Watching the dynamics of the front row at fashion shows is intriguing and teaches you a lot about the changes society went through. In the late '70s and the early '80s, a fashion show was an event mainly dedicated to the people working in the industry - from the media to the buyers. Not many received free clothes and accessories, but some were allowed to borrow. Journalists who were also genuine fans of a designer (think Italian journalist Maria Pezzi who was also a Missoni fan), weren't showered with presents, but tended to buy their own garments.
Things changed as the decades progressed: the '80s morphed into the '90s and celebrities in the front row became a must-have. Fashion houses started supplying free items to the most beautiful, powerful and famous who were also allowed to borrow pieces.
Further changes arrived with the Internet, even though at first bloggers admitted to shows or even sitting in the front row, hailed by ordinary people as a sign of fashion democratization but resented by powerful fashion editors, weren't necessarily given presents or the privilege to borrow a piece to wear for a specific show.
The last two decades saw further revolutions and the arrival of influencers, with the front row becoming a branded experience and an entirely new club with very few journalists, many celebrities and a lot of influencers.
This new revolution also meant that most people sitting in strategic positions were given free clothes or received clothes and accessories on loan by the brands inviting them.
In a post-Covid 19 world we are seeing a new branded experience: the must-have accessory for a brand is definitely a member of a K-pop band (or the entire K-pop band if you really want to splash out and can afford it). Most brands nowadays also prefer members of K-Pop bands as ambassadors (the latest brand to appoint one is Louis Vuitton that chose Hong Kong-born singer Jackson Wang, member of Korean group Got7 and firm supporter of China - he went viral a few days ago when, during a gig in London, he stated China was a "dope place" and blamed the media for the "propaganda bullshit" about China).
Fashion show guests lists are maniacally curated to include the good-looking, the famous, hip and cool and each guest is obsessively given a perfectly assembled branded outfit to clad their identity in the fashion houses' their are representing / celebrating / supporting (think Jasper Liu, Lucien Laviscount, Tyga and Usher, just to mention a few of the guests at the recent Louis Vuitton's A/W 23 menswear show in Paris, but all brands and fashion houses have their favourite celebrities, actors, musicians, artists and personalities).
In this world of front rows turned into human advertising boards (because the obvious hope for brands is that celebrities clad in specific designs and accessories will inspire fans to emulate them and buy into the brand), leads us to a question. Would it be possible to update Ashley Bickerton's "Tormented Self-Portrait (Susie at Arles, 1987-88)" and turn it into a portrait of a modern front row guest at a contemporary fashion show?
Bickerton created "Tormented Self-Portrait" as an unconventional representation of his self. Part of his early New York works, his series of "commodity sculptures," integrating corporate logos and commercial hardware, the work was actually inspired by the many self-portraits painted by Vincent van Gogh.
Bickerton's self-portrait was an abstract rendition of his own self, portrayed through the brands of products he used, from ConEdison electricity to Bayer aspirin (the subtitle referred instead to "Susie Culturelux", a brand name he invented, and to the city of Arles, where Vincent van Gogh worked).
"What exactly constitutes our notion of individual identity?" Bickerton wondered, "We wake up in the morning and select our individuality from a finite catalogue of readymade possibilities." Indeed, for Bickerton, looking like a sponsored automobile or even a household appliance, was a new form of self-expression and identity for a consumer society. The brand names he used represented day-to-day consumer choices that expressed a consumer's personality to others (in many ways we are all the expression of our consumer choices, but we can make a difference when we choose not to align with certain products and brands or when we reinvent what we wear by adding our personal touch).
In some ways, the front row guests with branded identities are not so different from Bickerton's commodity sculptures, from those arrays of corporate and personal logos. Mind you, there is one difference, actually: Bickerton's added the word "tormented" to his self-portrait; brand ambassadors or branded guests sitting in the front row at fashion shows are instead pretty unconcerned and untroubled. All that counts is the money you get paid for your role, after all. And a branded new outfit, of course.
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