Lifestyles

Outfits as Expression

Remember, back in 2015, the #AskHerMore campaign, in which red carpet hosts were urged to treat the actresses they interviewed as women of substance, and that was defined as focusing not on what they wore, but on what they did? The premise being that what they wore was a mere decorative trifle — superficial, frivolous, not thought through — hence not really worthy of discussion, and to talk about it was to demean the purpose of the woman inside.

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By
VANESSA FRIEDMAN
, New York Times

Remember, back in 2015, the #AskHerMore campaign, in which red carpet hosts were urged to treat the actresses they interviewed as women of substance, and that was defined as focusing not on what they wore, but on what they did? The premise being that what they wore was a mere decorative trifle — superficial, frivolous, not thought through — hence not really worthy of discussion, and to talk about it was to demean the purpose of the woman inside.

I’ve been hearing it again, a lot, with the recent vocalization of women in Hollywood, the Time’s Up and #MeToo movements, and the call to wear black at the Golden Globe Awards.

We’ve had these discussions at The New York Times. After all, it’s impossible to be someone who thinks about the messaging of what we all wear and not have been drowned occasionally under a chorus of furious social media commentary that can be summed up as: Who cares what (fill in the blank) wore? Think about their actions, not their outfits!

Yet in so many of those instances, the outfit is actually an expression, or a reflection, of the action. To ignore it is to miss part of the point. It’s not rising above, it’s turning a blind eye. And hasn’t that, in this case, been the problem all along?

By choosing to wear all black, the women of Hollywood (and now men, though to be fair, men announcing their solidarity by wearing black tuxedos, or even black tuxedos with black shirts, most recently a style chosen to denote the hipness of the wearer, is a little like a tree falling in the woods) aren’t taking fashion off the table. They are putting it at the very center of the table.

Whatever you think of the choice of color or the fact the actresses are wearing effectively the same gowns — sparkly, lacy, mermaid-y, princess-y — they wore before, just in a darker shade; and whether or not you approve of it as a gesture, the fact is women in Hollywood have finally woken up to a reality activists have known for years. That is: Clothes speak as loudly as many words, and they can be weaponized accordingly. They have finally seized control (or at least semicontrol) of their own image making.

And that means now is exactly when we should be paying attention to what they wear — which is not the same thing as crowing about who made it, or rating it on a scale of one to 10. That’s just advertising and insecurity.

It also means we should be paying attention to what actresses wear next: at the series of awards shows that follows the Globes and culminates with the Oscars. Publicists have already started whispering that there aren’t enough black dresses in all of fashion to make this statement more than once, and it’s a Globes thing: a way to start the year, at what has traditionally been a more flexible event than the more formal bids that come later.

But if the women and men involved are serious about this — if they want it to be read as more than a gesture, and convincingly seem like the start of something new — it has to have follow-through. Maybe they all wear red to the SAG-Aftra awards (that could be a little “Handmaid’s Tale”). Maybe the women all wear pantsuits. Maybe they wear short dresses instead of gowns. Maybe the men wear the skirts. It’s up to them. The point is, having begun to ask more of their clothes, they need to keep doing it.

Then, on the red carpet or off, we can ask more, too.

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