Who is anything for? The fashion audience has grown diffuse. Any given fashion item is now given a sort of plausible deniability as being potentially for a wide range of wearers. Exclusionary exorbitance, either in price or wildness of design, seem to be the only aspect of fashion that separates what is designed for who. This is equalizing at a cost. At one time, Vivienne Westwood’s Seditionaries would have been designed primarily for a London punk scene, Chanel would be for the Parisian or European elite, and Supreme was for the insider New York Skater world - these were regional designs for specific types. Globalization has ensured that any given brand, from LVMH titans to online-boutiquey independents are forced to design for “types“ that span continents.
The most modern iteration of this type is the Miu Miu girl. Miu Miu had the foundation of its 90s heyday, and Miuccia is a compelling enough storyteller to present the narrative that this ’90s girl “grew up“. Now, this ageless type attends Uni, is vaguely pre-professional yet too down to earth to be a girlboss, and seems like a real reflection of how a sect of young people actually dress. In Pedro Almodovar’s 2021 Parallel Mothers, Milena Smit plays the young and rebellious Ana and dons a spectacular Miu Miu track jacket. Here is a Miu Miu girl in the flesh, an articulation of a type as striking and natural as Hepburn in Givenchy.
Even this moment, which seems to “prove“ that the modern Miu Miu girl does seem to exist, we are countered with fascinating acts of discordance with this type. Enter the infamous Miu Miu set, which last year swept the moodboards of celebrity stylists and the dreams of would-be It girls everywhere. Zendaya wore it. Nicole Kidman wore it. Hailey Bieber and Squid Game star Lee Yoo-mi wore it in the same campaign. Miu Miu was subsumed by the viral, vacated of its specificity in return for a global “look“ that some went so far as to call a meme. The look tore Miu Miu away from its subservience to its type, and even before the popularity of the set the brand began focussing on developing plainer and plainer garments that drew the eye to chest pocket logos. In other words, Miu Miu was trying to retain its ability to dress its signature “girl“ while also participating in the logo-driven, globalized fashion market, and trend cycle. It is unclear how long this balance can remain.
Then again, Miu Miu is but a sublabel of Miuccia’s Prada alongside Linea Rossa (Prada Sport). Essentially, the Miu Miu girl is but one character in Miuccia’s realm of audiences for the three brands, Prada being the Miu Miu girl’s “adult“ and less specific iteration and Linea Rossa catering to an even more scattered gorp-core sensibility. While there was a time when Prada Sport meant something in Hip Hop, celebrities devoutly wore head-to-toe Prada (Willem Defoe often does), and Miu Miu became synonymous with 90’s chic, each brand participates in its own scattering of messages and meanings. In this sense, these brands begin speaking to everyone and no one. Miu Miu girls are relegated to pure fantasy because they can and would just as easily wear Prada or Prada Sport. Production dilutes all.
The way in which fashion constructs identities is part of what makes its fantasies so alluring, its promise of reconstructing so personal. And yet, identity has fractured in the internet age. The subculture has waned, the stereotype has fractured, and the accessibility of information and art has eroded previous boundaries of who could consume what.
When I was a high schooler, it was the promise of what Golf le Fleur could transport me to that made me wear and desire it, yet I staunchly rejected any idea that I could be defined solely by Golf. Alternatively, Supreme promised identities and transformations that made me explicitly avoid the brand - no matter how I wore it, in 2017-18 Supreme was impossible to decontextualize. Nowadays, Golf Wang offers an identity discordant with me while Supreme’s signification has (in its partial decline) grown more diverse and refined. The intelligence of the Miu Miu girl’s design is that she grows just as we grow, shifting in influences and ideologies; experimenting as we experiment. Still, she is grounded by type in a way that is now archaic - Miu Miu’s inability to commit solely to her tastes confirms this. So, what is the future of the imaginary fashion subject? Have globalization and capitalism killed them recently, or did these systems doom their fate from the start?
Last year, System magazine published a series of features on Rick Owens. A highlight was undoubtedly a section in which fans of the designer sent in pictures of themselves alongside questions for Owens, which he answered. Many have spoken about the fact that Owens is one of the few remaining designers who can encourage adherents into dressing solely in his clothes, who will purchase anything he makes and wear it devotedly. This feature shows the breadth of that base, from the queers and divas Owens fauns over and compliments specifically to the handful of hypebeasts whose wall of Rick boots and sneakers help fund his experiments. In this interplay Owens sacrifices none of his philosophical punch, it’s simply an aesthetic that easily migrates between a sea of types.
Rick Owens is an anomaly among his contemporaries - rarely are designers of his sensibility able to corral their audience so succinctly while meeting the financial requirements to experiment or function. Perhaps that is why my response to this phenomenon is somewhat cynical (I have yet to wear one of Owens’ garments). I wonder about the notion of distaste, about the limit to one’s breadth of Owens obsession, and where the line is for one of these fans. What do they buy when they see a show they hate? Are they “allowed“ to dislike their auteur?
Amidst these questions I think of two favorite designers of mine: Junya Watanabe and Jun Takahashi. Both designers have almost always catered to wearers internationally, and have used distinctive sub-labels to do so. Like Owens, both designers are aesthetic manipulators who create from interior obsession. Their products are cohesive, but unlike Owens defined more in their individual set of references than adherence to one aesthetic or type - they are designed to be individually and independently interesting. In other words, it is easier to find products from these designers that look or seem outside their “usual“ work, and their work is altogether harder to codify.
This creates far more room for distaste, an experience I have had often this SS23 season. Watanabe loves using American workwear and casualwear as a canvas for art and experimentation, he loves patchwork, and he often enjoys enlarged or otherwise odd graphic elements. For Spring 2023, that meant juxtaposing 60’s and 90’s pop art with modern brands to a dizzying and often tasteless effect. Commentators enjoyed scoffing at multi-hundred dollar Netflix hats, which to me are only truly egregious when paired with Basquiat shirts (Basquiat famously never wanted his work reproduced in this way). The collection looks as if the Broad gift shop did runway. It’s bad.
Takahashi’s collection is better, it’s full of zippered blazers, flaming plaids, and some of his best graphics in the last few seasons, but buyers seemed most attracted to his Pink Floyd collaboration. It isn’t strange to see Takahashi using his favorite music as a graphic subject for knitwear and outerwear, but the idea of wearing a Dark Side of the Moon trenchcoat seems cringey even in my most earnest of moods.
And yet, looking at these coats I realize I greatly prefer Takahashi’s graphic work for CAN and Television. Looking at Watanabe’s, I see the beauty in his normal patchwork, and his more literary-inclined blazers and tee shirts from SS21. These experiments are localized to each runway show, but to love these designers is to love their interpretation of worlds that can be personal to us. Takahashi’s SS06 collection lives on my phone background and in my mind always - I could care less about AW01’s “DAVF”. I would do terrible things for a Watanabe Carhartt, but find his multi-hundred dollar Carhartt tee just terrible. The result is a fantasy that places importance on a feeling of attraction amidst noise, a garment that can allow one to articulate themselves more clearly - not to transform into a new person.
The Owens fanatics react to a degree of affective and philosophical consistency in his work that results in specific sets of shapes, aesthetics, colors, and relations to the body that fans return for. The would-be Miu Miu girls chase the static fantasy of the “Miu Miu girl”, finding art in juxtaposing plastic characters with complex human being much in the way I saw myself in Golf. In both cases, the more you buy the closer you come to perfect representation of self, to euphoria. Watanabe and Takahashi offer another, slower mode. It is to wait for the garment to find and speak to you. It is to see a garment or style emerge and recognize it as perfect second skin.
It is complex to standardize fantasies of the self. The best fashion can provide is a structure for experimentation.