I have more bubble puns in me, but why go on?
Previously: Kristeen Young wore a dress of bubbles in 2007. Lady Gaga wore a similar dress of bubbles in 2009. I posted on the strange sadness one feels when someone famous does the same thing as someone you like.
Recently: Another discussion started along Young’s fans, partly because Gaga wore another, much less similar, dress of bubbles. The cruelties of appropriation were discussed. Hussein Chalayan’s similar/earlier creation was cited (again). It was pointed out that nobody outside the room cared. I dug up a New York Times blurb on Gaga’s bubbles, which was annoying on a whole different level -tried to implicate Gaga for copying high fashion; ended up implicating DIY culture- but in the end, was making the same argument as me: no matter where she took it from, she’s famous, she’s comely, it’s hers now, and that chafes.
At this point, Young jumped in via proxy, with a series of remarks which abashed and touched me, and which I’d like to quote:
the NY Times is bashing gaga because they say her dress is a rip off of a Hussein Chalayan (designer) dress. I’ve seen this dress and yes Gaga’s is exactly like it. My dress was inspired by and Abbott and Costello movie, Abbott and Costello go to Mars. I’ll explain if you want. You’ll notice that my dress is an actual dress and Gaga’s and Chalayan’s are bubbles over a leotard. Mine also has an X over the right breast with dots of blood…and a hoop over the right shoulder…..a reference to Amazon warriors who cut off their right breast so they could shoot arrows better.. In the Abbott and Costello movie (a favourite of mine when I was a child)…..Abbott and Costello try to go to Mars but end up on Venus where it is inhabited by Amazon women. They have a truth machine (a lie detector) there where they make men hold a bubble and if the man is lying (when asked a question) the bubble bursts. THIS was the inspiration for my dress. I actually said something about this, on stage, when I started wearing the dress.
Having said this, I think it is perfectly fine for artists (who aren’t clothes designers) to take ideas from clothing designers…..and re-work them. That’s what art and culture is about…..AND clothing designers are putting their designs “out there” to influence how people dress. BUT, I do not think it’s ok for well known artists to copy lesser known artists in their own field. I know there is a vampire tradition in RnR. But, it’s sickening…..and usually leaves the lesser known to have nothing but a heroin problem. If the internet is here for the whole world to know INFORMATION…..fine, let the vampirism live on…..but, just let it be known where they are getting their food.
I know, I know…..it’s JUST a dress. But, it’s not, you see. I spend a lot of time (and what little money I have) making music AND my outfits. It’s part of who I am…..my identity…..my creativity. When someone comes along, and is more known, and claims it as HER identity…..even for the moment……it’s gutting. She has the money and team behind her to consume and consume…and shout it from the mountaintops. I obviously don’t. And NOW, who am I? If I continue in the same vein I have been (for quite some time) will people say I am copying HER and dismiss me? See, it’s much more than a dress. And by the way, I don’t think it’s HER who is copying…..I think it’s stylists searching the internet for ideas…..I’ve encountered this before.
Is there life on Mars?
So. Forgive me for another bubble-post, but that really got to me. Fame tends to reduce us to our position relative to the very famous. We are expected to accept this, and indeed we are often greeted negatively if we don’t, but it’s actually pretty terrible. That’s why, in the end, I have to respect the culture of celebrity mockery which I’ve written against in the past; it’s just a pity that it so often manifests as thinly-disguised mockery of anyone different from ourselves.
(Also, someone I admire and empathize with is unhappy. Making an identity is incredibly hard, and when something takes part of it away, it’s painful. This is the primary reason why I posted today. Don’t let me pretend that all my human responses are in the service of my philosophies. On the contrary, my opinions largely exist so I can pair my human responses with something less obviously vulnerable, and I don’t think I’m alone.)
Hunting of the Snark
I can’t stand the Internet practice of mocking celebrity style, even as I’m obviously attracted to it enough to be familiar with it.
My problem is not that these blogs treat celebrity culture with irreverence. Debunking celebrity is great. Fame hurts art and 
people, and the more we debunk it the happier we will be.
My objection is that this kind of writing encourages a numbing aesthetic conservatism, though not on the part of its subjects. I doubt they care, unless they see the coverage as positive. Mockery has never been very good at keeping people in line.
It’s excellent, however, at policing the tastes of its writers and followers. Mockery creates a sense of easily punctured superiority. Lines must be drawn to keep you on the right side of the dreaded fence. You have to use stricter and stricter language to keep down the idea that these people might conceivably look good; you have to explain that she looks like a household object, that he has no idea what to wear, that she doesn’t know how to flatter her coloring and body, or, if you’re going to admit you like the look, the classic “she’s crazy but I love it.”
And anyway, how are you going to draw a line between the “attention whores” and the arty kids, between Katy Perry and Bjork? Both of them want to be seen; part of art is being seen, even if in the mirror. Both of them want to express themselves, even if their chosen form is the tabloid. The arty kids are smarter; they tend to look a lot better and have higher levels of style, but if you’re going to make fun of one, you always end up making fun of the other, because they’re different varieties of the same human impulse. And then you start to dismiss both, or tag the arty kids with the approving “crazy,” which is a similar dismissal: I’m not like that, but I like that. And then your whole sense of beauty changes just a little bit. Maybe it changes for the worse.
I also take issue with snark on unflattering clothes. It’s much more reasonable to complain that an outfit hides a person’s beauty, but this presupposes that the only possible point is the person looking beautiful.
I’ve always liked Wilde’s inevitable epigram that “one must either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.” One of its interpretations is that it’s possible to differentiate between your clothes and yourself. Beauty can be achieved either looking beautiful or simply by wearing something beautiful (or something ugly but inspiring). The latter will give you aesthetic pleasure whether it flatters your face or not; there’s no reason why this way should improve a room any less.
Flattery isn’t a bad ideal. I’m just saying there could be others, and they might contradict it without invalidating either. There’s so little beauty in the world sometimes; I think we should give a fighting chance to any possibility of it.
Credits: Katy Perry shot by Gareth Cattermole for Getty Images. Bjork shot by unknown.
Bubble bobble
1. Kristeen Young, 2007: 
2. Lady Gaga, 2009:
3. Wow.
4. Actually, it’s probably coincidence. Young’s dress got a lot of exposure, comparatively, since she wore it on Letterman with Morrissey as well as on the tour. But they’re probably just both riffing on the same Spring ‘07 Hussein Chalayan creation.
(Update: it turned out Young was not. Maybe Gaga was, though.)
5. And their takes are quite different. DIY vs. sleekness; dress vs. accessory.
6. Still, considering where my admiration lies, seeing paeans go to Gaga is extremely exasperating.
This is how it goes. Your favorite singer is a cult act with a peculiar trash-glamor aesthetic. One of her costumes is particularly definitive; like most of what she makes, it has distorted proportions, original details, and looks like it was made at home with a glue gun over many painstaking hours. She’s obviously proud of it and wears it on television. You get used to describing her style by describing this dress, since it epitomizes both what she’s doing now and her earlier, more punkish phase of decking herself out in discarded bread bags and miscellaneous wires.
Then a star does the same dress. She does it quite differently, and the look reflects her image as a leotard-packing disco queen, but it’s similar enough that, to any neutral parties who see the photo, the idea belongs to her, and all previous uses (Young’s and Chalayan’s both) are re-cast in her light. This is a hazard of the fame system: it re-rewards achievements according to the status of one’s career. What a cult artist wears is always vulnerable. What a star wears is hers.
7. I’m also annoyed at the general comment-response to posts about Gaga’s attire, though. It’s not that I like the woman; so long as our culture continues to give pretty youths whatever they want, there will be sentences like Gaga’s description of her Warholian Factory: “Everyone is under 26, and we do everything together.”
Under 26! They sound wonderful.
But out on the comment front, the ratio of pleasure to stale negativity (“Desperate to provoke Trying too hard Crazy Silly Doesn’t seem to understand how to be cool” – or, in the best-case scenario, “like Bjork”) was depressing. Sometimes a woman will wear a dress because it suits her aesthetic, not because it was engineered for maximum quiet flattery by two hundred clones of Christian Dior who live in a secret underground base. Especially if she is performing music on stage.
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