Activist Chic: I Protest!

When I first came across this piece about protester fashion in the New York Times, my first reaction was to roll my eyes. As I clicked through image after image of activist street style, I couldn't help but despair at the evident desire to strip away any issue of ideology - to reduce protest to performance. Does it matter that Nicole Thomas, 22, is wearing a Victoria's Secret pajama shirt? Who cares whether Liza Tichenor, 30, is rocking a vintage pencil skirt? There are much bigger issues in play.

The piece fails on every front: the looks on display are largely functional and boring, so it doesn't work as a street style piece, and (more importantly) it works to trivialize the Occupy Wallstreet phenomenon. In reducing the protest to a string of outfits, it strips the protest of its ideological content and - as this article from the Telegraph demonstrates - makes it available for dismissal as absurd 'hipster narcissism.'

But, whilst it's true that reducing political engagement to a question of surface and style serves to undermine the protest in a troubling way, I would raise some queries about both my own knee-jerk response and the Telegraph's snortingly dismissive coverage. There is a tendency to assume that fashion is trivial, consumerist, and silly, but we cannot avoid sending messages via what we wear. Clothes inevitably signal something to onlookers about our viewpoints, our attitudes, and our identity, and whilst we are never fully in control of how we are 'read' by others, we do have a certain amount of agency in terms of shaping people's perceptions of us via the language of style.

Is it really so silly, then, to consider how the way that we dress might reflect, express, or draw attention to our politics? Whilst the execution of the New York Times piece leaves a lot to be desired, is there really anything fundamentally wrong with the idea of examining the aesthetics of activism? Handled more deftly, it might even be an interesting and illuminating exercise. More than this, though, there is a need to question the assumption that being able to 'think fashion' means that one is unable to think anything else with the requisite degree of reflection and analysis.

As a result of their being perceived as sartorially aware, the protestors are viewed as being, to quote Brendan O'Neill of the Telegraph, 'far more sussed about their clobber than they are about why they have taken to the streets.' This is quite unfair, given that the article was for the fashion section of the New York Times; I mean, of course the contributors are going to talk more about their clothes than about their political motivations. The journalists would have been steering and editing their responses in that direction. And it is, of course, far easier to talk succinctly about style than it is to offer a concise sound bite on the myriad problems of capitalism.

And the very idea that an interest in style suggests a diminished ability to talk about politics is founded upon some very limited ideas about fashion - that it's an inherently and totally capitalistic discourse, with no space for any other significant meanings. This is suggested again when O'Neill hints at the irony of the existence of 'anti-capitalist' brand lovers: '“My pencil skirt is vintage”, says one protester. “The sunglasses are Michael Kors.” Another chirps: “My top is American Apparel. The vest is Forever 21.”' Yes, certain conceptualizations of fashion play into ideas about passive consumption and blind consumerism, but the issue is also more complicated than that.

Firstly, a protest very often brings together people from varied backgrounds and with diverging perspectives; it is a strategic alliance of individuals coming together to agitate for a specific cause. They come together in a way which makes their individual differences temporarily irrelevant - a way which subsumes these differences in the interests of a common cause. In the case of Occupy Wall Street, the protest centres specifically on New York's financial services, and the huge profits being made by the bailed-out banks. To sympathise with this cause is not the same as taking umbrage with every aspect of the capitalist system. In other words, we should not be surprised to find fashion lovers at a protest; people who hate the banks without hating American Apparel should not be viewed as damaging the coherence of a protest movement, but with that spirit of hospitality which can prove so useful when it comes to mobilizing popular support. Their cognitive dissonance is their own business. For now at least, they act as allies in a shared cause and should not be stigmatized.

Secondly, there is a mess of complex associations between personal style and personal beliefs. An investment in clothing cannot be generally or uncritically equated with a particular kind of ideological stance. In particular, an interest in style must not be read as an indication of empty-headed hipster bimbo-ism (or himbo-ism). Why is it so hard to believe that someone might be able to care about both her hair and the global economic crisis? Style and politics are separate discourses which can, in some (albeit limited) way, intersect and inter-penetrate. I can only guess at the processes by which they come to be seen as mutually exclusive... one rarely finds journalists arguing that football supporters, for example, are ineligible to protest because of their interests, and sport is just as much of a trivial, money-driven preoccupation as style.

This post is quite an incoherent outpouring of half-baked ideas, but I just wanted to challenge myself to reflect upon my own reactions to the New York Times piece. If you ask me, there are three essentials when it comes to dressing for a protest: flat shoes for walking and/ or running, bag containing supplies and She-pee in case of kettling, and some kind of home-made armour fashioned from baking trays in case of police brutality.