Fashism
& the politics of online fashion spaces
Ahhh, yes. That exclusive, I-know-you-agree-with-me posturing, that assumption that everyone here who likes fashion couldn’t possibly be right wing.
This piece by Emily Kirkpatrick of I <3 Mess has been circulating fashion substack this month. It popped into my feed this week, while I was bombarded with “is everyone ok???” across the various fashion Substack chats I follow. I was working in fashion during the 2016 election, a time in my life when I toed the party line and voted as I ought. So it comes at no surprise to me that we are still equating good fashion sense with left wing politics. What is surprising to me is that now, 8 years later, women who are so astute and intuitive in many ways (ie, share my taste in fashion, lol) remain utterly dismissive of the ascendant right. Despite all evidence pointing to a growing disillusionment with the Democratic Party, and alarming symptoms of societal ill, anyone who has been flexible or inquisitive enough to change their political opinions as a result is a Pepe enjoyer, groyper, autist or incel. It is almost as if anyone who has left the left could not possibly have had any sort of intellectual wrestling with ideas, any iota of creativity or of reason, or natural arc of opinion from lived experience. All we are doing is seeking our own infamy online and “tying white supremacy up in a pretty bow.”1 Those dismissed by Kirkpatrick in her piece as conspiracy theorists (Alex Jones) and white supremacists (Nick Fuentes), actually have a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the internet, and of the world, than she does. If the fashion girlies could set their echo chamber aside, I am confident that they have the intelligence to realize they are being baited. “Your Body, My Choice?”2 While I understand how degrading this sounds on its face, within the context of “my body, my choice,” and this election being a supposed referendum on abortion, it is a troll. It is myopic to not see that.
And concerning Elena Velez, the darling of this think piece, the “Donald Trump of emerging fashion.”3 To Kirkpatrick, this label was earned by eschewing DEI and CRT initiatives with her fellowship at the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. In an alternate universe, this label was aptly given because Velez’ designs evoke the feeling of a failing empire, of our failing empire. Gone With the Wind was the perfect inspiration for such a project, with page-turning depiction of another dead way of life — the American South. Of this ss24 collection she says that her “purest intention was to bring a lost Midwestern woman back to the American cultural narrative.”4 Being from Milwaukee, the daughter of blue-collar parents herself, it is unsurprising that the character arc of Scarlett O’Hara would resonate with of the erasure of American women in fly-over country. Why the erasure? Because they betrayed this country by voting red in 2016, 2020, and 2024. To make matters worse, they’re tacky.
She fittingly named her ss25 collection for Joan of Arc— “La Pucelle,”— another final cry for a people’s existence. Joan was famously successful, by the way.5 By no means a saint, Donald Trump is also our American denouement, the logical conclusion or bridge to the next stage of the American project. In Vogue Runway’s review of “La Pucelle,” Velez states her intention was to
“Reimagine negative stereotypes around patriotism or affiliation with, and passion and care for, a place that you call home. So we’re looking at all sorts of different allegorical female representations of national aspiration or an identity…such as Marianne from the French Revolution, or Lady Columbia, or the Statue of Liberty. But then also trying to find a way to integrate that with a more contemporary interpretation of what that girl could be—maybe she’s the cheerleader or the Miss America sort of pageant queen—and just trying to merge these two really interesting universes around womanhood and what she can symbolize to a people and to a place.”6
Elena is trying to design for the patriotic woman of a nation on the verge of collapse. In a rare flash of intuition, the Vogue Runway review juxtaposes her fashion to the current “infatuation with all things demure,” stating, “Velez isn’t having it.” Suddenly, I was seized with a conviction: Demure Fashion is popular right now because they want us to be demure. A woman in The Row is “too elegant”to peek into the dark corners of the internet, or of her own city, to try to understand why everyone who can’t afford her aesthetic tastes is a MAGA-sympathizer. In this context, what does my own preference for minimalist, elegant fashion communicate?
The work of Velez brings to mind another “friend of the pod,”7 Raimundo Langlois. His clothes evoke the early 2000’s, arguably the last time your average American could afford good quality clothes,8 with a sensual fusion of prep and cali, two quintessential American aesthetics. For someone who has written three essays on elegance, dignity, and modesty in clothes, it may seem hypocritical to be highlighting two designers who obviously do not have “modesty” or “avoid scandal” on top of their priority lists. But Langlois is a good counter-example to Kirkpatrick’s claims that fashion has been flirting with the alt-right via “ironic” design. While I agree with Kirkpatrick that irony is ultimately a lazy route for creativity, because it allows you to evade the articulation of your inspiration and intention, and subsequently the consequences of your work, many designers who have been labeled black sheep by the industry are not creating ironically. They are creating out of a patriotic appreciation for americana and with a vision for the renewal of our culture. And both Langlois and Velez are correct in their diagnosis: A country full of people who want radical change to the status quo (electing Trump twice now??) is not a nation of women who want to dress demurely. Lana Del Rey, whose aesthetic has been posing with a Glock in a nightdress for years, was the prophet, Nekrasova the believer,9 of what American women want. The right is ascendant for a reason, and it is time the fashion industry and women who have the money to buy Khaite at full price stop dismissing it as rage-bait or irony.
This begs the question: since the popularity of demure fashion seems to correlate with the rather demure intellect of so-called fashion women who refuse to let the currents of ideological change pique their curiosity, am I wrong to share their taste in clothing? Should I be dressing more provocatively? On the contrary— their aesthetic preference for elegance is a redeeming quality. After all, their preference is for clothing that is rather modest and sophisticated. Ironically, it tends to look more like Hugo Boss than the current iterations of “right wing” fashion. How can the right incorporate the fashion of elegance that liberal-leaning fashion girls embrace, while maintaining its project to reinvigorate America? It seems that somehow we could meet in the middle between Velez, Langlois and The Row.
Returning to the think piece, Kirkpatrick is correct to call out the blue-collar LARP and irony-pilled merch. I love wearing my husband’s Carhartt jacket myself, but those clothes need to remain utilitarian and at an accessible price-point. The alt-right’s flirtation with fashion needs to become more forward, less online. Elegance needs to be to become emblematic of a right wing woman, something aspirational. But to rebuild an empire, we are in need of some amount of strength. This elegance needs to have edge. I believe this is what Velez was trying to do with her Gone with the Wind ss24 collection, fusing elegance, edge, transgression and patriotism. So no, I don’t think being sympathetic to the right wing means I have to wear Praying’s “Melania Trump“ sweatshirt, or a nipple-baring tattered nightgown, or pose with my gun.
I qualify that I am not necessarily a MAGA-enthusiast. But a break with the politics of the last twenty to thirty years is overwhelmingly what this nation wants and needs. And as Fulton Sheen said, “the level of any civilization is the level of its womanhood. When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.” This echoes what Velez articulated when asking what womanhood can symbolize to a people or place. When will the fashion industry recognize the staggering creative energy in the project to make America great again? Fashion can be the vehicle by which the amazing women of America are awoken from their stupor and become a force of change.
Kirkpatrick, Emily. 01 Oct 2024. “Fashion’s Flirtation with the Alt-Right.” I <3 Mess.
https://x.com/NickJFuentes/status/1854015641218355621, Nick Fuentes originally says this during his election night stream after a clear Trump victory
https://x.com/louispisano/status/1702340659930087858?s=61, pulled from Kirkpatrick’s “Fashion’s Flirtation with the Alt-Right.”
https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/fall-2024-ready-to-wear/elena-velez/slideshow/collection Choose the review tab to see Vogue Runway’s collection review
My favorite Joan of Arc is Mark Twain’s! Twain writes of La Pucelle (“the maid”), “with Joan of Arc love of country was more than a mere sentiment—it was a passion. She was the Genius of Patriotism—she was Patriotism embodied, concreted, made flesh, and palpable to the touch and visible to the eye” (pg. 438)
https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spring-2025-ready-to-wear/elena-velez/slideshow/collection Choose the review tab to read Vogue Runway’s collection review
Red Scare podcast, hosted by Dasha Nekrasova (pictured in Kirkpatrick’s “Fashion’s Flirtation with the Alt-right”) and Anna Khachiyan
Both pictured posing with guns in Kirkpatrick’s “Fashion’s Flirtation with the Alt-Right.”
This is the piece that an artist like me dreams of when fumbling towards the materialization of a creative assertion- one that feels intuitive and urgent but is, at the time, still amorphous in the conscious mind. Brava.
They just don’t get it