Rebellion, “Ugly” Fashion, and the Fashion Machine
Dad sneakers, Birkenstocks, Uggs, loafers. These stereotypically ugly shoes have replaced the strappy sandals and stilettos of the 2000s. They consume the feet, strip them of shape and obscure any defining details. They are wholly unsexy. And yet, they are the go-to choice for fashion forward girls from California to Copenhagen, swelling beyond a trend to an overwhelming phenomenon.
Photo: Imaxtree via Fashionista
These shoes are practical and comfy. In fact, that seems to be the trend for all clothing right now. The focus has shifted away from the male gaze, and more to a celebration of womanhood. The choices women are making are centered around activities like going to the farmers market rather than date night (or so TikTok is leading me to believe).
Photo: @MARIANNE_THEODORSEN via Who What Wear
This is certainly not the first time something like this has happened. Women have been rebelling against fashion standards defined by the male gaze for many years, like the post World War I pants wearing women, to the punk rockers of the seventies, to grunge in the nineties. Like all of those women, the current generation is subverting gender expectations, taking control of their own bodies, often by obscuring the shapes of these bodies.
Is this a response to the Me Too movement? To the pandemic? To an increasingly suffocating economic climate of inflation? Yes, probably. But where it came from isn’t really what matters here; what matters is what is happening now.
Because the ugly truth is that, like every subversive, rebellious, or bizarre fashion movement that has happened in the last hundred years, something that came from more or less proletarian roots has been grabbed by the greedy talons of the capitalist machine. Now, it is being digested, transmuted in the belly of the beast, only to be churned into a product that the fashion industry can market as something designer. Balenciaga crocs, for example.
Photo: Balenciaga via CR Fashionbook
The Punk movement originated as an expression of anger against systems and institutions that hampered originality, self expression, and personal liberty. It was wholly anti-establishment. And yet, it was recycled into high fashion again and again. Using people’s genuine anger (about gender, about politics, about fashion itself) and capitalizing on it is what the fashion industry does best.
Photo: Steven Meisel via Vogue
It is actually a brilliant, foolproof business model; it will absorb any criticism leveled against it and repurpose it for its own gain, and in that way, it is indestructible. This article is being written in order to promote a business that is part of the fashion machine. Swallow, mutate, regurgitate.
In some ways, it is a rather hopeless thought. There is no removing oneself from culture. There is no ethical way to dress yourself in the morning, because whether you are with or against the tides of fashion trends, you are impacting the machine.
On a less pessimistic note, by choosing to participate, you are part of a community. “Ugly” fashion celebrates a community of women who, trend oriented or not, are focusing on women, and there is an indisputably positive joy in that thought.