Your Silence is Political
The Next Generation is Done Waiting
There is a specific kind of relief that appears when someone finally says the thing no one in the room is saying. This past Tuesday 23rd of June, that relief took the form of 27 students of the Bachelor of Arts in Fashion Design at IFM when, after an hour, and 160+ looks, the students made their final bows donning white t-shirts reading: Your Silence is Political.
The moment takes us back to Maria Grazia Chiuri’s Dior debut in 2016, a show that opened with a model wearing the famous “We Should All Be Feminists” t-shirt that, even though it voiced a political action, was sold for hundreds of euros, and its production processes and labor implications were practically unknown. The moment became a gesture both applauded and criticized, shedding light upon the fashion industry's commodification of political language, and lack of transparency within fashion’s supply chain. Nevertheless, the strategy was similarly adopted by a diverse set of designers, and became a common trope within Fashion Weeks, minimizing its impact and questioning whether it was simply an easy way for the fashion industry to perform politics rather than practice it.
Years later and within a political climate that begs to be spoken about—amongst wars being fought, the advance of the far right and, particularly in Paris, a heatwave breaking records daily—the students' actions feel not outdated, nor a commodification of politics, but timely. Fashion Week is not usually a time to talk politics, rather a time to hide them. And as attendees to the events of the season, one begins to wonder: Is no one going to talk about the state of global affairs? And, consequently: Am I the only one who cares?
The gesture crowning the IFM show was much more nuanced. It wasn’t trying to sell $500 t-shirts. It wasn’t trying to create a spectacle, though visibility with these kinds of actions is key. It was a collective move, coming from the future generation of designers to the audience—the industry—housed within one of the most prestigious institutions of Parisian Fashion. A call to action from the emerging members of the field to the established ones, a voicing of what is currently unspoken. And crucially, a piece made right then and there, at the school’s own Fablab.
But the t-shirt moment did not emerge from nowhere, and the point of the show is to enjoy the collections the students spent time crafting. Looking back at the collections themselves, several were already doing the work, voicing matters the industry tends to keep quiet about.
Entre Deux by Adony Bigueur
A collection inspired by bell hooks' writings, focusing on the evolutions of minorities, and their difficulties in accessing the dominant system. Adony takes the military uniform, usually understood as a symbol of power and colonization, and reinterprets it as a form of reappropriation. The collection not only celebrates Blackness, but the state of the in-between, and explores an “identity whose beauty lies precisely in fracture, alteration, and reconstruction.”
Bonjour Madame, by Louis Broissin
The collection explores the politics of being misgendered or unexpectedly gendered, based on the designer’s daily experience of being addressed as “Madame.” To them, the word acts as a catalyst, allowing them to explore the faceted nature of identity, and to translate into fashion, a fluid and “free dialogue between femininity and masculinity.”
The Softening of Authority by Yaojia Cen
Yaojia examines menswear not as a gender identity, but as a vehicle of authority and control. Intending to go against the grain, the collection hybridizes the logics of children’s garments into adult menswear, “softening authority from within,” and creating a new typology of body that is unbounded by the systems, not completely belonging to any of them.
Who Built Her? By Elona Clement
Since childhood, games targeted at young girls construct a specific vision of femininity. Historically, female fashion has been associated with frivolity and mere decoration, while menswear has been perceived as powerful and legitimate. This collection seeks to challenge the way womenswear has been perceived, by foregrounding often dismissed details of the female wardrobe, granting them the legitimacy they deserve.
See-lai Diary by Jessica Lin
Inspired by her mother’s identity as a migrant woman in Hong Kong, and the concept of “see-lai”—everyday married women or mothers taking care of family life and daily responsibilities—the collection reimagines the possibilities of women, reimagining men’s workwear through a feminine lens. Jessica honors her mother, and women as a whole, as resilient figures whose strength shapes both their families and societies.
Super Fragilis Homo by Arthur Vieillard
Drawing from the figures of Andrée Putman and François Sagat, Vieillard places the body at the intersection of anonymity and desirability, asking what we are willing to do to be seen. The collection explores how we “adapt to society’s expectations regarding physical appearance,” switching between wishing to remain anonymous and to be desired.
These are but a small selection of the stories that were told upon the runway. After the applause faded, and the audience chit-chatted, Fashion Week continued, it always does. Whether the industry decides to listen to what the talented students, the “future of fashion” are voicing, is another political act.
Words: Marina Teubal
Images courtesy of Vogue Runway