deepdiveswithdoireann

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Bin Bags, Bed Sheets and Balenciaga

In recent years athleisure wear has become a fast growing trend amongst the rich and the poor. I remember as a child my mother telling me wearing a tracksuit or leggings outside of the house looked lazy, tacky and unkept. The recent trend has changed my own mind about this, but I do recognise I have bais’ and so do a vast majority of people. 2020 saw the rise of the “chav check” trend on Tik-Tok, where people would dress in orange make, tracksuits with messy hair and impersonate British “chavs”. Basically people were just mocking working class British teenage girls. I grew up surrounded by girls like this, who fake tanned, had thick eyebrows and wore their Adidas leggings and Nike Air Max with pride. I looked up to these girls, I was pretty intimidated by them too and honestly for a while I tried to be them. But to see how the global media has mocked them and their style is so disheartening. It seems as though working class women cannot dress in any type of way without being called trashy, cheap and common. Whereas Kim Kardashian can be caked in makeup, wearing legging and puffer jackets and be called a trend setter. 

For my last entry of this series I am going to look at Balenciaga and how they incorporate many aspects of the “chav” style and sell it as luxury, innovative and trendy clothes. Their recent Fall Winter 2024 show was held on a street in  L.A and most of the models wore tracksuits and leggings. There were some interesting aspects of exaggerated tailoring, but for the purpose of this review I won't be discussing this. The show began with a shirtless model wearing shorts and oversized trainers, which set the tone for the first portion of the show. 

As I mentioned most of the models adorned tracksuits and legging style outfits. There was a recreation of the Juicy Couture velour tracksuit, which if I remember correctly was another fashion statement that was considered gaudy and distasteful. The models pranced down the street in these varying outfits, from oversized ill fitting tracksuits to the tight body suits that resemble something I have seen on Shein.

Balenciaga is very much a fashion house that is based on hype trends and creating conversations around their pieces. They were after all the brand that chose to completely cover Kim Kardashian for the Met Ball in 2021, which stirred a lot of conversation. Now this is great if you are someone who can afford to keep up with these trends, and have the designer logo on your new leggings or catsuit. But most of us cannot and when we look for cheaper alternatives we are judged by those who can afford it. I myself remember seeing a woman in Schipol airport, wearing a form fitting lycra catsuit, and I internally judged her for this. I thought to myself, “why do people think this looks good” , then I opened instagram and saw Miss Kardashian herself wearing pretty much the same outfit, but it was designer so therefore better. I write this now acknowledging the bais I projected on this girl at Gate G4, and to her I am truly sorry for this.

But I also write from a critical point of view of these fashion houses, who create trends that are only accessible when you can afford them. 

  Even one of the more interesting pieces of the collection was a dress that resembled a bin back, in black and a bed sheet, in white. It was fabricated in a way that made it look like the model had no option but to wrap herself in a bin bag or her bed sheet in an effort to stop herself from being nude. As I said this is probably the most interesting piece of the entire show, but when you consider the show is set on the streets of L.A, it's a little bit less digestible. L.A currently has an ongoing homelessness crisis with an estimate of over 75 thousand people experiencing homelessness in 2023 alone. This idea of presenting a piece of clothing that looks like the model had nothing else to wear, on the streets of a city full of homeless people is tone dead.

They had celebrity models featured in the show such as Cardi B. She wore, admittedly, a fabulous faux fur jacket. But her makeup was done in the stereotypical Chola style. Chola is an aesthetic that is often associated with the Mexican population of California, specifically the middle and working class women. Cardi B has received criticism throughout her career for her past as a stripper and has been called cheap throughout. Perhaps Balenciaga were trying to have her reclaim her power as an Afro-Latina artist, but to me it reads as performative and costumey. 

For most of this series I have looked at how fashion houses have incorporated styles from the middle and working class population and sold them as innovative ideas. Balenciaga, do this a lot. They play into this aesthetic too, by producing a boring tracksuit bottom, slapping a label on it and selling it for upwards of 500 euro. I mean lest we forget this is the brand that created the duct taped shoes and sold them for over 800 euro. So they are surely aware of their influences from mainstream or working class clothes trends. They play into modern consumer culture by creating pieces that already feed into pre-existing popular trends, but make them desirable to those who want to stay on top of popular trends. I don’t think Balenciaga is the problem here, I think that there is an overarching theme of luxury brands creating collections that derive obvious inspiration from the working class. These brands don't call it for what it is, instead they hide it by calling it a “reinvention of….” or “inspired by the seedy underbelly”. It's tiring, it’s boring and honestly it’s just unfair.

 Popular brands take inspiration from working class women yet the majority of the media ridicule these same women for their appearance, their clothing choices and lifestyle. We need to see a change, in either how we as consumers consume or how we as a society react to working class aesthetics. I admitted in this review my own bias and I think this is something that I hope more and more people will start to recognise in themselves. I also hope that this trend of celebrities and rich people trying to seem relatable dies down, but that seems unattainable. My personal mission for you is to consume more critically, really look at what designers are presenting as “new” and dont fall for the fancy words and tricks.

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I'm sure most of us watched the 2012 film adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. But I’m also pretty sure nobody saw that movie and thought “woah I would like to dress like those characters”. Well I guess John Galliano thought differently because his Spring Summer 2024 collection for Maison Margiela, resembled the costumes. From the nude and tight corseted  prostitutes to the poor and desolate who lined the streets with torn and tattered clothes, Galliano captured it all. 

For the weeks following Paris Fashion week it felt like the conversation around the show was inaccessible. Floods of Tik-Tokers were recreating the porcelain makeup look, created in collaboration with Pat McGrath. Twitter or X was a stream of memes and clips of actors who walked in the show such as Gwedoline Christie. The viral nature of the show made it impossible to avoid. Many claimed the theatricality of the show was bringing excitement back to the runways of fashion week. There was definitely excitement and buzz around this show as a complete performance. But what can be said for the clothes and the inspiration itself. 

The show opened with the first model emerging from a back lit foggy tunnel, while staggering and walking with a cane. The backlighting highlighted the accentuated shapes of the models' figures, a theme that is consistent throughout the show. There was a key focus on shapes and disfigured human form. Presented inside a vaulted warehouse right underneath Pont Alexandre III, the show played with stereotypical Parisian characters. From the prostitutes of Le Fourcy to cat burglars and gamblers, Galliano covered it all. I suppose this is where the similarities to Les Miserables comes from. Galliano himself said he was inspired by the “seedy underbelly” of Paris and wanted to recreate that in his show. 

The execution  of the theme is immaculate. The designer delivered his intent without any doubts. The models were wearing form fitting corsets, adorning see through dresses that resemble something from an impressionist painting while others wore patched up jackets and ill fitting trousers. One key element of this show that drew a lot of traction was the pubic hair underwear, and this is where my real critique begins. Pubic hair is still something very taboo among women, we are often shamed and ridiculed for this, so to see it now become a fashion statement, is a bit insulting. There was a lot of hypersexualisation of models, I mean corsets and latex were worn throughout the show, both being rather fetishised clothing items. This is consistent with the theme of course and the designer used the latex material in a nontraditional way by draping it rather than leaving it to be form fitting.   

  Regardless I find the inspiration for this theme borderline offensive. A luxury fashion brand claiming they were inspired by the seedy underbelly of a city, reads to me like “we were inspired by the poor and destitute”. It’s almost insulting how on the nose the whole thing was. To have models wearing clothes that had fake patches and ill fitting tailoring, I mean it's just so on the nose. It seems to me to be another show that is taking something that the working class is criticized and shamed for and presenting it as art for the rich. 

Most of the people in the audience have more than likely never had to patch up their clothes or worn hand me downs that didn't fit properly. So for Galiano to commodify this aesthetic is jarring. As I mentioned it is a beautiful collection, but this ongoing widespread aestheticization of poverty is exhausting and relentless. To some degree at least Galliano admits where his influences lie. That confronts us with the truth but it also paints the designer out of touch and ignorant.

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Cosplaying Poor: The Tired Trend of Rich Fashion

Aren’t rich people not tired of cosplaying as poor? Because we are tired of seeing it. By mixing work wear with refined tailoring and elegant silhouettes, Carharrt and Sacai’s collaboration for Spring/Summer 2024 perfectly captures the essences of rich aestheticising  poverty. Beyond the slumming, which is the core issue with the collection, it comes across as tacky and tired. 

Carhartt, which is a work wear brand established in 1889, has grown in popularity in recent years due to endorsements from celebrities such as A$AP Rocky, a rising trend of vintage fashion has also led to a growth in popularity. I've even seen memes that refer to seeing construction workers “breaking in” Carhartt jackets so that people can buy them second hand and get that distressed, edgy look. This idea of buying pre-distressed clothes isn't new (I'm sure we all fell victim to the ripped jeans epidemic of the 2010s) but are brands taking it too far?  Brands such as Balenciaga have gone viral for selling shoes held together by duct tape for hundreds of euros, resulting in obvious backlash for this brand. There were other collaborations in recent years that follow a similar pattern as Carhartt and Sacai, such as the Adidas and Gucci collaborations. To me this seems like luxury fashion is trying to cash in on the influence of Black aesthetics in pop-culture; brands like Adidas became a staple of hip-hop culture from their association with Run-DMC. Now Carhartt uses rappers like A$AP Rocky and Lil Uzi to promote their brand, and the cycle continues. 

Carhartt and Sacai flopped with this collaboration. The clothes themselves are lackluster to say the least. All they really did was implement iconic silhouettes from their dungarees and attach them to silk skirts, which looks boring. Of course they tailored new silhouettes incorporating their jackets but this being said, anything they tried to present as “new” looked straight out of Bikini Bottom. Shirts with huge leaf embellishments, is just one of the looks that is being pushed most on social media and websites like HypeBeast, but it looks like it came straight out of H&M in 2016. Maybe if the collaboration was presenting something new, exciting and original it would be easier to digest. But I’m doubtful any fabulous fashion forward flair would calm the gastric upset triggered by their working class posturing. 

I do recognise that Carhartt clothing is not necessarily cheap, but it is built with the intention to last. The rise of fast fashion and micro trends has led consumers to feel as though they need to stay up to date with trends while the rich lead the way. The rapid trend cycles have subsequently led to a rise in the prices of trending brands such as Carhartt. I’m tired of the trend cycles that have become so concrete and unachievable for most people. I think collaborations such as this show that rich people will always want to fit in with the other 99% of us. While we can only dream of living luxuriously, the rich can dress up as poor and call it anything from “rat girl chic” to “homeless core” and be praised for it.

If you are someone who can afford to indulge in this collaboration, I wouldn't bother. You're going to look outdated before you have time to take some outfit pictures for Instagram. Invest in vintage, it's more sustainable and generally made from better quality materials. 

This collection is a hard pass for me. Not only because of the exploitative nature but also the lackluster looks. But if you can afford to look poor and be praised for it go ahead, this collection is made for you.