Phoebe Philo: Invisible and Visible Bodies

‘The chicest thing is when you don't exist on Google. God, I would love to be that person!’ said Phoebe Philo in an interview with The Evening Standard in 2013. Philo’s desire to avoid being immortalised in internet culture may seem paradoxical now, considering Celine’s ex-creative director has achieved cult status, with the infamous @oldceline account dedicated to her work and the furore around her imminent return after five years away to fashion with her eponymous brand. What stands out, however, is that the theme of visibility and invisibility isn't confined to Philo's online presence; it also permeates her clothing designs.

As a designer, Philo navigates the balance of exposing and hiding body parts, not necessarily for public display but for creating an image of an elusive woman. In the evolving landscape of fashion and feminism, the dichotomy between the visible and invisible body has become an intriguing subject of exploration. Phoebe Philo, a renowned fashion designer, and philosophers Hélène Cixous and Iris Marion Young, prominent feminist scholars, provide a unique lens through which we can examine this duality. But what is it like to be a woman who maintains her elusiveness in a patriarchal world that often reduces her to a mere body, seen but unheard?

In her seminal work The Laugh of the Medusa (1975), philosopher Hélène Cixous advocated for women's writing as a means to challenge patriarchal norms and reclaim their bodies from the oppressive system that held them in the shadows. Hélène Cixous argued for the importance of women's writing in challenging patriarchal conventions. She also believed that by writing, women could reclaim their bodies and break free from the ‘repression system’ that kept them in the dark. In the realm of fashion, women concealing their bodies under clothing can be viewed as an extension of patriarchal control. Cixous wrote about writing as a practice to be visible, but the term 'writing' can also be applied to the work of fashion designers as they craft silhouettes, colours, and shapes that enable us to articulate our identities.

Since Cixous, we have witnessed a transformation in the visibility of bodies. By the end of the 20th century, female bodies transformed commercial objects that marketed fashion. It was during this era that Phoebe Philo's designs at Chloé began to challenge the idea of displaying the body. Rather than entirely concealing it, her designs blurred the boundaries of whether or not to reveal it. In her designs, we can discern how she unexpectedly uncovered certain body parts, such as hips through circle cut-outs on square dresses from Chloe S/S 2004 collection, or challenging traditional glamour with lightweight fabrics and revealing body parts while countering them with sheer fabrics. As a fashion designer, she ‘wrote’ the body, giving it visibility from a female perspective, inscribing her desires instead of adhering to the male gaze's demands.

The fourth wave of feminism which fought against body shaming coincided with Philo's return to the fashion scene. Interestingly, during this time, magazines and fashion critics reviewing Philo's collections for Celine frequently described her designs as empowering. ‘Empowerment’ seemed to be the prevailing word for Philo's work during this period. Her streamlined clothing revealed the body in a different manner—less through cut-outs and décolletages and more through the creation of clothing that outlined the female body in motion. The silhouette appeared as though it had been shaped by the wearer, despite Philo's minimalist design approach. Thus, one could argue that revelation could be found in the shadow of the clothing. Did she create a fantasy where women were empowered while their bodies remained concealed?

This question takes me back to 1990s, when another feminist scholar, Iris Marion Young, wrote an essay titled Women Recovering Our Clothes in which she explored how women's pleasure in clothing could be described, attempting to distinguish liberating and valuable aspects of women's experience of clothing from the oppressive. As a positive aspect of fashion, Young saw that it offered tools for the body, allowing for a shift in how we interact with clothing, even if we couldn't completely escape the male gaze. One of fashion's tools, she believed, was the power of movement in clothing, even in shadow—our bodies' sensations in clothing were just as important as their visible aspects. When looking at Philo's designs from her Celine era, one could argue that it was about the body's movement within the garments. We saw bodies that defined themselves within narrow, rectangular draped suits, and bodies that uncovered themselves beneath layers of wide clothing, resulting in the creation of a new silhouette. In a way, she ‘gave back’ body to women. In her Spring 2017 collection, she featured the work of Yves Klein from the Anthropométries' series. The original work depicted a woman's body, which was created by a woman using her own body, but the credit for this representation was given to Klein. Through Philo's design, it felt as though she was returning the credit to its rightful owner.

Guessing what Philo's new line might entail is a curious process, as it is hoped to be the antithesis of what she created a decade ago. In today's era of social media, it's as though we are managing two bodies, one for public presentation and the other, the body in trainers, as said British psychotherapist Susie Orbach. It feels like we have one that we refine through clothing and another that we perfect through image manipulation. Thus, one can fantasise about a body that remains unmediated by the media, unobjectified—a canvas for an unreal identity. This is also the power of fashion, according to Young: the capacity to be a body not yet fixed and to experiment with clothing and style as vehicles for expressing the unreal possibilities we imagine, to create our own fantasies.

It appears that there is increasingly less room for fantasy and freedom in defining what women's fashion can be, especially as women designers are outnumbered, and are being replaced by men. Therefore, the return of Phoebe Philo represents not only a revival in the visibility of women's contributions to fashion but also a step toward giving us back the power of body fantasy.