Order it elitism or snobbery, but the fashion industry is unlikely to hold Donald and Melania up as icons. Coupled with: was Taylor Swift to blame for the election result?
Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters
The Obamas had an results on fashion. What effect will the Trump presidency demand on the fashion industry?
Carrie, by email
Hello, readers.I’m chirography this from under my bed, where I’ve been wearing my pantsuit for seven epoches straight now. I have drunk all the alcohol in the house so have since stirred on to cleaning fluids. I’m seeing spots, which is what I hoped for because I believe we’ve all had quite enough of reality this week. Washing-up melted is my tipple of choice now, folks.
Maybe you’ve turned to this article to get a rest period from all the election coverage. Light relief, perhaps, or possibly just a change of tune. And I want to oblige you, I really do. But it’s badly to be all business-as-usual – making jokes like, “Ha ha, hotpants are stupid,” and “OMG did you see what Beyoncé sported this week?” (that’s usually what happens here, immediately?) – when you’re starting to eye up the oven cleaner as a chaser.
On on, Freeman. You’re a professional. You covered the hell that is Milan menswear taste weeks four years running – you can handle this. So what can we say relating to the Trump era – [gags on own tongue] – from a mould perspective? Barack and Michelle Obama did affect fashion. In truthfully, Michelle is on the cover of US Vogue this month – again – looking so great you wonder how any models get jobs these days.
Their celebrity among fashion folk is because the Obamas are genuinely – and I’m common to use a technical term here so have a dictionary ready – hot as Pandemonium. This demographic – “coastal elites”, as I believe they are petitioned nowadays – genuinely liked them, and that made it quits easier to hold them up as fashion icons.
Which produce a overthrows us to the Trumps. Now, I appreciate we should all be approaching this presidency with an unscheduled mind and hopeful heart and yadda yadda yadda. But I about it’s a pretty safe bet that Anna Wintour won’t be inviting Mr and Mrs Trump to politeness the pages of her magazine with quite the same joy in her heart as she did with the Obamas. I’m unswerving Trump supporters – and doubtless Trump himself – will put this down to “elitism” and “pretension”, and that’s a fair point, of course, given Vogue’s famed prejudice against Manhattan billionaires. And yet, despite that, Trend has been a friend of the Trump family for decades, as is inevitable specified that Wintour and Trump were both major images in 80s New York so probably waved at each other across the Four Enlivens every other day for the past three decades. Ivanka, Trump’s fancied (a little too adored for the comfort of some of us) daughter, has been present in gushing fashion magazine articles for years. And yet, somehow I don’t over recall that’s going to happen any more. It’s hard to present a issue woman as the paragon of modern day feminism – she has babies … and works! And slug a spreads a daily blow dry! HOW DOES SHE DO IT!?!? – when her father is on fillet talking about his fondness for giving women surprise directions smear tests.
It’s almost poetic, really: all his life Trump reasonable wanted respect, and his urge to run was almost certainly lit when Obama publicly take the mickey out ofed him at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. And he won! But at the cost of continually him or his family ever having any respect from precisely the stripe of people he always wanted it from. Is this an O Henry be story or a Dilbert cartoon strip? So in terms of their strike on high fashion, no, I don’t think the Trumps will have much of an collide with. Is this elitism or just fashion people not feeling first of all fond of a politician who won by employing blatantly misogynistic and racist long-windedness? Because of all the things you can criticise the fashion industry for, it does, at sparsest, employ a lot of women and gay men. So it tends to have a pretty liberal resolute, and you can call that elitism if you like, but it looks more get off on people simply following their beliefs to me. I say potato, you say nab ’em by the pussy. Pass the oven cleaner.
As we advised of, politics are decided by celebrities these days. Which celebrities failed us this constantly?
Nadia, by email
Look, I have no appetite for the blame strategy. What’s the point? We will never have a woman president because a short-fingered vulgarian is yon to destroy the world. But! I will make an exception when it get well to blaming celebrities and TAYLOR SWIFT I AM LOOKING AT YOU.
As we all know now, stainless women without college degrees voted for Trump. But you grasp who white women listen to? That’s right – Taylor Fast. Swift remained intriguingly silent during the campaign, which have all the hallmarked odd, considering her much-vaunted best friend, Lena Dunham, was anything but. Serene Swift’s eventual, and very last-minute, admission that she was attest to for Clinton was made through the medium of a polo neck (it’s an Instagram obsession) rather than a full-throated endorsement.
So why the reticence, Tay-Tay? Dialect mayhap she feared alienating her country-and-western base. Maybe her well-known abhorrence for Katy Perry, who has long been a Clinton supporter, trumped her statesmanship. Maybe she’s just a big coward. Who knows? But you know what, Taylor? Making music videos with Victoria’s Confidential models about how much you love female solidarity bad sod all if you can’t even be bothered to speak up for a woman running against a blow up misogynist. Walk the walk, Swiftie.
Post your have doubts to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email [email protected].
