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When I was a fashionable young man in the city (admittedly some time ago), there was a trend called heroin chic.
All the models had to look like they were recovering from (or about to have) an overdose, sprawled on musty old sofas or stained mattresses in cutting-edge industrial estates, or slumped in pools of unidentifiable liquid in dimly lit nightclub bathrooms.
It was an ‘avant-garde’ aesthetic that glorified and exalted a nihilistic and hedonistic subculture. While desolate, glassy-eyed waifs littered the catwalks with their bruised, stick-thin legs, fashion houses grew fat on prestige.
The clothing itself—the cut, the craftsmanship, the haute couture—was almost irrelevant. What mattered was the identity, the attitude.
But a lot of people, including me, were very uncomfortable with this. We thought it was weird and sick that fashion would glorify, maybe even encourage, things like substance abuse, addiction, and eating disorders.
sarah vine
Of course, we were written off as hopelessly old-fashioned for saying that, but I’ve met plenty of people over the years who have battled those demons, and there’s nothing glamorous about it.
It didn’t stop the fashion industry from shamelessly selling this look as the epitome of chic, taking advantage of the neurosis of an entire generation and selling it as a lifestyle.
Thirty-odd years later, and not much seems to have changed. Fashion seems to be exploiting vulnerable people for profit, only this time it’s not about drug use or eating disorders, but about gender identity and trans culture.
Take a recent social media post from British brand Burberry as an example. It features a topless, heavily tattooed trans man, his mastectomy scars proudly on display, embracing a partner of indeterminate gender with a partially shaved head.
It is a raw photograph, quite somber. No one looks very happy. The red welts on the man’s chest appear irregular and painful. The duo’s haircuts are stark and extreme. It is, in every way, the opposite of an image designed to show real fashion.
In fact, clothing and jewelry are a mere afterthought in this impeccably awake and gender-fluid cadre of modern diversity.
Its only real function is to provoke: sympathy, confusion, shock, perhaps even anger. In my case, an eye-rolling disbelief at the levels of cynicism on display. Because I don’t think there is anything sincere or real about this image, just cultural vampirism.
It seems to me that these people are being exploited, not celebrated.
SARAH VINE: “A recent social media post from British brand Burberry shows a heavily tattooed topless trans man, his mastectomy scars showing, embracing a partially shaven partner of indeterminate gender.”
They, and their experience as individuals, are being used for no other reason than to polish the brand’s wake-up credentials.
I understand that such things are important in the modern media landscape. But is gender dysphoria really an appropriate area for marketing? Is it right for a brand like Burberry to seek to monetize, which is, of course, the purpose of publicity, trauma, and the struggles of trans people? Burberry would argue that by displaying such ‘inclusivity’ it is supporting and validating trans people.
I would respectfully say the opposite.
This is transplotation, pure and simple. An appropriation of the trans experience that, far from validating it, belittles it.
Because while gender dysphoria is nothing to be ashamed of, it’s also not just some brilliantly simple lifestyle choice that anyone can try for a while and then throw away.
It is a serious, difficult and often very traumatic process that deserves to be treated with the utmost respect and seriousness, not reduced to a cheap publicity campaign.
How many vulnerable and impressionable young women will see this and think that a double mastectomy is something to aspire to, like a new pair of shoes or a handbag? It trivializes and cheapens an important and complex issue.
Social media users strongly criticized Burberry’s post.
It’s not unlike what Calvin Klein did last year with another cultural hot potato, obesity. Of course, CK has form in this realm: shock has always been the brand’s first tactic when it comes to capturing the public’s attention.
Just think of those Brooke Shields ads from the early 1980s, in which the then-15-year-old actress would ask, “Want to know what comes between me and my Calvins?” Nothing.’
In the 1990s, the brand filmed a series of television commercials that resembled pornographic casting shoots, in which a gruff-voiced interviewer invited barely post-adolescent men and women to play on-camera for him. They were later banned.
In 2019, Calvin Klein decided to latch on to the ‘body positivity’ trend, using plus-size models to advertise underwear in the name of ’empowerment’. ‘I speak my truth in my #calvins’ was the catchphrase. It was an attempt to jump on the diversity bandwagon that was as transparent as it was tacky.
But then, vulgar seems to define the modern haute couture landscape, from Balenciaga, which launched a campaign last year featuring little boys dressed in S&M bondage gear with a side of pedophilia, to publicity-hungry people like the 27 year old model. Old American rapper Doja Cat, who made her grand front-row entrance at the Schiaparelli show this week, covered herself from head to toe in red sequins.
Naturally, her look was hailed as a “trump” by fashionistas.
If you ask me, it looked like a large and exquisitely uncomfortable hemorrhoid.
We all understand that couture is about pushing boundaries. But there is a fine line between provocation and exploitation.
The trans experience is not a clothing advertising vehicle, any more than eating disorders or mental health issues are chic.
It is about time the fashion industry took a hard look at itself and took responsibility for what it is selling.