Becky raises a really interesting point about the rejection of fashion as a political act. Maybe Lee Miller's turn away from fashion after witnessing the effects of the Holocaust, as Becky seems to suggest, is like a reflection of a reworked form of Adorno's famous dictum to say "there is no fashion after Auschwitz."
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All your replies and responses to SHOWstudio Blog articles hereDr Becky Conekin utilises her extensive research into the life of Lee Miller to inform her contribution, the latest in our Political Fashion debate. Examining the politics of appearance, Conekin investigates the attitudes that Miller met following the war, when her looks began to fade and she settled into family life away from the glamorous world of fashion, and questions what these responses engender.
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I find this story rather puzzling I must admit .... we can assume and speculate about why she let herself go due to the incredible events in her extraordinary life ... there might be some truth... there might be some guilt as explained .. or just simply the fact that with age .... views and interests do tend to change .... and yet I keep wondering . " Does the world improve around us if we join someone's unfortunate and regrettable misery, do we add anything positive to those in misery already by becoming one of them ?.... just wondering and wondering ..... I once saw a story of a woman who was absolutely dashing and full of life and then at certain point in time she turned a slob .... depression followed and lost her confidence ... but then by chance she turned her life around with the help of .. you guess ! ..... fashion!! ... and from that moment on she regained her confidence and became more alive.... who would ever believe that ? ... as shallow as it might read to some !
What I find interesting about fashion today is ... that in a certain way it's a knife of two edges .... just be careful how you use it ...... it might cut you or it might help you to be an useful tool in the matters of the feeling good factor, that is something many people need badly more often than not ..... no harm in that :):) as long as it doesn't become the ruler of you life .... In the end it all depends how we use it... it is just like ..... FIRE ... if only to illustrate it ......:):)
In reply to Galileo's Universe:
i hate that turn of phrase: "let herself go". What exactly does it mean? What and for whom was 'she' keeping things in control for in the first place?
In reply to Sandrine:
... yes I wondered that too !!... but then again it is utterly impossible to get inside someone's head in order to get to the core of why and what makes someone become ' self- destructive'..... I wish I could had ask her exactly the same question ..... about what she meant with ....'let herself go'..... wasn't she happy with herself in the first place ??? .... it could had been of course millions of reasons .... we will never know .... will we ?
PS> ... on the other hand, my speculative answer would be that ..... what she meant was that events in her personal life led her to lose ' total control ' ..... whatever that may mean .... as in ' let herself go ' but then again ... I'm just guessing :):)!
In reply to FrancescaL:
You see I find so hard to believe in that "........ Miller was perhaps freeing herself of the social constraints that fashion had, for so long, imposed upon her and those around her? ' ... what does it mean ' freeing herself '..... as if fashion was indeed holding someone against their own will ? ... it also sounds as if confined to a ' mental prison' as if serving a kind of sentence ......... wouldn't it be better to think that the person was freeing herself from the will of the social constraints she HERSELF allowed to be put in..... ? ... after all she does sound to have arose above the rest ... whatever that means :):), a rather high-minded person with a very total will of her own !!... I'm not so sure now whether it is FASHION the monster or simply the monster WE turn into in order to .... confine others .... or perhaps the simple fact that she wasn't as strong as she wanted as to believe ? .... in the end it all goes back, I assume , to each one's INSECURITIES ......... and fashion for that matter will never be able to speak for itself .........:):) ... in the end we personally do with fashion whatever we want and use it however we want but then again we must take care first of our own personal insecurities and demons and then fashion would just be .... icing on the cake... !
I agree with the idea that, having witnessed the horrors of WW2, Miller simply didn't think fashion was amusing anymore. Think of W. Somerset Maugham's comment: "Art is merely the game which those who, being supplied with food and women, invent to pass the tediousness of life" (or something like that- to the same effect). Granted, Lee Miller was not the type to be 'supplied with women' but the point is the same: fashion is fun when you're safe and well-provided for, and when you aren't, it seems less necessary, unless you're French (or me) and then it's always necessary. So her rejection of fashion was a result of what she saw. But it was also a rejection of the construction of femininity to which women were and are subject, and of course when a woman rejects femininity she often suffers for it (witness the Rei Kawakubo collection dubbed 'Hiroshima chic').