Dear reader, Transport yourself to 100 years ago in Italy. Go ahead, pack a bag, but don’t bother packing any black or brown shirts. Your welcoming committee is Benito Mussolini himself. His Roman Empire? The Roman Empire. His aspirations? To resurrect an Italian Empire amidst global economic and political instability by any means necessary. In …
There is a distinctive sound coming from some of fashion and pop culture’s biggest faces today. It is the delicate clinking — or sometimes, the deeper clanging — of a stack of bangles.
The theme’s usage of the word lexicon is ironically apt, considering that the majority of the looks that ascended the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s steps require some sort of tool other than fashion as language to decode their substance and raison d’être. Perhaps a better theme for the amalgamation of fabric and stitches donned that night would be: “In America: A Lexicon of Confusion and Calamity”.
The tug-of-war between wanting to dress in traditional feminine attire and desiring the same respect their male colleagues gain from wearing suits is a battle that has been fought since the days of Joan of Arc.
Being deemed fashionable relies on outside perceptions of your clothing. How do you look wearing those Nike shorts? Do they make your butt perky? Are they, God forbid, stained? As society progresses, one’s clothing becomes less about intrinsic comfort and more about the desire for external validation.