ONE FOR ALL
A new exhibit at FIT, Uniformity, assembles notable work, athletic, and military uniforms, and the high fashions they’ve inspired. There are beautiful uniforms here: a 1942 US Womens naval reserve skirtsuit by Mainbocher, an embellished nineteenth-century British mess jacket, and a dark 1920′s Marymount school dress with a sky blue collar and bow. And there are beautiful couture garments, including a twisting, one-shouldered, princess-seamed corset dress by John Galliano for Dior, in silk camouflage. The most joyful garments on display are TWA flight attendant outfits from 1975 designed by Stan Herman, polyester separates in cherry red, mustard yellow, cobalt blue, and flecked oatmeal, that can be mixed, crazily, at will. They hardly seem like uniforms.
But when happens when uniforms are intended to, and do, foster conformity? Thom Browne’s 2009 Mens show gets at the potentially sinister underpinnings. Browne dresses 41 models in identical grey flannel suits, raincoats, brogues and briefcases, and sends 40 of them to sit in neat rows of desks. They enter in file, hang their coats on stands, pull on sweaters, sit down, and type. Their leader, seated in front, facing them, at an identical desk, remains half a step ahead, dictating their rhythms. The set piece is hypnotic, and not without charm. As the leader rings a bell to mark the lunch break, each man opens his attache and pulls out a sandwich and an apple from a brown paper bag.
Browne’s suits are a skillful reinvention, and caricature, of the prep school uniform and the white collar suit. The trousers are famously short, and the jackets fit tight around the torso and under the arms, giving the men who wear them an innocent, adolescent appeal. But all the men in the 2009 show are young, tall, slender, and, except for one, white. Their striped white sweater armbands, brylecreemed hair, vacant stares, and unchallenged submission call to mind Nazi youth. A uniform, without freedom, quickly becomes hegemony.