Gorgeous women in skimpy lingerie and wings rocking playful, over the top haute couture. It could be the Playa but what we’re hinting at is this year’s annual Victoria’s Secret (VS) fashion show which just occurred.
One of the most anticipated and popular events in the default world fashion community, the annual VS fashion show has a reputation for being a sensational smorgasbord of perfect bodies in sexy undies. This year’s presentation, however, is generating even more buzz than usual due to a bevy of the buxom barbies sporting pieces clearly inspired by alternative fashion sub-cultures, most notably Steampunk.
VS continued their angels-wearing-wings theme but added a daring new twist by replacing feathers with balloons, gears, patchwork quilts, and other nontraditional items. It will be fun to see who from our community will one-up these designers with the wings they construct for this coming year’s burn.
This show reminds us how effective skimpy undergarment outfits are on the Playa. They’re also easy to pack and practically keep themselves organized. Just imagine only needing a medium sized purse for all your Playa outfits! (Well, that and a really warm fur coat.)
Plus, consider the off-playa benefits: cleaning them is a breeze, they’re great for the bedroom or the beach/pool/hot-tub, and they almost never go out of style. The bottom line is, they create a titillating opportunity for adding potent sexual energy to the atmosphere of any situation.
VS’s notable departure from their typically blase’ style campaigns of the past resulted in Playa-worthy looks that are every bit as glamorous while being immensely more fun! Whether or not this is a continuation of the BRC-inspired trendsetting announced during the Milan fashion show is unclear at this point but we’ll take this as a strong indication that the paradigm shift isn’t over yet …
If you’re interested in wings, we’ll be posting soon about a radical pair we are currently crafting. Click the subscribe links to the right and you will be notified!
UPDATE: Watched this show online (click here) 3 times yesterday with a large group and everyone LOVED it. It’s great entertainment in addition to the incredible fashions (many of which I had not seen pictures of yet). I recommend that you skip the “reality show” portions but plan on watching it more than once!
OK. I agree. The style is cool. But there is something disturbing about the steampunk aesthetic being co-opted by VS. Steampunk is handmade, DIY, beautiful in no small part because of its idiosyncracy. I guess that it bothers me to see Victoria’s Secret stealing our culture, and taking it apart so that they can put it back together in Malaysion sweatshops and sell it back to us.
Glad you brought this up Jerry. From the sources I researched, it seemed well-understood that the Steampunk aspects of this fashion show will not be mass-produced or otherwise made available in Victoria’s Secret retail locations. Yes, they are co-opting an aesthetic and it is possible that their intentions are not in keeping with the tenants Steampunk was founded upon, but if you are feeling uncomfortable now I would encourage you to brace yourself for what is on the horizon. Rumor has it that Steampunk is going Hollywood and will shortly after be popping up in a number of mainstream retail fashion outlets. It’s part of the life-cycle of every cool sub-culture from punk, goth, you name it. If you are having difficulty with this cycle I would encourage you to look at such commodification as the fire that burns away the old to make way for something new
Well, now you know how Black folks feel about OUR culture, as it journeys through Racist Ridicule, to Titillatingly Ethnic, to Mass Produced and Reconstructed Till Mainstream. Victoria’s Secret is the new Elvis. Welcome to American Consumerism.
Fashion is a business that is obsessed with doing something new, while its members are simultaneously, rampantly copying each other. I attend big fashion trade shows each year and the paranoia about being knocked off is intense (no cameras on the show floor, buyers and exhibitors identified with badges at all times, everything short of an FBI background check) and ironic, seeing that every third manufacturer is offering the same styles, really. It seems to me Style is created and evolves, like a virus, by copying what we saw someone else do and then tweaking it (viral mutation) because of access to materials, personal preferences, etc. It is the arc of a style movement to grow by being copied and then enter the capitalist consumer-sphere. As members of a heavily capitalist, consumer culture, it seems damn near impossible to divorce ourselves from its rapid reproduction/assimilation of our subcultures (indeed of anything it can get it’s hands on that has the slightest wiff of “cool”), but I do think we have choices about which things we choose to use in our stye, where and how we use them. “We have a particular power to disrupt the machinery of consumerism which is designed to make us victims … we can take as much power as is possible from the capitalist system by using its own language to break the boundaries it depends upon.” (The GLAM Manifesto)
Wow! Thank you Mairin for adding so much to this discussion
Dear Author dustycouture.com !
Bravo, brilliant phrase and is duly
Glad you enjoyed this post. Hope everyone gets a chance to watch the amazing VS show (click here)!
Thanks for the great article – I had fun reading it! I always enjoy this blog.
Thanks Cristy! Would you like to see more topics like this?