other sponsors Bose and Omega; says, ‘I don’t want a lot of sponsors. I want a few quality ones.’ [2] suggesting that these relationships have become inevitably symbiotic.

Roger Federer front row at Fashion’s Night Out with Anna Wintour and Blake Lively (http://www.zimbio.com/)

Now a highly lucrative global industry that sits in the arena of advertising and industry, the relationship between athletes and big brands is absolutely necessary in any dialogue on sport and even fashion, with brands offering credibility and commercial value to an individual. This is crucial to the effectiveness of the entire business, McIlroy cites one of his personal and professional influences as Tennis champion Roger Federer, as a symbol of ‘grace and good taste’ [1]. This no doubt connects with the values of the brands for which Federer endorses, such as Nike, Rolex and Louis Vuitton (Federer’s 2012 sport earnings of $7.7 million were dwarfed by the $45 million he received for sponsorship) [3]. Given this, the values of the individual sportsman become imbued with those of the sporting brand and the necessary clarity of boundary is therefore distorted. Reflecting, in many ways, Nike’s original imperative in the Air Jordan collaboration, to ‘…erase all boundaries between the sponsor and the sponsored.’ [4]

1. S. Elliott (2013). Losing a Step, Nike Seeks to Regain Its Edge. The New York Times. April 14. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/business/media/nike-once-cutting-edge-seeks-to-regain-its-brand-aura.html?pagewanted=all
2. K. Crouse (2013). The Branding of Rory McIlroy. The New York Times. May 4. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/sports/golf/the-branding-of-rory-mcilroy.html?pagewanted=all
3. Roger Feder’s 2012 profile on Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/profile/roger-federer/)
4. N. Klein (2000). ‘No Logo’. p 51. London: Harper Collins

By Emily McGuire

“Do the interns get Glocks?”

“No, they all share one.”

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004)

Karl Lagerfeld and Victoria Beckham. Bottom image: Lauren Conrad and Whitney Port intern at Teen Vogue in The Hills (ohsevendays.blogspot.co.uk)

A quick online search for fashion internships and you will find ‘dream jobs for fashion divas’ alongside ‘fashion intern horror stories’ as top search results. Unpaid fashion internships have gained notoriety as a critical – and highly coveted – first step to engagement with the fashion system[1]. Glorified by marketing, and romanticised in pop culture there is an enormous demand in the industry. The fashion intern community mascots the image crisis and socio-economic issues[2] regarding unpaid labour where the economic value of work is diluted in an otherwise rigorously capitalist industry. As a full-time intern in New York City for several luxury brands, my experiences have revealed the unstable and highly idealised culture of unpaid fashion internships and the power play that exists between intern and industry.

As a relatively recent global phenomenon, understandings of the fashion internship are vague and generally undefined to both industry and intern alike. The term is perhaps best understood by the rhetoric that circulates within the industry and proliferates marketing.  Phrases like, ‘an exciting opportunity’ and ‘a great way to get experience’ saturate listings on fashion internship listing websites, constructing an understanding of internships as career-focused, offering positive situational learning for the intern’s benefit[3]. The true experience of fashion internships often contradicts these luring ideals. Positions are unofficial, unpaid, unstructured and largely unsupervised, comprised of menial tasks, errands and observations. This reflects the allocation of interns by the industry to supporting productivity and cost-effectiveness. This insecurity within the workplace reflects the insecurity of the intern identity: anonymous, disposable and subservient. Phrases like, ‘I’ll get the intern to do it’ which often circulates fashion studios, reinforce a nonspecific, homogenous image.  Indeed, the purpose and identity of the fashion internship are open to interpretation and subsequently, widespread misuse. As a new entrepreneurial spirit underpins the fashion system[4], the application process, serial interning and intern inequality are highlighting serious complications for the fashion intern community.

The interview setting crystallises the fashion industry’s authoritative relationship with its intern community.  For interns, the interview is a critical first point of contact with the industry where the applicant’s best work is showcased for approval and validation.  Despite that the work is usually unpaid and informal, the company accepts the intern; the intern does not accept the company. Motivated by reputation value to charm and impress employers, prospective interns are processed like employees where a position must be earned. In my own personal experience, at an interview for such a position, upon showing my portfolio I began to explain the construction of a particular garment I had made, provoking  the comment, ‘we just might have to use that idea!’ from the interviewer.  I replied with, ‘thank you’ despite feelings of complete anonymity and disempowerment. Lured by the cliché rhetoric, ‘It’s who you know’ interns become willing victims for the exposure and self-marketability provided by fashion internships. The interview represents a doorway to this new entrepreneurial spirit of contingent labour[5]. Free agency, autonomy and self-direction are positive aspects favoured by unpaid interns. However, this new spirit also signifies a casualisation of the workforce of which self-exploitation is a direct consequence[6]. Marketing and media reinforce this stigmatic image through which a promotion of subservience and submission as seemingly necessary to progress, underlies romanticised pop culture imagery and glorified accounts of insider status. While Free Fashion Internships describes ‘fashion intern hopefuls like you’ like contestants and Intern Queen advises interns to ‘know their place’[7], the interview setting solidifies fashion internships as exclusory and interns as insecure.  Indeed, the formalities of the interview perpetuate disempowerment as part of the fashion intern identity.

From desire and desperation for a covetable reputation rises a subculture of serial interns. A market saturated with demand for unpaid labour and little opportunity to progress, serial interning have become habitual within the fashion system. Reputation capital is the key incentive mechanism for interns where respect, references, networks and experiential learning are quantified[8]. Prestigious, respectable internships often require the completion of previous internships and most placements do not result in an official paid position at all. Undertaking multiple internships simultaneously or consecutively has become an obligation in response to this. I have undertaken six unpaid internships at luxury brands globally, sometimes three at a time five days per week. Since none of them realised into an official position, my references are critical supporting material for self-marketability as confirmation of my reputation through an association with these studios. The bargaining powering of respectable references is outweighing remuneration value.  Indeed, why pay for labour ever again if it is accepted for free? A ‘race to the bottom’ is highlighted by unpaid interning, reinforcing the perception that certain kinds of work have no economic value. Serial interning has normalised the subservience of fashion internships where reputation serves as insurance against a perilous job market. The value placed on talent and labour in the fashion industry is no longer clear-cut, and the necessary distinction between intern and employee is an increasingly exploited grey area.

Blair Waldorf and Dan Humphrey intern at W Magazine in Gossip Girl (themoderngrad.files.wordpress.com)

Privilege is a critical factor in the widening socio-economic inequality that defines – and divides – the unpaid fashion intern community. To work for free, interns commonly rely on external, most likely parental support to undertake a full-time internship. This has been my own experience and that of many of my interning contemporaries. To undertake unpaid work with minimal sacrifice to quality of life – that is, to have all financial needs met – therefore signifies socio-economic privilege. This lifestyle of quasi-inequality is romanticised by the aspirational characters of pop culture; from Blair Waldorf at W Magazine in Gossip Girl and Hannah Horvath in Girls. This majority group is less likely to feel discontent with the lacklustre conditions of unpaid fashion internships because they sacrifice less for the experience, normalising intern exploitation[9]. In this inherently exclusive and self-preserving culture in the fashion system, the already-privileged continue to benefit, empowered with a head start to respectable credentials. For many young people, the financial hardship accrued through unpaid labour restricts them from entering the intern community at all[10]. This discrimination highlights a growing outsider majority of non-interns, those limited within the widening gap between outsider status and industry involvement[11]. Pressured by limited entry-level alternatives and intern experience as a pre-requisite, not undertaking an unpaid fashion internship is considered more detrimental than the unfavourable circumstances they present. Indeed, socio-economic privilege preserves access to industry opportunity, diluting meritocratic values and perpetuating an intern hierarchy.

Rigorous quantifiable research into the widespread effects of unpaid labour within fashion must be undertaken to legitimise the intern community. Structured, enforceable, educational programs and financial incentives would reform and improve the identity of fashion interns and appreciate meritocratic and economic values otherwise diluted by the casualisation of contingent work. Indeed, without interns the fashion industry would grind to a halt; it is in the system’s best interest to nurture them.

1. Henderson, J.M. (2012). Are Creative Careers now Exclusively Reserved for the Privileged?  Forbes. August 31. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jmaureenhenderson/2012/08/31/are-creative-careers-now-reserved-exclusively-for-the-privileged/
2. The legal complications pertaining to unpaid labour are too extensive for this discussion.
3. Perlin, R. (2011).  Intern Nation. P.3. New York City: Verso Publishing
4. Wark, M. (1991). Fashioning the Future. P. 61-63. New York City: Taylor and Francis Publishing
5. Florida, R. (2012).  The Rise of the Creative Class. P.94. New York City: Basic Books Publishing
6. Andrew Ross notes “the flexibility [which free agency] delivers is a response to an authentic demand for a life not dictated by…excessively managed work” (Perlin, R. 2011, P. 37)
7. Carstens, C.I. (2009) www.freefashioninternships.com/about/ and Perlin, R. (2011). Intern Queen Inc in Intern Nation. P.151. New York City: Verso Publishing
8. Florida, R. (2012). The Rise of the Creative Class. P. 74-75. New York City: Basic Books Publishing
9. Perlin, R. (2011). Intern Nation. P. 168. New York City: Verso Publishing
10. Perlin, R. (2011). Intern Nation. P. 159, 163. New York City: Verso Publishing
11. Perlin, R. (2011). Intern Nation. P. 159, 163. New York City: Verso Publishing

John Galliano for Dior Haute Couture spring/summer 2006

By Sophie Pinchetti

In an age dominated by cultural homogeneity and standardised accounts of good taste, imagination pierces through the vapidity. It expresses itself in forceful and unbridled visions, exalting our own power to dream. At the time of his commanding years at the helm of Dior, master designer John Galliano created just this: deliriously fusing story, mystery and myth into clothes. Opening with a spoken word passage from The Book of the Revelations conjuring the insolent figure of the Antichrist, Galliano conceived this collection for Christian Dior during a time of political unrest in France, following the designer’s travels in southern France during the street riots. In a blood-shed palette, Galliano summons the spirit of 1789 – the French Revolution, a time of upheaval, destruction and transformation. Fierce, provocative women defiantly march down the runway to the sound of whips and swords striking, in a violent rapture of dramatic scarlet and red robes and tough leather, some bearing ‘1789’ brazenly tattooed on their neck. It was a collection with perverse and erotic tones that raucous, rebellious libertine spirits such as the Marquis de Sade could have enjoyed. In the theatre of fashion, few deliver originality with such force. This is Galliano’s potent couture, born from an eccentric revelry of merging imagery and creative license, testifying to the fashion industry’s ability to create intoxicating, transporting experiences when wild imagination, exceptional craftsmanship, and wealth combine. In a final display of the mind powering this vision, Galliano appears, incarnating simultaneously vagabond, warrior, and story teller, professing himself as the sorcerer of this intense sartorial mirage.

by Hampus Hagman

‘The whiteness is inseparable from the violent action that separates it out.’

Anders Olsson, Century of Innocence: The History of the White Monochrome

Kazimir Malevich ‘Suprematist Composition: White on White’, 1918

The white shirt: a neutral surface and the basis of a man’s wardrobe – according to many-a-style manual. And thus, the white shirt is invariably presented as a garment that serves as the canvas against which the wearer’s individuality will emerge. According to this line of thought, the white shirt focuses and frames the body, while itself receding quietly into the background. Considered in purely aesthetic terms, this explanation of white is reasonable enough – but metaphysically, semiotically and ideologically it leaves something to be desired. The white shirt has throughout history often been a mark of power, luxury and wealth, and to relegate it to the background is, still today, to underestimate its potentially more aggressive participation in creating meaning for the wearer’s body.

In Brian O’Doherty’s 1976 art theory classic Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space the author finds that the white walls of the art gallery confers a particular value on art by providing a clinically neutral space that allows the art exhibited to be evaluated on its own terms, shielded from the intrusion of the outside world. A similar logic might arguably be applied to the socioeconomic distinction between the white and blue collar shirt, and this dichotomy is indeed an interesting social construct. The condition for the pristine quality of the white shirt is that the environment is kept at bay. This is in opposition to the blue collar work shirt which relies on the possibility of it being dirtied. On the work shirt the results of manual labour are directly visible, manifesting a concrete – indexical, if you will – and rigid bond to economic value. The white shirt, on the other hand, rejects environmental and corporeal messiness; it rejects the social and subsequently the body – the body of others, but even, in its Platonic Form [1], that of its supposed wearer.

Maurice Scheltens and Liesbeth Abbenes for Fantastic Man, 2007

In a photo shoot by Maurice Scheltens and Liesbeth Abbenes, for the magazine Fantastic Man published in 2007, this rejection of the body is brought to the point of its obliteration. Here, exclusive white shirts are folded and pressed to form a two-dimensional surface that emphatically bars the garment from bodily inhabitation. Scheltens and Abbenes hereby effectively draw out the connections between the mainstay of the white monochrome in modernist art and the white shirt. The purpose of the white monochrome is often to deliberately evade figuration. It might be seen as the ultimate rejection of the representational objectives of figurative painting and hence as a completely self-referential surface, and so its meaning comes only from its rejection of meaning as such. Scheltens and Abbenes play on this paradox by presenting the white shirt as a refined, self-sufficient surface; an ideal state, preserved only through total disembodiment. While artists of the white monochrome rejected figuration [2], they were nevertheless not blind to the possibility that their blank surfaces could be filled by a meaning that arises in the projections of the beholder. The white shirt could be said to trade on a similar rejection of the meaning that comes from explicit marks (which is to say that it rejects direct contact and the ‘staining’ that might come from it) and in so doing it invites a more fluid and projective meaning to play out on its surface.

Fashion designer Tom Ford

While the white shirt excludes, it is also an acutely receptive and highly charged surface, readily available for perversion. As such the white shirt is a space full of potential. Fashion designer Tom Ford has made much use of the white shirt as a surface for projection. Ford himself appears almost always in a dazzlingly white shirt with an impeccable, perfect fit. When not sealed shut by a tie, the shirt is unbuttoned – just a tad too much. Flesh pushes its way forward, intruding on the pristine surface. The effect is, of course, highly calculated. Through that one-button-too-much cleavage, the exclusivity of the white shirt is turned from something pristine and untouchable, into something highly tangible: sex, desire and glamour.

Lucio Fontana’s ‘Concetto spaziale, Attesa’, 1964

Like Lucio Fontana’s white slash paintings might be said to oscillate between presentation and disruption (Is the slash a framed sign? Or a violation of the pristine surface? Is it vagina or wound?), Ford´s chest gash results in a similar ambiguity [3]. Does the aperture pose a vulgar display of flesh – a tarnish upon the pristine surface of the shirt? Or is the shirt conversely the mere background for the presentation of the splendour that is Ford’s body? This ambiguity is the very point. Ford weighs the poles of vulgar and exclusive against each other and comes up with an irresistible balance. In his white shirt, Ford’s body is both rarified, and a source of desire. Ford, fully aware of this tension, engineers it into a paradoxical lure of exclusion and invitation.

A scene in the film The Comfort of Strangers (dir. Paul Schrader, 1990) perfectly captures this logic of the white shirt as a paradoxical surface that excludes yet elicits projective desires. Rupert Everett’s character is drunkenly inquiring into his on-screen girlfriend’s perception of herself as a sexual object. She replies by turning the tables of objectification on him: ‘People aren’t talking about my thighs or my bottom…The whole damn restaurant is talking about your thighs and your bottom’. The film then cuts to a wider framing of the restaurant; Everett’s character obliviously at the centre of the frame in his brilliant white shirt. At the same time, people around him – men and women alike – strain their necks to look at him. Isolated and unselfconscious, he is the hub of projected sexual desires. The colour white is an underlying but consistent motif in the film, a symbol of both suppression and projection.

This brief trajectory through the theory and practice of the white shirt gives evidence of the tensions and procedures of this garment. In its pure, idealised form it arguably represents the epitome of exclusivity, yet it is through wear inevitably tarnished by the body. The white monochrome in art, as literary historian Anders Olsson pointed out at the beginning of this text, performs ‘a violent action that separates it out’ and in fashion the white shirt debatably fulfills the same function. The power of the white shirt is as strong as it is evocative – through it we claim authority over the discursive meaning of our own bodies.

1. See Plato’s theory of Forms. The ‘Platonic Form’ of an object is an impartial ‘blueprint’ of perfection and here refers to the white shirt in its ideal state, which, in order to maintain its pristine cleanliness, must ultimately exclude the body.
2. Monochrome painting is a significant component of avant-garde art in the twentieth century. As we understand it today monochrome painting is said to have begun in Moscow with Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition: White on White in 1918.
3. Tom Ford is himself a confirmed fan of Lucio Fontana. The visitor to his Madison Avenue store was once met by an eight-foot tall aluminum slash piece by Fontana. Ford thought the idea appropriate that a men’s store would, in his own words, “be designed around a vagina”. See Vanessa Grigoriadis, ‘Tom Ford After Sex’, in New York Magazine, May 29, 2007, http://nymag.com/nymag/features/32120/index2.html