While daydreaming about a pre-brand era, imagining a kind of heaven where we’ve transcended capitalism, ego, and self-exploitation, I felt what I thought was an ancestor stroking my head and whispering in my ear: What would you wear in front of the gods?
It wasn’t until I realized that the “ancestor” was, in fact, my husband—who had come downstairs looking like a ghost, his cold, sweaty hand resting on my heated cheek, topless—that I asked him, What clothes did you sweat through last night?
“I changed my wet T-shirt three times,” he said, feverish from some post-COVID symptoms. “One was a complimentary T-shirt from Air France after they canceled my connecting flight, and I had to stay in a hotel in Paris. The second was a blue Ellesse T-shirt from the ‘80s or early ‘90s. The third was a white long-sleeve turtleneck from Muji. I picked them one after the other, half delirious, in the dim light of the night.”
He stroked my head and then, in return, asked, What would you wear to your funeral? Then he collapsed onto the sofa, leaving me alone with his moaning sounds echoing across the room.
I stared at the ghostly candle on the windowsill, the Saxon nutcracker, the penis candle, the small wooden turtle, the Saca lo Malo smoking pyramid from the Lima witch-market, and a rubber “holy egg” the size of a real egg. I wondered what the woman next to the giant guinea pig on the packaging of the Guy Negro soap bar was wearing. The intense disappointment I felt when I realized she was naked was interrupted by a memory of an article about burial gowns, in which the following question had arisen: I’m a naturist. Can I be buried in the nude? A funeral director had answered: If you fancy the idea of a naturist funeral, it’s possible to go naked, but the body must be covered from public view with a shroud, coffin, or casket. Natural burial is becoming increasingly popular, and some people opt for a shroud made of hemp or bamboo fibers instead of a coffin.
I see in front of me the flickering rhythm of dressing and undressing. Above and below the earth. Liminal spaces, rites of passage. A blending of the material with the metaphysical. Layers of fashion, identity—no identity, wrong identity—What identity?! I feel like a teenager, and an immediate urge to shed my clothes overtakes me. A clear state.
Where does fashion end?
Not Satan, but the alchemists wrote in medieval times: “That which is below is like that which is above, and that which is above is like that which is below, to accomplish the miracle of one thing.”
I see Balenciaga toe boots made of black-tanned leather with a Vibram rubber sole of a fashionable dead soul in the ground. The shoes would be an ideal choice for wandering through the clouds, even though both materials are prohibited in green burials or cremations.
I wonder, in my irritated mind, in these complicated times, if the gods of climate change are trying to rip fashion off our skins and provide the heat needed to unwrap us?
Do the gods like nudists best?
In Victorian times, when no one would have thought of eco-friendly burials and climate change, most people wore their own clothes to their funeral. The deceased dressed in their everyday clothes —most often reflecting their position in society—positioned in family groups for posthumous photographs.
It was also during this period when Queen Victoria’s mourning, beginning in 1861, brought high fashion into mourning. Jay’s Mourning Warehouse in London’s Regent Street announced new collections every season, including daywear, evening gowns, fabulous hats, fans, and jewelry—all available in every color, as long as it was black. Widows were expected to wear black for two years, and Queen Victoria herself chose to wear mourning attire until her death, 40 years later. This was also when industrialization bloomed, setting the stage for the capitalist society we live in today.
In my fantasy, Queen Victoria wears her mourning dresses in combination with sturdy boots and protective gloves, ready to transmute base metals into gold. I emphasize fashion styling as a servant for symbolizing stretches between worlds, beliefs, and ideas of the self and societal order. Inviting into liminal states. Entering the unknown. Not knowing who you’ll be next season. And who you were the season before. Naked or dressed. In order to get to know yourself better.
The act of wearing clothes performed on a Procrustean runway? The next season. Consumption. Materialism. The afterlife. The rite of passage. The money. The soul. Oh dear, it’s all there at the same time.
Cancelled or called?
Spiritual leaders showcased their status and holy origins through their ritual attire, often mimicking animals. Their custom robes and accessories allowed them to transform into other identities and bodies. They underwent both physical and spiritual transformation.
In the cloudy skies of individualistic and capitalist landscapes, you can see a need in people changing their outfits drastically for different occasions or times in their lives—the butcher from down the street, now a passionate skater boy from the Russian suburbs, tomorrow nailing a deal before heading to lunch at the Dior Café in the Miami Art District meeting with a curator transformed into a Transylvanian vampire medium, meeting a young gallery artist, transformed into an aristocratic lawyer in his mid-50s. A subversive, sometimes delusional, contemporary amphitheater—an experimental playground where fashion-clad bodies present real or unreal concepts of the inner self. Or a pathway to integrate and balance opposing tendencies within the psyche?
Fashion may express opposites through styles that we need to integrate into our conscious awareness by acting them out beforehand. Choosing a character to understand, express, or identify with. Opportunities for small ritualistic performances. Unannounced. Casual.
Does the gold appear where fashion ends or does creative freedom appear where fashion starts?
Who knows.
Realizing that I’m feverish myself, I’ll leave you with a suggestion to read: On the Genealogy of Morals by Nietzsche.
