If you love fashion and haven’t tapped into how political it is, you are missing out. Like, a lot. There are so many ways to engage with it, whether at the “is-it-cute-or-not” level, the “brand legacy” level, the sustainability level, etc – and none of them are wrong. It’s ART, people! And as such, there is just no extricating it from politics, as we see in the Prabal Gurung S/S 2020 collection.
If you saw the collection at face value, you’d probably think it was lovely (because it is), and so would I. But ending the observation there would be a pity.
Prabal Gurung, whose collection celebrates it’s ten-year anniversary this year, has become increasingly vocal when it comes to politics on his runways (for more history, I suggest this and this article). This week at his Spring/Summer 2020 show for New York Fashion Week was no exception.
Before I even saw the collection, I stumbled upon these posts Gurung had on the brand’s Instagram:
I get that the text above is tricky to read – so here’s the gist: after ten years of his brand and 20 years of being in the US, Gurung wants to shed light on the question of who gets to be an American.
He illustrated this question in the collection in a few ways, most notably:
1.) Opening the show with typical patriotic colors and American fabrics and design, but always with a twist; and
2.) Letting the show evolve as new patterns and international influences enter into the mix.
He also ended the show with the models doing their encore walk wearing sashes à la Miss America, each reading ”Who Gets to Be American?”.
Clearly, subtlety was not the goal here. But the backstory of this show can teach us so much about where we stand as a country and how we as individuals can reframe how we think about patriotism.
Prabal Gurung S/S 2020: The Story is Everything
The New York Times fashion editor (and my personal patron saint of fashion writing) Vanessa Friedman criticized this show as having “way too much focus on surface.”
I humbly disagree. Perhaps Friedman was only looking at fabrics, and not the invisible yet potent framework propping the show up. Because there is a lot going on here under the surface.
The Meeting
In outlining the origin story of this collection, Gurung mentions a business meeting in which various parties were debating how to define “American.” A colleague turned to him and said, “Well, you don’t look American, so how can you define what it is?”
Whoa.
It is notable that Gurung is, in fact, an American citizen.
The thing is, that question-slash-accusation is not new for a lot of people, especially for immigrants and people of color. From listening to friends’ and strangers alike who’ve been the target of such questioning, the effect of continual doubt on your ”American-ness” is exhausting, dehumanizing, and simply not accurate. We need to do serious work on how we frame what an ”American” is – and if you ask Gurung, that answer is messy, it evolves, and you can’t peg it down with just one word. Funnily enough, that’s just how identity works, doesn’t it?
Gurung’s audience, in general, are people with means – which in this country, often translates to political pull. These are people who are going to be donating to campaigns, holding fundraisers, wearing specific labels to high-profile events, interviewing with press, etc. I can’t imagine a better audience at this moment in time. All those eyes, glued to diverse models moving down the runway dressed like Americana 2.0, a tangible representation of the actual ethnic and racial landscape of the country. Political-change-but-make-it-fashion? This audience is ready for it (and so am I).
So what a great counterargument to his colleague’s point, right? His answer is, “not only will I redefine American, but I will do it 60 times, one for each and every look I send down the runway, and then again with every model wearing a sash with your f-ing question on it.” Damn. And then the press eats it UP! Double damn. I’m not a vengeful person, but man that fills my heart with glee.
José Antonio Vargas
This is where things get personal for me. I’ve been following activist and journalist José Antonio Vargas for years now. Back in 2015, I participated in his “Define American” campaign and even got to meet him.
Vargas moved to the US from the Phillipines as a child and has never held formal US documents. Before his current work as an immigration activist, he wrote on a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at The Washington Post. He “outed” himself as undocumented in a 2011 essay in the New York Times, which served as a springboard for his career in activism. He’s also produced films and TV documentaries on immigration – this man is a gift.
I’m doing a crappy job of summarizing his remarkable life, so I highly suggest you google him and see what he’s all about, or go to his website.
Why bring up one of my biggest celebrity crushes? Because it turns out that Gurung recruited him as a consultant on this collection. I thought it was impossible to love Gurung OR Vargas any more, and I was proved wrong. I love it when that happens.
My heart exploded when I saw that Vargas was consulting. After all, my husband was undocumented for 15 years and we went through hell. Being outside the system is incredibly alienating – I mean, they actually call you an alien. I heard Vargas on NPR one evening and sobbed in my car, because I realized that we weren’t fighting the system alone.
He’s more than qualified, even if he isn’t known in the fashion world. After all, he founded a nonprofit called Define American, an immigrant-rights organization. He’s all about literally redefining our views on who “gets” to be American.
The Tale of Hudson Yards and the Cheetoh-in-Chief
Nowadays, the current resident of the White House seems to wiggle himself into the cracks of every conversation (what an image), and this one is no different.
You can imagine how I feel about the current administration. There’s been a lot of ugly crying in my car with NPR or Pod Save America on, especially around issues of human rights and immigration. Lots of PayPal charges to various progressive organizations on my debit card. Lots of self-education. Just lots of feelings and tiny actions to try and right this situation (or in my mind, left the situation, amiright? haha).
With that in mind, you can justify the dorky booyaaaaaa I whispered to myself when I read in Vogue that Gurung had originally planned on showing his collection at the Vessel at Hudson Yards. He cancelled, however, when he discovered that the Hudson Yards’s real estate developer was holding a fundraiser for the Dolt-in-Chief. It would have been the site’s first-ever fashion show. Womp womp (for them, not for Gurung).
There are so many layers to this – personal, political, and everything in between., and we’ve barely scratched the surface. So when we say that fashion is political, this is what we mean: our decisions, our perspectives, our words, and our resources shape the political landscape. Fashion is a part of this, both in how we consume it and how we create it. If we continue to pay attention, we may even be able to grow it as a tool for change. That would be my dream.
love,
Stig.
PS. Want to see my Define American video the organization posted to their website in 2015? This is me, when I was still pre-med, literally a week before the accident. I was house-sitting for my former high school drama teacher 🙂 Here it is!
