NANCY BOY
Tuesday 2 April 2013
It's nearly a decade ago since Chloe Sevigny first appeared to delight our lucky retinas in Sonic Youth's dynamic and rifty offering "Sugar Kane" (love love love). She was straight out of junior high but I remember listening to it over and over whilst over and over contemplating a "that girl in sugar cane pixie cut". It was the back end of grunge when dungarees were just about still acceptable and not Dexy's Midnight Runners-esqe & many reasonably aged children would have stared bewildered at who Kurt Cobain was. The video & band had the je ne sais quoi feeling I used to get watching pulp videos or reading Sylvia Plath or watching old Gene Kelly films with my gran. It was her. Yet behind her too cool for school steely toughness she's been quoted saying that she'll always be the awkward shy girl.
Obviously since then she has gone on to do monumental things, mostly know for her acting but for me she has heavily helped my route along the fashion road with her eye watering collections with Opening Ceremony. It's the fifth collaboration with the brand and she's never seemed to veer from her fixation of androgyny and taking influence from youth. I remember fondly her first collection being inspired by her Junior High years, mixing pastels, big boots, ankle socks and florals (which I remember being crackers for). But each collaboration, as she's grown, her theme has stayed the same but still matured like a fine wine.
The new collection was a real highlight for me for upcoming AW 13 showcases. Being a fan of the 60's go-go girl vibes & angsty girl bands, when the surly riot grrls appeared at St Marks Church setting at New York Fashion Week, the pungent whiff of 1960's mode of protest blew through the room, in the most adorable fashion.
Last May, I managed to see a favourite LA grrl band of mine, Bleached, at the Cluny in Newcastle, so my little face lit up to see them performing alongside the moody mistresses. A-line silhouettes sulked on stage alongside eye of horus prints, 90's PVC block wedges & Dum Dum Girls-like vertical striped hoisery.
When I saw Bleached live, I was in full girl-crush mode with the Clavin clan in their caramel pop-socks & white t-bar pumps. For me, there's no one quite like an angsty girl band's wardrobe to sink your teeth into to find juicy dots of inspiration, bands like Bikini Kill, Veronica Falls or The Vivian Girls.
It was inspired by teens in neighbourhoods Chloe saw and teens on street style websites in boom. She's managed to pull of 60's IT girl vibes effortlessly without pressuring her fashion foundations. Cherry lined schoolgirl charm knee high socks, oversized mustard cardigans & transparent boots were in full swing cohesively meshing in with 60's colour palette of poppy red, grey toned powder blues and understated sunflower yellows.
I tend to source my wardrobe mostly from charity shops & vintage shops & feel a sense of satisfaction from putting together wearable outfits on smaller budgets with the vibes & avenues I look for in my sense of style. What I like about this collection so much is that it looks like the more detailed and intricate numbers you can source by scouring UK high streets for donated charity clothes & story filled treasures that mean so much more than if they were new. She always puts her mind to the history of fashion and sees the importance in not only looking forwards but looking backwards. Angsty protests signs read "NANCY BOY", "LET'S HAVE SEX" and "GOAT PUSSY" and eye make-up was heavy and no nonsense, which was of course paired with angry pouts, printed head scarves, 60's mac's, love heart prints and pink and cream knotted gingham, reminiscent of Elizabeth Taylor. Those monochrome clumpy Pepe Le Peu like builders chelsea boots, yes please!
The room she had to play with textures pushes the capsule collection into an ever higher bracket, as you can see with the pictures it was a soup of corduroy textures, furs & leathers to please any cynic. It enhances the appearance of grungy layering without jumping to the samey-samey appearance & keeping it strong yet feminine. The great thing is that with the models moody faces, I've already got one of those for free! I've always seemingly got sulky little madame syndrome so it seems like a piece of cake. There was sides of monochrome shoppers and high necked jumpers, channelling the like of Francoise Hardy and added together to create the giddily idiosyncratic concoction of strong schoolgirl who knows her own mind and can't half pull off a taupe sheepskin coat.
It's so easy to get sucked into the alluring characterisation or to perhaps get confused as to whether or not a not-so-high-end and more accessible collection that carries such strong occupy movement connotations fits in the current climate. Accessibility to such a bold statement carrying movement, I feel, took the risk of downgrading the real meaning of the movement and the beliefs of the women attempting to be portrayed. It's a similar argument to what film critic Mark Kermode remarked of gawdy cringefest, Sex & The City 2. He commented upon the film trying to purvey adverse situations like social or religious oppression by relating every problem back to everything these symptoms of society don't represent.
To quote Kermode: "I think her name is Samantha, ends up throwing condoms around being all, I'm a woman, I have sex, I'm a woman, I buy shoes, I am a consumerist, and it turns out under the burka's, it turns out all the women are wearing designer Diors and the minute they get in the room of all the Sex & The City girls they all go ooh look we are all just as vacuous and shallow and consumerist as the rest of you"
The occupy movement, the third wave of feminism, women's suffrage & the equal pay act 1970 was not fought for by these women for the right to be able to buy Manolo Blahnik's without judgement and share in supposed group similarities of what defines femininity, feminism and strong female role models but social, gender & economic inequality and activism.
Campaigns & protests against cultural & political inequalities always reminds me of the quote from the Betty Friedan classic "The Feminine Mystique". She writes of - "The dissatisfaction plaguing housewives who look at their nice homes and families, wonder guiltily if this is all there is to life, with a vague sense of dissatisfaction of adapting to a proper role."
Second wave feminism has created the individualism that has moulded the fashion world into what it is today. The sexual liberation, treating yourself as an individual & treating clothes in a realm other than practicality. Being a lower end of the spectrum brand & by keeping with a simplistic 60's nature, Sevigny get's it spot on and celebrates women's strength in character.
Who couldn't fall head over heels for the Twiggy like masculine monochrome cigarette trousers, cute block t-bar shoes, breton stripes & cigarette corduroy swing coats. It's a collection for girls who can actually play their instruments and a collection that's begging to see a discotheque dancefloor or two.
Chloe's sloe eyed beauty ties everything together with heartbreaking fluidity. It's like playing with the dolly dress up box everyday.
"When I was 19, 20, I had very short hair and I was very into the androgynous look. But I was much thinner then and I've filled out, become more of a woman now. I don't think I could pull it off so much now. But I think the androgynous look is so beautiful. It's one of my favourite looks on women."
- Chloe Sevigny
