Fashion Brief
In 1970 the Miss World pageant was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London, and although the 70s in this country are now styled as some kind of brutal dark age when people turned a forgiving blind eye to sexual harassment and worse, the pageant was already outdated. The women’s liberation movement stormed the event, throwing stink bombs and barracking the host, Bob Hope, who was himself looking as anachronistic as the swimsuit round. He, however, was an indefatigable fan of beauty pageants – indeed, he used to bring Miss America on his annual Christmas tours of Vietnam, meaning that alongside blacklisting screenwriters, we can count beauty pageant winners as yet another one of America’s strategies to fight the scourge of communism. And so, predictably, Hope was outraged by the protests: “Anybody that would try to break up an affair as wonderful as this, with these wonderful girls from the entire world, has got to be on some kind of dope, ladies and gentlemen.”
Which brings us to the fashion show for Victoria’s Secret, a mid-range American lingerie company, which was held in London on Tuesday night. Bob Hope would have been delighted at how much British people have come around to his way of thinking, 44 years later, 11 years after his death. No dope smokers round here any more, Bob. Far from there being any protests, the coverage of the event has been blanket and utterly adulatory. The newspapers, including the Guardian, featured big reports about what is nothing but a giant advert for an underwear company.
Online magazines have, for weeks in the runup, carried stories about how the models get in shape for the show, with detailed articles about their ridiculous diets and obsessive exercise routines. Women’s publications, such as vogue.co.uk and graziadaily.co.uk, that wouldn’t touch Miss World with a 10-foot swimsuit, have featured endless photos from the event.
The appeal of the Victoria’s Secret show for the media is obvious: indeed, it’s hard to miss with the models stomping straight towards the cameras, their genitals, nipples and backsides almost entirely visible through the mesh fabrics. The company seems to think that because “the angels”, as the company’s models are cringingly dubbed, wear over-the-top costumes – including occasionally racially insensitive ones such as Native American headdresses, geisha outfits and tribal make up – this mitigates the salaciousness. If anything it exaggerates it, giving the show the air of a Playboy mansion party, minus the weird old man in a silk bathrobe.
Everything for which the media criticises fashion shows – the veneration of skinniness, the reduction of women to their physical appearance, the pointless expenditure, the power of advertising, the racism – is encapsulated by the Victoria’s Secret show. And yet no show is covered as extensively and as adoringly as this annual advertisement for an overhyped lingerie brand. Indeed, the Mail Online, which is generally the loudest complainant against fashion shows, was so filled with stories about the Victoria’s Secret show that it was even harder than usual to find any actual news on the website.
There is no real difference between Miss World and the Victoria’s Secret show, except that the women are allowed to talk during Miss World and wear clothes. I covered fashion shows for this paper for almost a decade and I also once attended a Miss World pageant when I was a young reporter (feel the envy, readers!) so I feel I know the difference between a fashion show and a beauty pageant better than most – and it comes down to the clothes and the focus. The focus in the Victoria’s Secret show is resolutely on the bodies of the models, as that is all it has to offer.
Victoria’s Secret is not fashion – it’s underwear for teens and twentysomethings. And yet, ever since the mid-90s when the company came up with its wheeze of having an annual fashion show, Victoria’s Secret has, through the simple but guaranteed means of heavy advertising, aggressive self-publicity, celebrity appearances and money (the shows are estimated to cost at least $12m – £7.6m – a go), hoodwinked the world into thinking that this is a show that justifies any kind of coverage.
The media, always happy to find an excuse to feature photos of thin, half-naked women, eagerly swallowed this line. Leg-crossingly creepy male celebrities, including Usher, Adam Levine and, er, Justin Bieber, eagerly rocked up to perform. Fashion editors and writers who should know better were excitedly Instagraming photos from Tuesday night’s event which invariably featured models in bras and knickers larking around with Taylor Swift, this year’s celebrity guest, who sang on stage in a tacky looking negligee and gown, like a cut-price Blanche Dubois.
The idea that the image peddled by Victoria’s Secret is in some way “more accessible” than that promoted by other fashion shows, as defenders of the company routinely claim, is as laughable as the $2m bras the models wear. Yes, Victoria’s Secret garments are cheaper than those from, say, Chanel (well, except the mutimillion pound brassieres), but the models are precisely the same shape as those found in the more traditional shows. For all Victoria’s Secret’s guff about the company “loving curves”, the only curves it celebrates are those beneath the padded bras. Indeed, the company made this very clear with their recent ad campaign, featuring the usually proportioned models alongside the slogan “The Perfect Body”, until protests forced them to change it.
Miss World will happen next month, but don’t expect it to get anything like the coverage gifted to Victoria’s Secret. The media will claim this is because the pageant’s objectification of women is simply too embarrassingly retrograde to bother with; but the coverage of Victoria’s Secret proves this is not true. Miss World’s mistake is that it doesn’t come parcelled up in the zeitgeisty packaging of near nudity, cheap celebrity and advertising deals. Under that umbrella, women can be objectified as much as anyone likes, as a certain lingerie company knows.
Pass the dope, Bob Hope.
