editor-in-grief

Some have even claimed her as a non-binary icon, though that's very much up for debate. While Hatshepsut happily raided the masculine side of the royal wardrobe and blurred gender expectations, most historians see it as a calculated political strategy rather than evidence of a non-binary identity. But who knows.

Even when designers are intending to challenge the status quo, anti-fashion by design can unintentionally be pro-fashion in fact, as cumulatively, it conjures the illusion that big fashion can fix itself. Ultimately, big fashion reinforces the competitive scarcity mindset born out of breaking of communal bonds. It promotes materiality, rather than collective participation, as the solution to our need for belonging and acceptance.

Was blown away by this ensemble by Yohji Yamamoto (SS1997) which is on show right now as part of the Weaving, Embroidering, Embellishing. The crafts and traits of fashion exhibition at the Palais Galliera in Paris.

(Citated from Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion)

"...stains, the seeping of liquid onto cloth, are evidence that something once was, indexes of actions performed. Though stains can, of course, be intentional (the very word a synonym for dye), most often we think of these marks as accidents, 'a slip of the hand or failure to keep the edges of the body schema in check,' the ways we mark and are marked as we interact with the objects which surround us. Though the substances which leave these marks (wine, coffee, lipstick, toothpaste) may not be in themselves inherently abject, their presence on our garments can be profoundly affecting, revealing our inability to move through the world unscathed. The potentially disruptive nature of these everyday marks stem, in part, from the fact that they are what anthropologist Mary Douglas would term 'matter out of place'; things which cross binaries and trouble the conceptual oppositions we use to organise our worlds. As things which are not where they should be, 'stains make visible both ethical and social missteps (e.g. grass stains on skirts and lipstick on collars) and that which should remain within the body: sweat, blood, semen, tears.