Fashion has become a little prudish of late. It’s true. Just last month, for example, a New York billboard agency banned Armani Exchange’s new ad campaign because it was too racy. The problem? It showed a man’s bare bottom. Yes, a bottom. Just a few years back, glossy magazines around the world were given the go-ahead to run an advertisement that featured a female model with Gucci’s G logo shaved into her pubic hair. This was full-frontal nudity with a capital G. And it was all fine and dandy. And yet, now a man’s bottom is deemed too risque? Go figure.
But it’s not just fashion’s ad campaigns and imagery that have become more modest. The clothes have too. Many are blaming the global financial crisis. See, just as conspicuous consumption is out of fashion, so too is overt sexiness.
After all, right now, fashion is about longevity and versatility. Women, apparently, want items they can wear to a bar at night, to school drop-off in the morning and to the office after that. So, as you can imagine, sales of tassel-trimmed conical bras are pretty slow right now.
As feminist author Ariel Levy put it in The New Yorker last month: “Now is not the time to be assertive about your cleavage (or what remains of) your wealth.”
Levy makes the point in reference to the recent rise of Lanvin - the elegant, though somewhat modest French fashion label designed by Alber Elbaz, the man who was de-throned by Tom Ford as the head of Yves Saint Laurent’s ready-to-wear collection in 1999, when sex, wealth and fashion went hand-in-hand-in-hand, and Ford’s if-you’ve-got-it-flaunt-it sensibility shaped the industry.
She argues that Ford’s “naked-men-on-bearskin-rugs” aesthetic, which dominated the ’90s, seems distant and comical in the current economic climate. And that Alber Elbaz’s “quiet, complicated conception of female sexuality” has finally won.
She’s right. This season, sexiness hasn’t disappeared; it’s just more subtle. More Elbaz. Less Ford. There are no G-emblazoned pubic areas splashed across our favourite glossies. No male bottoms on our billboards. Rather, designers and advertisers allude to our bodies and reference our sexuality, with a slash here and a cut-out there.
It all started late last year, when Yves Saint Laurent, Rodarte and Akris perforated and laser cut their spring-summer collections, and even their shoes, to reveal teasing flashes of the female form.
Akris continued with the theme in Paris last month, presenting demure, tailored dresses spliced with sheer panels and cut-out sleeves.
At home, Gorman uses lace-cut and perforated leather, Lisa Ho gives us sheer panel inserts, Alice McCall has peek-a-boo cut-outs and Zimmermann has opted for laser cut silk to allude to the female form GFC-style - with a strategically placed perforation or peep hole.