Fashion Week has an interesting history with political spectacle as some shows send garments down the runway conscious of their cultural critique, while other shows are infiltrated by spect-actors in protest. Just this season, model Ayesha Tan Jones, staged a protest against Gucci’s straight-jacket inspired collection as they walked down the catwalk, hands held eye-level, with “mental health is not fashion” scrawled on their outward-facing palms in pen. The same London Fashion Week was commemorated by a staged die-in by climate campaign group Extinction Rebellion outside its venue, thrashing about in buckets of fake blood to symbolize the fashion industry’s role in the deterioration of life on earth as well as its negligent accountability towards a more sustainable model. And elsewhere, during Paris Fashion Week, comedian and performance artist Marie S’Infiltre crashed Chanel’s latest show in a vintage Chanel outfit (her grandmother’s), as a means to not only enliven the infamously serious affair, but also partake in a spectacle that promises glory, basking in the eternity of the Chanel brand. These examples act as critiques of an industry whose preservation depends on the constant reiteration and belief in itself.
All of the mentioned spect-actors take on the role of party crasher, breaching an assembly by satirizing the imaginary borders installed around the spectacle. However, my interest is in Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty Show, a political spectacle in its own right that did not seek to exclude, but instead invited all of us to crash the esteemed party of Fashion Week.
If fashion shows hope to inspire possibilities in its spect-actors, then one that strives for inclusivity should facilitate an entrance point of empathy everyone can align themselves with. Rather than encouraging a prohibited breach of spectacle, it encourages self-actualization through socialization; it is equity in action, spilling off the catwalk and into the capacities of the individual.
Art executed through performance is innately political for it displays the potential for radical transformation. Boal contends that if art is to be sovereign, then it should deal with all humans, their actions (or inactions), as well as what is done to them. Performance spectacle accomplishes this through a catharsis of the senses that depicts a correction of humanity; in a purposeful alteration, a new way of orienting the body is enacted and there is potential for the viewer to find emancipation.
Performatic theatre is often called an artistic form of coercion. The spectacle of Fashion Week is a great example of placing commodities on display in artistic sequence. This is essential if we are to agree with Brecht that theatre in the scientific age should strive for the joys of liberation; liberation from the confines of history; liberation from present conformities of daily life; liberation from precarious potentials of the future. Thus, theatre begs its actors to move in the style of a man who wonders as opposed to the man who knows the truth. Judging performance through issues of true/false or those of being/pretend becomes futile; what gives these mediated acts their effectiveness is in their affectations, or even more precisely, the inspiring potential in the emotional weight of their movements.
That being said, Brecht would not want us to ignore the contradictions of our given world when tempting this intersection. This season’s Savage x Fenty is cognizant of Brecht’s appeal, so, unlike the initial acts of protest described here, this political spectacle strives to deconstruct the fashion show format rather than puncture its beloved iterations. In this way, it establishes a new world of expression that is not totally dismissive of the power structures it critiques, but instead works within its bounds of artifice, simultaneously challenging its norms and expectations.
The show introduces new performatic possibilities for a fashion show by highlighting the brand’s inclusive ambitions and blowing them up in a colorful display of lingerie, sleepwear, dance, and song. Interestingly, the audacity of this political spectacle makes each choreographed song or dance number seem more like performance of protest, seamlessly oriented around a multiplicity of body types and gender identities marching before a fashion world that does not typically champion their body or existence. Thus, Fenty x Savage reasons with the idea of fashion as a protection from human nature’s more restrictive tendencies in an attempt to promote modern nature (and all its inconsistencies) at its most cathartic.
If we consider Arendt, political action can only take place on the condition that the human body makes an appearance. In being witnessed, various perspectives concerning the body depend on such displacement in order to establish coherence. Butler contends that this is how political action persists- the space in between actors. The emancipation we feel does not emit from the individual, but the relation among individuals. Thus, political revolution by way of spectacle cannot be commenced by a single instance, but by the radical solidarity of the “us.” Both Arendt and Butler concur that human dignity is championed by social relations that strive towards acceptance in the name of equality.
Butler adds that, “The claim of equality…is made precisely when bodies appear together, or, rather, when, through their action, they bring the space of appearance into being. This space is a feature and effect of action, and it works, according to Arendt, only when relations of equality are maintained” (Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, p. 88-89). The life that emits from a body, although it may not be as readily apparent as a garment, must still seek out means of perseverance, especially when it is at odds with a domineering hegemony. Such queered conditions of perseverance inevitably depend on sociality, and in turn, ask for radical reorganization of established mores in order to carve out space to thrive. In light of this, I ask: If fashion has become a means of simultaneous protection and expression, notably for minoritarian subjects who are disenfranchised by the industries’ historicized limitations, then it is in turn a political sphere where we should not only make room for such bodies to exist, but also make this a paramount objective, in the name of equality for all.
By opening up the fashion discourse to include traditionally excluded bodies in a realm that champions political post-structuralism, Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty Show aims to provide a forgotten (or disposable) population within the confines of fashion a right to be seen. This generosity of the human spirit is exemplified by the opening moments of the show, where the pop star and mogul takes center stage on a platform surrounded by other dancers; she is not alone, even though her larger than life persona almost calls for her alienation. Instead, she concedes to the role of conductor, facilitating an assembly that is not all about her, but in fact all about us.
Keywords: “Equity,” “Aesthetics,” “Empathy”