Fashion’s Alliance with Othering
By Joe Hanlon
Obviously clothes are important. No matter what else our day brings with it, be it frivolity or ferocity, fashion is somehow involved. After all, “fashion” is defined and created by the choices made by individuals that then influence cultural trends or preferences of style. Each day, we as individuals make active and informed choices in how we will dress; consulting sources varying from weather apps to calendars, family members to celebrities, literature, film, media and a dizzying list of many other cultural constructions, people believe they have the ultimate agency over the form and function of the clothes they wear.
But, do we really know the history behind choices that are seemingly individual, casual, and ‘harmless’ when picking clothes and getting dressed? What can be too often dismissed as vapid or insignificant when assessing the impacts and inspirations of clothing, are really sometimes constructed cultural remnants of fashion’s age-old alliance with the othering forces of society. Fashion and the visual intricacies that define it are the result of the lived experiences of entire peoples and places: it is a cultural and highly dynamic condition of contemporary life and at its root, fashion is conceptual. It is nuanced and extends beyond the physical, able to suggest feelings and recall memories in some of the most powerful ways art can.
By its definition, fashion speaks a common visual language of opacity that defies labels of specificity and categorization. Some trends become trends seemingly out of nowhere but their developments, when historicized, reveal the shortcomings of the ancient and ever-relevant industry that is Fashion.
Some of fashion’s most seemingly-innocent visual languages are actually riddled with systematic othering. Take the recent instagram-fuelled obsession with Toile, the idyllic and pastoral fabric prints that originated in France. If you have been on instagram the past several springs, you have probably seen toile worn in a contemporary or trendy way. Shirts, blazers, masks, jackets, dresses, sheets, curtains, and basically anything people wear that is made from fabric has traditionally incorporated toile motifs since their inception. A recent article in Cosmopolitan, Chic Toile Fashion Is Having a Moment, and You’re Gonna Be Obsessed, describes the print as both “timeless” and able to give off a “dreamy cottage core vibe.”
But what lies beneath these scenes of pastoral life and idyllic carelessness is a history of classist and racialized othering. Toile hails from France, which achieved its industrial power through the violent colonization, occupation, and theft from the people and lands of the Middle East and North Africa. This history is visually evidenced in the development of a European taste for ‘exotic’ motifs in decorative arts. As industrialization and colonization concurrently developed, so did a taste for decorative and art objects from places deemed to be the other as understood from the fashion world’s euro-centric perspective. Toile’s very existence is predicated on the portrayal of people labeled as different. That difference is then visually and decoratively exploited to provide beauty for the ruling class. Today, these direct colonial roots have been obscured, and so now many people see toile as simply a delicate and interesting pattern to be worn in the spring and summer. Read more about toile’s history here and exoticism’s impact on taste, here.
Toile is just one of many exaples of how fashion reinforces the designation of the other and hinges on the exploitation of the many, to feed the desires of the few. There are countless ways that the expressive and individualistic nature of fashion allies itself with societal injustices. Maybe each day when getting dressed, we should begin considering this too.