Fuck Fashion, Too.
Some Thoughts on Misogyny in the Institution of Fashion as a Substrate of Colonial Culture Production, Replication, and Enforcing
This was all inspired by my poem, Heterosexual Fashion Boys which is from my forthcoming zine, GODDESS III. I’d like it to be a book, actually — not a zine. But we’ll see what happens. You can read the poem here for context.
I have always had a love of sartorial aesthetics. My mom went to FIT and I grew up reading Complex Magazine because my brother collected it (along with magazines like The Source, XXL, Don Diva, etc.). We would watch How to Make It In America on Sunday nights and I resonated deeply with Cam & Ben’s hunger and drive to create a streetwear brand. I wanted to be like Factory Girl — not like Edie Sedgwick but NYLON’s Dani Stahl. Back then magazines, journalism, and blogs still mattered. Probably because I’m neurodivergent, I didn’t understand why the other people who were interested in streetwear (and of course, hip hop) as a culture (mainly cis men) did not engage with me like a peer. I got the sense that they did not respect my ideas or my knowledge and even perhaps felt threatened by it.
Here I thought I had found my intellectual equals, those who felt passionately about the same things I did but instead I was treated as other and less than. This was true in other subcultures I existed in, too, including ones based on music (especially rock), nerd fandoms, and film. I was baffled by the fact that that men who dressed badly and had poor taste got more respect than I did, but I do now. This is only because I have spent the past year or so studying the gender relations of cis people and have accepted that although it makes no sense and is completely dehumanizing, it is what it is and I just have to deal with that as best I can.
Even though I knew all of the culturally appropriate subject matter, it wouldn’t make a difference. Not because I’m neurodivergent but because I am in a female body, because I am feminine, and perhaps most of all because they’re attracted to me. And apparently cis people have to objectify and other people of other genders in order to have sexual or romantic relationships with them? It’s all very strange & convoluted. Probably because it’s made up. It makes more sense to me to honor someone’s humanity, but hey — I don’t make the rules. Thankfully, however, I do now know them.
Anyway, I no longer have interest in being peers with cis men (or cis people at all, really). In 2020, I met this guy (a model and now designer) at a New Years party in South Deptford, London and we remained as what I thought were friends for some years after. I say I thought we were friends because he’s the kind of guy that stops chatting you when he’s got a girlfriend, which I guess is a form of respect for the girlfriend although I think it’s actually really rude to me. In the end I realized that that means he doesn’t actually see me as a friend but someone he is saving for when the time is right to have sex.
Unfortunately, I haven’t traveled internationally since lockdown but probably for the better because maybe then I would have finally yielded to his advances and hooked up with him. Although he’s not my usual type, he still fell within the range and also I thought he was hilarious so I very much looked forward to hanging out next time I was in London. That will never happen, though, because when he started his fashion brand (which I won’t name), he stole the design for my Diosa jacket.
Everyone knows my aesthetic — candy colors, ornamentation, glitter, whimsy, PINK! Everyone has seen the jacket in question multiple times, and it is pictured here for your reference.
Tell me why, then, did he debut a dyed-pink denim jacket of the same exact hue and form with yellow rhinestones the same exact color on the back? Out of respect he had never actually earned, I gave him the benefit of the doubt to rectify the situation but when I confronted him about it, he of course claimed that it must have been some sort of fluke. Perhaps I would have believed this had he not liked every photo of me wearing the jacket. The jacket that I hand dyed and painted and bejeweled for days — there are literal Reels on my Instagram page of me making the jacket in my studio at art school.
The Diosa jacket was not just an accessory — it was an actual fine art assemblage that exists within the canon of my practice as a fine artist. Spray paint, rhinestones, flat-back half pearls, allusions to pop cultural media… I went into debt to work with renowned artist so that I could hone the thesis statement of artistic ethos and this person made a cheap recreation that would never carry within the same subversively anti-colonial, iconoclastic spirit that the piece I spent weeks if not months working on does. There is magick in my jacket, whereas theirs is a casual replica.
I have to now name that this person is a white cis male who is signed to an agency and has walked for Saint Laurent in Paris Men’s Fashion Week on Hedi’s personal request a number of times. This is not a flex for me because that actually has nothing to do with me. He has a personal and professional relationship with Hedi; not me. It’s more to say that he has insider access to the means of production in the fashion world and I do not. And what was he offering me beyond to crash at his house when I come to London so he could f*ck me? Not much, I reckon. Meanwhile his very proximity to me at all still ended up being fruitful for him since he ended up stealing my ideas…
People like me — gendered as women, assigned female at birth, embodying high (and even at times hyper) femininity, radicalized as Black — are allowed to be muses. We are allowed to be inspiration. But because the colonial structure that undergirds this social system is one built on the pillars of aspiritualism; cisheteropatriarchy; anti-indigeneity, anti-Blackness, white domination, and racism; capitalism; and industrialism, we rarely get the keys to the kingdom. We have to accept that the gatekeepers who fall within the right identity markers will often rebuff and reproach us for even attempting to step out of the role they have created for us as biological machinery to be passed from man (father) to man (boyfriend or husband) as property. We have to accept that we will face myriad forms of disrespect from less talented, less creative people who could never even fathom and iota of our genius but who are applauded for their ability to replicate mediocrity again and again while doubling down on enforcing the violence of the superstructure. And we have to accept that it is a true miracle if there is any justice whatsoever.
Fashion as an institution & industry that exploits people assigned female at birth (AFAB) and who are gendered as women (PGAW) and it is dominated by cis men. Regardless of sexual orientation, these men (& the women who are complicit) create a dangerous & toxic system of misogyny that spills straight into our everyday lives. Any sign of autonomy and agency in a PGAW is demonized. Association w femininity is dangerous and that combination can be lethal. For this reason (and many others), fashion is directly linked to the crises of femicide & domestic violence.
I think that’s crap. But like I said — I didn’t make the rules. I’m just accepting the game for what it is. The opps will be people who look like you, identify the same as you, have similar experiences to you, as well as those who don’t. But when you’re Awake in the game and you can stand up and get a bird’s eye view at the scene at your feet, you might realize that some people are really fine fulfilling the role that the designers of the game have laid out for them. And some of us are not. Some of us are seeking sovereignty. Some of us are seeking the keys to the kingdom. And perhaps you’ll find that joining up with those rare few who See not with their eyes but with their Heart, those who are in this world but not of it simply makes more sense than squandering any of your time with people who are either unwilling or simply unable to consciously co-create their world with any real accountability. It may not look as glamorous or chummy as a false life and shiny reality but… who the f*ck wants chum anyway?