-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.nationalreview.com/contributors/stuttafordprint022602.html
>>>Has anyone seen the Columbia sportswear logo? If so, what does it remind you
of? A<>E<>R<<<
}}}>Begin
Andrew Stuttaford
Fashion Victims
Evil on the catwalk.
Mr. Stuttaford is a writer living in New York.
February 26, 2002 8:30 a.m.
ver in Europe, as George Bush has been reminded only very recently, the chattering
classes are uncomfortable with the notion of evil. As an idea it is just so, to borrow
a
word from the French foreign minister, "simplistic." However, even allowing for the
old continent's tawdry attempts at world-weary sophistication, it is disappointing, to
say the least, that a disgusting event in London last Wednesday passed with little
notice, no criticism and, here and there, some applause. It was a spectacle that
combined shallow frivolity and deep, deep moral relativism and, of all unlikely places,
it occurred at a show during the British capital's Fashion Week, at the catwalk debut
for a collection created by Helga and Eva, 24-year-old twins from Austria.
Helga and Eva claim to find their inspiration in their country's past, including, they
say, the Third Reich. They have already enjoyed some success. Their label was
included as part of Fashion Week's "New Generation," a group of young designers
sponsored by a leading British retailer.
In what was, doubtless, intended to be a witty gesture, invitations to see the twins'
collection were based on Nazi-era passports. At the show itself, the musical
backdrop contributed to the totalitarian theme with a soundtrack that combined
classical tunes, Wehrmacht chants and folk songs, all overlaid with Led Zeppelin.
Jimmy Page's heavy metal was included, apparently, as a gesture to contemporary
western culture.
The collection featured designs based on both the industrial and political aesthetic of
the former dictatorship. On display that Wednesday were cloaks and knitted
sweaters, all, naturally, in parade-ground brown, and often emblazoned with the
regime's most famous symbol, the swastika. In a neat touch, jackets and dresses
were edged with little Iron Crosses.
The London press seemed to like what it saw. A commentator in one leading daily
said that Helga and Eva had brought the old despotism's fashion sense "in from the
cold", while another newspaper ran a friendly piece in which the writer noted that the
twins' collections were available at a number of expensive British stores. American
fans of designer tyranny will be thrilled to know that these clothes can also be found
in New York, Boston, and LA.
Interestingly enough, the prospect of Helga's and Eva's show did not seem to worry
Britain's Labour government, usually so sensitive to the slightest hint of political
incorrectness. The night before the collection's launch, there was a party in honor of
Fashion Week hosted by Tony Blair's wife, Cherie, and the secretary for trade and
industry, a busy lady, who doubles up as the U.K.'s "minister for women."
To be fair, these two grandees may have had no idea what would be strutting down
the catwalk the next day, and, so far as I know, there was no foretaste of the
totalitarian treat to come. It was an evening of chandeliers, not searchlights, of
velvet
ropes, not manacles. There were no guard- dogs, no watchtowers, no burial pits. The
waiters wore shoes, not jackboots, and carried drinks, not guns. Guests were
permitted to arrive by taxi rather than cattle truck. There were no amusingly staged
beatings or faux executions to sit through. Best of all, everybody was allowed home
alive at the end of the evening.
How very different it was 60 or 70 years ago, in that era desecrated by men marching
under the symbol now found to be suitable for an expensive knitted sweater. The
twins' art is, consciously or unconsciously, a celebration of cruelty, an insult to
slaughtered millions, many of whom ended their lives dressed in the only real
totalitarian style, the rags and tatters of concentration camp clothing. That two
designers can borrow evil's insignia to make a fashion statement is yet another
dismal reminder of how little mankind has really understood the nature of 20th-
century mass murder.
At this point, I should, however, admit that I have changed a few details in this
story,
none of which ought to make any difference, but, strangely, they seem to.
The twins' real names are Natasha and Tamara Surguladze. They do not come from
Austria, but from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Their Tata-Naka label
features designs inspired not by the Third Reich, but the USSR.
Oh, so that's all right then.
The London Daily Telegraph described the scene:
Graphic prints were based on original propaganda motifs from the "industrial art"
movement championed by Lenin and Trotsky. Others featured the Cyrillic letters
CCCP, which represented the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Sweeping
cloaks and knitted sweaters in "Red Square red" were emblazoned with the symbol
of the Russian revolution, the hammer and sickle, while glittering Russian stars
clasped the edges of jackets and dresses…The "Mother Russia" theme was
reflected in the invitations, based on the old USSR passports…and in the music, a
garage mix of Shostakovich, Red Army chants and folk songs, overlaid with Led
Zeppelin.
And, no, this is not all right.
Yet, somehow, people think that it is. Fascist fashion would shock. Communist chic
does not. To wear the swastika has become, quite rightly, a taboo, but the hammer
and sickle is, in the hands of Tata-Naka, no more than a vaguely "daring" image, a
mark of Cain reduced to a potentially lucrative logo. Quite why this should be the
case is difficult to grasp. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were as bad as each
other. Trying to find a moral distinction between those two charnel- house states is a
pointless exercise in political theology — about as useful as debating how many
devils can dance on the head of a pin, and rather more dangerous (it is a partial
explanation for the failure to hold a Soviet Nuremberg). Nevertheless, that is exactly
what we tend to do — on those rare occasions when the issue is discussed at all.
And the usual conclusion, that Hitler's Germany was easily the greater (and history's
greatest) horror, has developed into a part of our culture's conventional wisdom, a
facile nostrum that removes the need to ask the necessary questions about other
monstrous savagery.
It is an illusion that soothes, and it accounts for the fact that most readers of this
article were, I suspect, more than a little relieved to discover that the twins had
taken
their design hints from the creators of the Gulag rather than the architects of
Auschwitz.
Well, weren't you?
End<{{{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
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