Fashopolitico

Fashion and Politics, they don’t sit amazingly well together and yet there seems to be a recent trend towards mashing them up to create new angles on the age-old subjects. The most talked about at the moment has to be Esquire magazine’s (U.K. edition – website coming soon) recent 75th anniversary event where they revisited a number of classic covers from the 50s, 60s and 70s, replacing existing imagery with photographs of various fashion designers [via magculture]. All the chosen covers were originally art directed by George Lois [georgelois.com] who took a distinctly concept driven (almost ‘advertising-y’) approach to each cover. They were often overtly political too. Something that would be considered death at the newsstand by many men’s magazines today. The end result of Esquire’s new cover versions is that you begin to question the political relevence of modern fashion designers. Vivienne Westwood and Christopher Bailey’s images seem to be a snug fit although Donatella Versace & John Galliano’s logic seems fundamentally flawed when posed next to Muhammad Ali & Roy Cohn’s worthy illustrations (As a sidenote, Wired seems to have picked by the ‘topical’ baton with their ‘Screw the spotted owl’ cover for their June issue [wired.com/16-06]. It’s nice to see a revival in controversy being used to sell a ‘mainstream’ magazine, and I’m not talking about some selleb’s ‘amazing’ weight gain/loss story). SHOWstudio have also been giving Fashion & Politics a shove with a ongoing series of ‘Political Fashion’ pieces that are worth having a rummage through [showstudio.com/politicalfashion].