It’s All the Rage. And I’m Not Even Angry!

The other morning, as I was flipping about different media sites, a certain desperation began to set in. Where was something to read that had nothing to do with anything serious, depressing or grim as all hell?

Ah, yes, here we are. You can always count on fashion to deliver some momentary distraction and a little light outrage with metronomic regularity.

No matter the state of the world, the fashion world always delivers on its promise of over-the-top ridiculousness. While we stagger through yet another recession as the pandemic ticks on and global events darken on the horizon, over in fashion-land, it’s all outsized pants, see-through dresses, silly hats. You name it and a designer has made something bound to annoy and infuriate. More please!

The latest scandal du jour (ooh, French!) is Paris fashion house Schiaparelli’s realistic-looking animal heads — snow leopards, wolves and lions — attached to dresses and coats. They made a scandalous debut at Paris Fashion Week, where the Schiaparelli show kicked things off with a faux roar.

Outrageous outfits and antics at other runway shows that week, such as skirts worn atop one’s torso like an upside-down haystack, failed to attract the same level of brouhaha.

So why did the lions, leopards and wolves, oh my, make people go cuckoo?

A little background, if you will. The heads were, according to Schiaparelli designer Daniel Roseberry, inspired by Dante’s Inferno and represented some of the seven deadly sins. The New York Times’ fashion writer Vanessa Friedman placed a well-manicured finger on the hot button issue. “If social media and the red carpet are the fire of fame, Roseberry said, couture has become fashion’s ‘gasoline:’ pour it on top and the conflagration gets ever hotter. It is ‘culture-making,’ he said. Or outrage stirring. These days, the two ideas can seem one and the same (file them under ‘provocation’).”

The entire point, it appears, was to piss people off, and huzzah, it worked a charm. But this is nothing new.

Schiaparelli’s founding house mother and namesake Elsa Schiaparelli was one of the most well-known provocateurs of her age, which is something considering that she was up against the likes of Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau. Schiaparelli’s eponymous fashion line came barrelling out the creative madness that was the surrealism movement of the 1920s and ‘30s.

The designer’s stock and trade was always kookiness incorporated into clothing, ever since she cooked up her infamous lobster dress, worn by none other than Wallis Simpson, when she wasn’t upending the British monarchy.

Upending, heh.

In light of this, the 2023 animal collection seems almost quaint.

Other forms of culture rarely attract this level of vitriol. Well, Star Wars does. But fashion is something that everyone feels entitled to have an opinion about. After all, we all must get dressed in the morning. And hating what other people choose to put on dates back to the Pleistocene, when people were wearing actual bearskins. Ugh: that was so last century or so ago.

As The New York Times duly details, fashion’s dedication to novelty, shocking or otherwise, is all about attention. In a crowded marketplace, getting noticed is critical. In light of this, it would be interesting to take Schiaparelli’s zoomorphism to its illogical conclusion, entering into creature feature territory by donning an entire mascot outfit, complete with fuzzy body, enormous head and outsize feet. Tres hot! I mean, those suckers are warm.

But mascots too have come under fire for their wardrobe choices. Rooty, the homegrown A&W root beer bear, has been happily peddling the tasty beverage bottomless for the better part of 40 years. Bottomless, as you will kindly note, does not refer to endless soft drinks but the fact that Rooty has been displaying his tooty since the early 1980s. Apparently, his deshabille state finally caught the eye of some pearl-clutchers, who asked A&W to put some damn pants on that bear! Now the poor old ursine has been forced to don a pair of jeans.

A&W later released a statement indicating that the company was actually making a joke about the current state of hysterics over the appearance of M&M mascots. Too sexy, too woke, too whatever, who can keep track anymore. It’s all fun and games and silliness, until it isn’t.

Occasionally faux outrage turns into the real stuff, as lawmakers in different parts of the world turn their withered gaze to real live women and their sleeveless wanton ways.

When the Missouri GOP opened their 2023 sessions with a new dress code ruling that women shouldn’t be allowed to go without sleeves in the house chamber, most people rolled their eyes so hard, they got stuck, thinking “Oh, those kooky Americans.” But it wasn’t that far from the 2019 dustup in the B.C. legislature, when women were told to cover their arms in the hallways.

Women and their bodies, clothed and otherwise, are all still causing consternation. Faces, hair, arms and legs, it doesn’t seem to matter what part it is, some old geezer is about to have a heart attack with the slightest glimpse of flesh. It’s been well-noted that teenage girls’ outfits are more regulated than assault rifles in the U.S., raising many questions about why the right to bare arms is more contested than the right to bear arms.

Where is Rooty, the bare-assed bear when you really need him?

For a great many people, but mostly women, there’s always someone telling you what you can or cannot wear. One would think that these constant unwanted edicts would turn more women into bears, apt to chew people’s faces off just to get a little peace and quiet.

If you can’t recall the last time males of the species were subject to this level of scrutiny, it’s because it’s almost never happened. Maybe there was a minor tizzy over giant codpieces. The cod (I mean men) were a mite upset that their special bits were garnering so much attention. What would the salmon say? Or the damn judgey halibut?

The history of the codpiece, published by the University of Cambridge, contains this little beauty:

There’s ample historical evidence that men have always agonised about their masculinity — and especially the question of size. A late 15th century manuscript entitled Detti Piacevoli recounts the following joke (translated by Barbara Bowen): “A woman was asked what kind of penises women preferred, big or small or medium-sized. She answered: ‘Medium ones are the best.’ When asked the reason, she replied: ‘Because there aren’t any big ones.’”

Fashion has long been a form of shorthand, a kind of semaphore that humans use to denote to other humans that they’re friend, foe or something more. Whatever the trend, it’s always been something of a distraction from the onslaught of real bad news: a space of light relief from the hoofbeats of apocalyptic horsemen. But with the blurring of silliness and seriousness, the lines between faux fur outrage, M&M wokeness and naked bear bums, it’s getting harder to find something diverting.

It might seem something of a tempest in a teacup, and really, that’s all I want. A bit of light ridiculousness, a reprieve from weightier issues. Maybe teacups themselves will get drawn into the furor as the fashion forwards decide that fur is out, and porcelain is in. Stick one on each boob, another on your head, like a fancy fascinator and venture forth, waiting for the admiration or admonishment that is sure to follow.