The dressed and styled human body is irresistible to analyse. Framed by the idea that people’s dress and engagement with Fashion is a fundamental component of how we all conceive, create and convey personal and shared histories, the following ‘mini-essays’ are my attempt to unpick the cultural threads that hold our wardrobes together. Aide-mémoires, tongue-in-cheek, discursive, works-in-progress, I began writing them in 2013 in the spirit of Roland Barthes’ Mythologies and Umberto Eco’s Travels in Hyper Reality, although rarely with the same perspicacity, precision and pace.
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56. The Vogue (Harry Styles) shoot
Harry Styles’s photoshoot for the December issue of US Vogue is noteworthy for two reasons. It is the first time the magazine has featured a solo male on its cover, and Styles is adorned in androgynous garments. The images have gained global attention, sparking an inevitable surge in social media reposting, and triggering a fairly predictable backlash…
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55. The Face Mask (3)
The following is an extended version of an article that was commissioned for The Conversation. Before a bruise-coloured backdrop, Lady Gaga and Arianna Grande performed a medley of Chromatica II and Rain on Me at MTV’s recent VMAs. Gyrating in purple and black, the singers’ costumes were distinctive for including face masks. Gaga’s mouth covering, possibly…
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54. The Face Mask (2)
An edited version of this post originally appeared on 24 July 2020 as an op-ed for Manchester Metropolitan University, here. On 24 October 1918, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors ordered the city’s inhabitants to wear a face mask in public. Violators of this instruction would be punished with fines of between $5 and $100, ten…
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53. The TED Talk
The more I thought about the tragedy, even cynicism, of Alan Turing’s posthumous appreciation, the more I became aware of just how many marginalised people have ended up making a social impact that is positively disproportionate to their status among their contemporaries.
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52. The Pop Sculptor
Jeff Koons’ Balloon Venus seems at once dominant and diminutive in the space it occupies within the Ashmolean Museum. This is a large, attention-seeking bulbous structure, fashioned from polished magenta-coloured stainless steel. It stands 2.5 metres tall. It weighs nearly 1.5 tons. It possesses all of the awesomeness of the, admittedly much smaller, age-old fertility…
Dr Benjamin Wild 