DEAR SUBSTACK AUDIENCE, WHOM I ADORE:
THERE HAS BEEN A FORMATTING UPHEAVAL, AND NOW I CAN’T RUN MY ARTICLES ALONGSIDE MY AUDIO. SO, UNTIL I FIGURE OUT A BETTER IDEA, YOU’LL BE RECEIVING 2 EMAILS A WEEK. I apologize for the extra e-clutter.
Victory and Triumph.
LOVE, CINTRA.
(This piece previously appeared in Billboard magazine. )
Everything Lady Gaga wore this past year—from the infamous meat she draped herself in at the MTV music awards to the giant egg she emerged from at the Grammys—was, at the very least, something to look at. Or perhaps eat, maybe, if you had been trapped in a Virginia mineshaft long enough.
2010 was a year of fashion extremes, for the music industry -- of both the good and evil varieties. From the hourglass curves and Little Mermaid hair on Katy Perry to the alien brain-coral wigs on Nicki Minaj to the ultra-dowdy anti-fashion non-statements made by Susan Boyle, there was a lot of eye-candy competing for the attention of the music-watching fashion lover...but unsurprisingly, the game still belongs to Lady Gaga, the gravitational core of the music industry's visual information, around whom all others are thrown into a reactionary orbit.
In 2010, Lady Gaga finally got over clothing herself in discarded Madonna skins. Madonna, after all, had always made her bones by picking up the trailing edge of the sexual avant garde (vogueing, lesbian flirtation, black pvc boots, etc.) and dragging it kicking and screaming into the mainstream. La Gaga reanimated it all again some two decades later, but first she pulled all the overtly sexual teeth out of the old looks in order to subvert Madonna's flirty, kitten-punk impact, and make it more scary art-creature-y.
In true magpie fashion, Ms. Germonetta collects shiny bits from an ever-widening wide gallery of sources. To inspirations gleaned from Matthew Barney’s Cremaster series, Vegas space-alien, 1980's club kid looks, and fashion delicacies either made or inspired by the late Alexander McQueen and Philip Treacy (whose millinery work is so admired by Gaga, that she actually submitted a resume to him last May in a genuine bid to spend the summer as his unpaid intern. Mr. Treacy, it appears, was not so comfortable with the idea of Gaga fetching his coffee. ) Gaga added, as her most recent gambit—jutting, warthog-shaped bone formation "implants" in her cheeks and shoulders — a direct reference to radical French performance artist Orlan, whose work has been centered on extreme plastic surgery and facial modification for decades.
Following close behind Gaga's attention-strangling tailfeathers, Nicki Minaj has also endeavored to make her fashion a relevant extrusion of her music act. For the 2010 MTV Music Awards, Ms. Minaj wore a Manish Arora dress that looked like the Faberge sarcophagus Donatella Versace will eventually be encased in when she is shot into space. Ms. Minaj -- in the language of the true fashionista -- claimed the look to be "the dress version" of her album, Pink Friday.
Kids, too, seem to be doing some successful experiments in fashion determinism - if you can consider any of Will and Jada's phenomenal offspring projects to be actual "kids." Willow Smith's "Whip My Hair" video, with its Krush Groove, goofy-cool, anarcho-‘80s- androgyne style and sneering Neneh Cherry affect, is, IMHO, a pretty good role model for the girl-children of America. Young girl fashions finally seem to be breaking free of the hyper-stripper-oversexualized looks that have dominated the post-Britney era -- this will be a welcome return to psychological health, for the tween closet.
Other relatively young artists had varying degrees of luck coming of age on the red carpet. Miley Cyrus attended the Grammys in a Herve Leger dress seemingly made of blue venetian blinds, which suggested very little other than the idea that her stylist was Venetian, and blind. Justin Bieber's $750, blown- sideways hairstyle—which always seemed to be hovering on the event horizon of a collapsed Flowbee—made news in 2010. This was taken by some to be a sign that society is returning to softer, more feathered bangs on young men, and softer, more feathery pop to go with it -- a hair version of the Monkees as a lite-rock reaction to the Beatles. It's at least a haircut that Moms won't fear, and at best, will probably imitate.
Her style and waistline were constantly criticized, but Jessica Simpson had the last laugh with a billion-dollar fashion business that outpaced fellow rag-traders Justin Timberlake and Victoria Beckham - not to mention Madonna Jr. (tween mogul Lourdes Leon). Simpson’s strategy: Make party shoes inspired by more expensive party shoes except do them in vegetarian pleather at a low price point. And...it's working.
The country-western crossover fashion parade seems to have intentionally rounded off all its own edges like the rubberized table corners in a toddler-proof dining-room. The sartorially narcoleptic Lady Antebellum, in true Jessica Simpson fashion, will probably make billions of dollars eventually marketing a middle-aged, adult-contemporary, soberly de-fabulated office-to-karaoke-spinoff line. The fact that Taylor Swift's straightening of her hair for the 2010 AMAs somehow sent actual shockwaves through the media shows how little else there was to cling to, fashionwise.
Katy Perry turned heads with a blue wig at the 2010 MTV Music Awards, but became persona non grata on Sesame Street by infamously appearing in what could be called her 'Suckle Me Elmo' shirt. Her immediate response was to tone down her former fashion recklessness. The pink strapless Badgley Mischka cocktail dress that she wore to the AMA's in 2010 was the almost apologetic sartorial equivalent of "No, I am only drinking club soda tonight, thanks" - but those who appreciate fashion really didn't think she had a problem to begin with.
Susan Boyle’s defiant commitment to her own caterpillar eyebrows and tea-cozy frumpishness was so bone-deep and sincere that when stylists tried to reupholster her look in 2010, she rebelled. Respect must be summoned for a woman so dead-set against the tyranny of fashion that a mere pluck, blow-out and new blazer caused her entire psyche to implode. In her own small, unwaxed way, Ms. Boyle is a cultural hero.
Although I have no particular love for the mesh-Daisy-Dukes-n-white-bustier looks that Rihanna reserves for her magazine covers and music videos, her stylist, Mariel Haenn - an exceptionally sophisticated mind, among those who dress musicians - never lets Rihanna step onto a red carpet looking anything short of retro-glamorous-yet-modern, and scorchingly hot. The best of her outfits—usually a very strong, monochromatic couture statement—are by Elie Saab, who seems to understand precisely the right mood that a Rihanna gown must evoke. Saab’s creations are architectural tour-de-force extravaganzas (the white number Rihanna wore to the 2010 Grammys, e.g. was a monolithic, Joan Crawford power-goddess feat of classical construction) that pack enough of a visual wallop to keep pace with the attention-getting tantrum theatrics of Gaga's Royal Drag Queen Academy of Art-style. But instead of turning Rihanna into a swan boat or a tumbleweed composed entirely of Hot Wheels tracks or an electrocuted gyroscope, Haenn and Saab actually allow Rihanna to be a sexualized female.
It's important to understand these paradoxes in fashion—the balance between sweet and scary, hard and soft, sculptural threats and flattering whispers. Rihanna is cleaning all clocks on the red carpet -- and for the sake of societal beautification, we can only hope that a new generation of fashion-watching music fans follows her lead, and imitates her.