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General Media Theory

McQueen: Evocation and the Fashion Madhouse

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Image sourced from GATA Magazine

I will begin with the statement that fashion, as an umbrella term, is not an evocative object. In its modern form, fashion is too widespread, commercial, capitalized, and individual for all of it to be considered evocative. Fashion is viewed by the mass majority of people in the way Kopytoff defines commodities- being produced materially as something, but also being marked societally as such. It is a wonderful, divine medium, but it doesn’t have one singular meaning, as not all of them are exactly designed to shake a person’s worldview or way of thinking, nor act as a transitional object and a basis of emotional connection. What is infinitely more interesting, however, is when designers use the medium of fashion as an object through which they can proclaim their own evocations, as does the Spring 2001 collection entitled Voss by the late, great British designer Alexander McQueen.

There is an evocation of insanity throughout the collection- the models walk with jerky, unnerving, enigmatic movements and expressions. The makeup is pale and bilious, the hair is covered with wrappings and bandages as if they’ve just come out of surgery. The set is designed to look like a padded cell, and there are one-way mirrors inside offering a voyeuristic view into the encagement, a view that satirizes the way the fashion industry preys on designers and models, treats them as entertainment, discards them the moment their evocation has been ran dry.

There is an evocation, that of discipline, throughout the collection. It is often said that fashion is a discipline itself, a code, a simultaneous desire and denial of values, be it aesthetic, functional, or emotional. The showpieces are uncomfortable, made of unconventional materials, both unorthodox in style and responsibility. A bodice of blood-red venetian glass, a breastplate of spiked silver and black pearls- a dress of ostrich feathers and microscope slides, a periwinkle straightjacket frilled with amaranth. It is all a discipline, a discipline of lunacy that is par for fashion’s course.

Furthermore, the evocation of transition and reinvention manifests with intrigue and aplomb. Many pieces are distinctly androgynous- menswear staples such as the pantsuit are deconstructed into gauzy and feminine silks and chiffons. Comedic surrealism is also used- a necktie becomes a makeshift halter, an unfinished puzzle is now a chestplate, a model castle perches itself on a model’s shoulder, weighing her down with the burden of being just that, a model. It’s a very liminal form, a form that tiptoes between expectation and self, the cultural and the natural, the rigidity of grounded society and the freedom of surreal insanity.

And another evocation begins to reveal itself, that of meditation and vision. Natural materials feature throughout- seashells fresh from the British coast, various explosions of feathers, the fearsome stillness of taxidermied birds. They are indeed familiar, but they are manifested uncannily, disorientingly unfamiliar. They infuse the collection with a contemplation of sorts, a contemplation on how these objects have both been made and found, found to be made into its own reflection on the hauntings and perils of modern fashion.

Indeed, at this point in his life, McQueen, who was 31, had grown tired of the insatiable thirst of the fashion elite. He was in the process of leaving his position as the head of Givenchy, a storied Parisian couture house, and he had always struggled with the press’s framing of him as a rebellious, working-class outsider in the upper-class society of luxury fashion. He was heavily smoking and using drugs, and had grown weary of the immense pressure put on him, especially regarding rumours surrounding his work at Givenchy.

So when one analyzes this show retrospectively, it becomes clear that this collection is, by both definition and practice, a quintessential example of what Turkle considers to be an evocative object. The whole show is a double-entendre, showing the fashion elite what they want to see by way of “wearable” clothing and commercialized androgyny, but also laughing in their face, satirizing their seriousness and forcing them to commit their own sins, viewing the clothes and models as scrutinized lab rats for experimentation. It is an object of discipline and desire, controlling his deranged fantasies within the constraints of traditional fashion. It is an object of transition and passage, allowing the concepts in his mind to be transported into reality, traversing the line between the constructed and the abstract, the self and its surroundings. It’s a liminal collection, an intermediate space between fashion’s expectation and McQueen’s heedlessness.

And, most obviously, it is an object of meditation and new vision, giving old objects a new meaning and purpose through a new medium or way of thinking. A dress of razor clam shells is most likely the most obvious reference to this logic, with McQueen even referencing it in a 2000 Women’s Wear Daily interview, saying “The shells had outlived their usefulness on the beach, so we put them to another use on a dress. Then Erin [O’Connor] came out and trashed the dress, so their usefulness was over once again. Kind of like fashion, really.” (Fallon)

It’s all a phantasmagoric display, escalating into a final display of writer Michelle Olley, fat, nude, and covered in moths, a direct contrast to the sanitized, tall sylphs floating through the show. And yet, the collection is its own evocative object for McQueen, in its existence as a provocation to thought, a companion to his emotional life, an undying legacy in the face of modern fashion’s tendency to steal, beg, barter, copy, backstab, and ignore. It’s pure, unbridled, raw, hopelessly realistic fashion that is simultaneous in its purpose as a commodity and its evocation as a manic transcendence.

Objects, as per Turkle, shift their meanings with time, place, and individuals. Fashionable objects go in and out of style. But just like the amaranth, the unfading bloom, a designer’s evocation never dies.

Works Referenced:

Turkle, S. (Ed.). (2007). Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. The MIT Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hhg8p

Fallon, J. (2020, April 23). The McQueen Chronicles. Women’s Wear Daily. https://web.archive.org/web/20240807033219/https://wwd.com/feature/article-1201126-1706647/

Kopytoff, I. (1988). The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process. The social life of things (pp. 64–91). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819582

understitch,. (2024, March 2). The Life and Death of Alexander McQueen. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CY1fkAWprE

All photographs sourced from firstVIEW unless otherwise stated

Written by Rosetta Jones

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Ingold, Conneller, and the Materials of Creation

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If there is one foundational argument in all of Ingold’s Making, it would be the one presented in Chapter 2: Materials of Life. The book explores our relationship with the act of “making” through many mediums, but in this chapter, he focuses on the materials themselves, centered around the idea that it is not a project’s surrounding idea that creates it, but rather, the engagement with both materials and consciousness. In order to solidify this argument further, he cites the work of Chantal Conneller, whose 2011 book An Archaeology of Materials: Substantial Transformations in Early Prehistoric Europe prescribes concepts to Ingold that elevate his argument to a higher level of understanding- namely, the return of alchemy.

Project v. Growth

Before we begin to characterize Conneller, however, we must recap Ingold first. And this chapter can be best illustrated by a graph he provides. Two vertical lines parallel each other- one stands for a flow of consciousness, the other is a flow of materials. Then, the flow of consciousness stops to form an image, while the flow of materials stops to form an object. But instead of letting these stoppages occur and resolve naturally, we have instead formed a new connection, one where ideas and objects feed off the flows of consciousness and materials, instead of letting the natural movement of both create on their own accord. (Ingold, 20)

The diagram of consciousness, image, materials, objects. (Ingold, 20)

This is a view that Ingold and many others characterize as hylomorphism, a theory by Aristotle that creates an object from start to finish with a predetermined purpose, function, and amount of raw material. It is this to which, Ingold states, we are accustomed to- the concept of making as a project. But rather, he proposes a new way of thinking; that is, viewing making as a process of growth, an interaction with the world of materials, an intervention in worldly processes. Instead of having an ouroboros of images and objects reign supreme without paying mind to the matter that constitues them, they should be formed as natural interventions within both- not wanting to know what will occur when consciousness and materials collide, but waiting in anticipation for the result of them doing so. (Ingold, 20) And in order to do that, we need to stop viewing materials through the lens of chemistry, and instead through the lens of alchemy.

About Chantal Conneller

This perspective of alchemy is one that Conneller has focused on for quite some time, in her position as an archaeologist and a professor of early prehistory at the University of Newcastle. With a focus on the mesolithic period, her book An Archaeology of Materials: Substantial Transformations in Early Prehistoric Europe helps to shift the view of materials away from one that fuels an image or its object, but as a unique form of matter with its own qualities and manifestation. Within this book, she argues that materials cannot be understood by one singular, all-encompassing, rigid definition, but rather through the social, cultural, and technical practices in which they are appropriated. (Conneller) And this perspective is one best understood by one who works with materials for a living, one who studies the art of alchemy.

One key example by Conneller is the differences in the characterization of gold- for a chemist, gold is a periodic element and has a form different from its physical manifestation. But for the alchemist, gold is a yellow, shining matter that glows brighter under water and can have its shape transformed- and the definition of gold is applicable to anything that fits the subject criteria. (Ingold, 29) This difference is key to Conneller’s main argument- “different understandings of materials are not simply “concepts” set apart from “real” properties; they are realised in terms of different practices that themselves have material effects.” Just because one material has a specific composition does not mean it is limited to it- instead, the alchemist views the material by “what it does, specifically when mixed with other materials, treated in particular ways, or placed in particular situations.” (Ingold, 29)

Chemical Ignorance

When comparing Ingold and Conneller to one another, parallels start to form- where Ingold expresses skepticism against the loop of image and object feeding into one another, Conneller directly warns against using one context of a material as a universal definition for all others. It is the same point- one conclusion on an idea or material cannot be used as a basis of knowledge for other forms of matter. Both consciousness and materials are vast in their complexity, difference, and position in space and time- no two forms of matter are ever the same. 

And where Conneller proposes a shift to view materials as not singular categories, but amorphous forms that shift with the winds of time and context, Ingold uses this logic as a platform to propose his own shift; a shift that begins to view the act of making as a multifaceted processes that observes and intervenes in the world around us, specific to time and place. One practice, as Conneller observes, is not a basis on which one can interpret and make conclusions upon another. Instead these practices differ immensely in their purpose, their interaction with the world around it, and the final artifact they happen to create. (Ingold, 29) Everything in the act of creation, according to Ingold, is relative to the world around it- Conneller just so happens to agree.

Conclusions

To summarize, ideas and objects cannot blindly survive on their own- an awareness and a centering of creation must be shifted back to consciousness and materials. In doing so, we are giving these materials sentience and life, gifting them a wide-varying, complex definition that shifts with the practice and purpose they are used for. Conneller encourages creators to, instead of viewing materials solely through their form, view them through their process, intervene in their evolution, create with them in the forefront of their mind. Both ideas, like the diagram of creation theorized by Ingold, work in tandem to produce one another- where consciousness and materials collide and swirl to create images and objects, Conneller’s theory of material context supports and validates Ingold’s rally to indeed, shift our thinking by a quarter term- view the act of creation not as a project to be completed, but as an interaction to be mediated and observed.

Sources

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge, 12 Apr. 2013.

Conneller, Chantal. An Archaeology of Materials: Substantial Transformations in Early Prehistoric Europe. Routledge, 28 Mar. 2012.