Inner Monologue

I was listening to the Vogue podcast last month when they did a retrospective episode on Demna’s time at Balenciaga. Now I’m not the biggest Demna fan personally: while I of course recognize his incredible technical skills, this era of all black, early 2000s-esque, “these sunglasses look like they came from a gas station” style just really doesn’t hit for me. But I wanted to hear how the Vogue editors would discuss the impact of his time at the house because (whether I fuck with it or not), his work and his aesthetic have changed how people dress in the last ten years.

At one point one of the editors says something to the effect of “while he had moments of either extreme beauty and serious, there were also moments of parody when you could never quite tell whether he was just having a joke at our expense.” What struck me about this was how they all agree, but then continue to discuss it in a way that seems like they’re…totally fine with it? Look, no one likes someone so self-serious that they cant have a little giggle at themselves; but I also wouldn’t say that Vogue is known having a sense of humor about itself (though maybe they’d do better if they did? There, I said it). But it was also how they all made a point to make sure that we know that, to not only are they okay with Demna making fun of them to their faces, they are SO in on the joke that they circle back to singing the praise of his genius again. “Isn’t is so incredible? He made couture sweatsuits that he showed in LA for your run to Erewhon! He has models in ball gowns wearing gimp masks on the trading floor on Wall Street!” It’s the frantic “I need you to know that I’m so very cool with this, I’m self-aware.” Are you?

This all reminded me very much of the reactions to many of the Alexander McQueen runway shows in the 90s and early 2000s. His shows were so (actually) shocking that many people walked out in disgust. Of course now he is one of the most revered and lionized designers in modern fashion history, as he should be. But at the time, people said many of the same things: “he’s making fun of us to our faces.” It really makes me wonder if fashion people have some sort of strange humiliation kink; they’re being negged by these fashion bad boys and they…..love it? Hate it but have to pretend to love it? More than that, they NEED you to know how much they love it. It’s Amy Dunne’s “Cool Girl” speech all over again. “Humiliate me, it’s fine, I’m the cool girl.” Or, “oh, he’s making fun of other fashion people. I get it, so it doesn’t apply to me.”

Now, other publications could maybe pull this off successfully because they actually have a sense of humor and a point of view. But not Vogue. They are so far up fashion’s (read: luxury conglomerates and advertisers) own ass that they tell you every collection is good even when anyone with eyes can tell that it’s not. Reading their runways reviews of bad or boring collections is actually a hilarious exercise in how to say nothing with a wordcount. Cathy Horyn they are not.

So the idea that this same institution is going out of its way to tell you that they love these men who give them the middle finger, no but they really actually love it…now that’s funny.