The Released Pressure Valve: Power and Counter-Power Dynamics in Fashion.

Fashion has always been about conflict. Starting as a way of protection, it quickly became a vessel to showcase class, privileges, power and belonging to a community, setting up clashes between people who were included or excluded by those codes. With red, blue and purple being historically expensive colours to obtain with die and therefore, were reserved for royalty as a way to state their wealth and status. Fashion developed all around the globe in various codes and trends as a way of communication and belonging.

Touching its peak in Europe at the court of the Roi Soleil (“Sun King”), Louis XVI in France, where fast-changing and eccentric fashion trends were set up by the king to prove his power over his subjects and challenge their social status and loyalty. This spectacle of opulence and excessive fashion became unbearable evidence of the class divide between the starving French people and the court itself, resulting in simmering tensions and eventually in the French Revolution. After that, a shift appeared in the modern dress code where being dressed modestly, specifically for men and wealthy ones, became a standard. Eccentric parure was only used back then on women as an object of display of their family or husband’s wealth.

Moving forward, dressing flamboyantly for men, has gradually been reclaimed, largely by queers and alternative communities as a way to counter traditional masculinity and social rules. Women’s wardrobe on the other side, after several waves of feminism fighting for their civil and human rights, evolved accordingly through the years, revolutions and backlashes. One can follow the revolutions only by looking at the woman’s garment: freeing their bodies by getting rid of the corset in the 1910s, to the Garconne of the 1920s assuming an androgynous figure, burning their bra in the 1980s… Today’s movements have women reclaiming feminine code such as the bimbo, on the margin of the comeback of the trophy wife, and embracing traditional feminine artefacts in an empowered way, whether it is through the corset, obnoxious fake nails or high heels. In this way, whether you want it or not, fashion has always been about making statements (cf Devil Wear Prada and the iconic blue cerulean scene).

With political, social, and economic shifts always impacting our ways of dressing, with the garment at the forefront of counter-culture and fascist uprisings, fashion remains a fascinating sociological tool for reading about our society. Indeed, as the codes were being structured historically by royalty and the upper class, power within garments shifted in the last century through social revolution and access to social media from the upper class to minorities. With counter-culture holding increasing importance in trend-setting, outcasts were now defining what was “cool” or not. Following this interest for the mainstream to get edgy, or at least perform this edge, the fashion industry shifted in the late 90s from rich family-owned businesses to huge conglomerates owned by a couple of wealthy businessmen putting star designers from diverse social backgrounds at the head of the art direction of those powerful houses. For the first time, stories were starting to be told by working-class creatives and then later on by POC, queer and alternate designers, broadening the mainstream horizons on what could be seen as beautiful but also bringing the

political storytelling related to those identities to the forefront of the cultural discussion.

Vivienne Westwood and her disruptive Sex boutique in Soho in the 1980s, expanded into a huge powerful fashion house and a major cultural reference. Having inspired so many young designers, eager to change the industry and promote freedom through their clothing, she participated in creating this vision of the industry as a fun, rebellious, empowering realm. With fashion design being seen as “The Most Beautiful Job in the World”, the researcher Giulia Mensitieri explains how fashion has now developed this imagery where minorities and misfits could exist, thrive celebrate their uniqueness and difference within this industry. Sadly, with the reality of fashion also being “capitalism’s favourite child” led by a couple of white wealthy men, one must also question the relevance in the long term of fashion storytelling to shift people’s perspectives. Indeed, while it feeds this highly polluting industry, giving always more money and more workforce to those men at the top of the food chain, one could also argue it finally allows our storytelling, life and struggle as minorities and counter-culture to be domesticated, commercialised and invisibilized. Vivienne Westwood herself looked back on the 80s and confessed that punk was nothing but a released pressure valve for people in the UK to bear living in a country in crisis and became a scapegoat for the fascist Thatcher government. Indeed, with Vivienne Westwood dead and her brand striped out its real political drive, making fashion catwalks mimicking ecological protest while outsourcing garment workers’ labour on the other side of the world, one can wonder how we can truly shift the paradigm and allow this powerful industry to send the right messages in the right way.

With so many creatives joining each year the industry with the hope to revolutionise fashion and the desire to show their unique perspective on the world, I think we are starting to realise representation and storytelling aren’t good enough anymore for achieving social revolution. Indeed, as the last generation of designers already did that work representing different bodies, cultures and counter-cultures on the podium, we also discovered the meaning of cultural appropriation and what it creates when only one group of people are privileged enough to tell everyone’s stories. Whether it has been an important work, helping the younger generation to embrace fluidity within the way of expressing themselves through garments, it also has damaged minorised groups by exploiting their carefully developed means of self-expression, making them less visible - built on their creativity and identity. Indeed, with codes of the oppressed population being re-appropriated by groups in power, wearing those highly charged symbols without having to suffer any of the reality that minorities face can be extremely harmful. Whether it’s a hairstyle loaded with racial discrimination or a ‘feminine’ garment feared for disrupting the patriarchy, what one person finds to be a fun look, another can find to be an emblem of their mistreatment. In this light, we can all wonder if it’s to our advantage to shift everyone’s access to diverse garment styles or if what we need to work on first is fixing that inequality so we can then share culture from a place of equity and not domination.

Let’s take a look at this: 4 people out of 5 working in the industry all around the globe are women but all the decisions are being made by a couple of men spread in the few European fashion capitals. This means there is indeed so much untapped potential in shifting this industry to something that is so much better for everyone and has a massive impact on people and the planet. The struggle is: the industry is so competitive, always looking for new talents, trends, cheaper garments ect. and young designers with almost no economic support are bearing the burden of this sick industry while groups like Shein and Boohoo are thriving from copying them and exploiting even more garment workers around the globe. With key leverage being: achieving decent pay for all workers, empowering diverse communities all the scale of the making processes and creating goods that limit the damage to the planet, the pressure young designers trying to take on challenges big brands will disregard is insane. And even not looking at this, so many previous experiences from star designers cherished by the industry showcase the hardship of the industry. From Alexander McQueen killed himself in 2010 after being crushed by this soul-eating system, Galliano being kicked out of Dior after suffering from serious mental health struggle and severe addictions leading to problematic behaviour in 2011, Virgile Ablo dying from cancer in 2021 while at the post of Art Director for Louis Vuitton. While one might wonder if this level of struggle only exists within the higher sphere of the industry, the reality of designers who haven’t made it to the spotlight is still as violent, if not more. Having to cumulate several jobs to hope to sustain a living in those European fashion capitals, often far from their homes and families, having to work for free on collaborations or for other designers - burnout and mental struggle is a frightening shadow following workers at every scale of the industry. And when we realise that even the designer that made it to the top only stays those days for an average of two collections at the Art Direction of those big fashion brands before being replaced by some other star designers, one might wonder what perspective we are really chasing.

With a couple of independent brands showing how we could do things differently: from Sinead O’Dwyer designing technical clothing for true unapologetic inclusivity, to Bethany Williams working with NGO to empower diverse social groups by sharing their storytelling and being part of the making process, Marvin M’Toumo sharing his high fashion brand through political theatre performances and working with a close-knit team to unpack power relation within the industry, Botter sharing their Caribbean heritage and the political struggle related to it in the catwalk while working with artisans from back home. Diverse fashion groups such as Fashion East, Flair Fashion and HiFi are also giving a stage for new, smaller, more diverse brands and designers to get in the light of the Fashion Weeks and challenge this industry relying on cultural privileges and generational wealth.

As those were the only positive examples I could think of in therm of fashion design and I couldn’t find a silver lining in this essay to soften this harsh statement on fashion, I believe no essay in the world will make people stop wearing garments and designer stop dreaming to “make it in the fashion industry”. In this way, and as it will always be creatives looking at finding solutions to challenge the status quo without feeding this beast, I believe radical honesty and collective upbringing are the only drives we can focus on toward shifting little by little this capitalist industry and society overall. With traditional fashion thriving on opacity and the making of the dream to keep the machine rolling, the only way that is left for us to threaten the system is by breaking the silence regarding all the harmful structures put into place for this industry to thrive, against the people that feed it. Tell the truth, break the “fake it until you make it rules”, help each other thrive and research solutions collectively will be our only salvation. Indeed, if fashion isn’t anything but social cement before it is stolen by capitalism, our last barricade as young political designers will be feeding our one community, cultivating local joys, researching lasting solutions and sharing our findings, whether it is success or hardship.

We deserve a better system, we deserve to collect the fruit of our hustle and this new generation of designers will be about showing them how it’s done.

By Marie Schaller for issue 2 of The Grey.