Bad taste is good taste in fashion

By Rujuta Vaidya

Full disclaimer: I wrote this article to formulate my own thoughts on camp and kitsch—how the two concepts evolved, where they overlap and how often one is mistaken from the other. In a world of people obsessed with perfecting every tiny detail of their digital footprint, where's the place for the (nearly synonymous with bad taste) aesthetics of camp and kitsch—especially in fashion? Why are they thought of in the same breath, and, if both are considered below the exacting standards of sophistication, what has brought them back into the sartorialist's vocabulary?

It all started with Balenciaga's ironically ugly and overpriced handbags—all worth an eye roll and a can-you-believe-this head shake. The latest, gift-shop poster leather shoppers, made me prod further into the relevance of such print on a $1,790 handbag. The piece is a prime contender for the kitsch camp. And this was not the first time Balenciaga has mocked the It-girl essential with something so painfully garish as a gift-shop poster and whack!—laid it out in the midst of high-brow fashion, perhaps to elicit a reaction; remember the much-memed Blanket Square and the Ikea-inspired Carry Shopper? Demna Gvasalia rarely fails at shocking his audience, but he isn't the only designer to walk down this road of supposed bad taste.

Tom Ford's autumn/winter 2018 show bore an overriding '80s touch—sequinned trousers and jackets aplenty. Take a closer look at the collection and you will see a jumper with the brand's logo emblazoned in hot-fix rhinestones, not entirely unlike the designer label's many rip-offs. It's as though Ford openly challenges you take on a brazenly gaudy wardrobe. Alessandro Michele, current creative director at Gucci who once worked with Ford, has a taste for irreverence himself. From working with Trouble Andrew aka Gucci Ghost on capsule collections to deliberately misspelling the logo of the storied Italian house as ‘Guccy', Alessandro Michele has long mixed high-brow and low-brow on the runway.

Meanwhile, at Comme des Garçons, Rei Kawakubo married sculptural pieces with Betty Boop and seemingly endless yards of ruffles, lamé and lace. Kawakubo's work softly approached exaggeration, raising it into a near crescendo of fury. Notorious for not explaining her work to the audience and leaving it to individual perception, the Japanese designer, who was honoured with an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last year, took us behind her mindset recently: “Camp is really and truly something deep and new, and represents a value we need. For example, there are so many so-called styles such as punk that have lost their original rebel spirit today. I think camp can express something deeper and give birth to progress.”

Here begins our journey of telling one apart from the other. German modernist writer Herman Broch wrote, “The maker of kitsch does not create inferior art, he is not an incompetent or a bungler, he cannot be evaluated by aesthetic standards; rather he is ethically depraved, a criminal willing radical evil.” Broch argued that this depravity, this willingness to go against what's safe, is what defines kitsch in the first place. “The essence of kitsch is the confusion of the ethical category with the aesthetic category. It is not concerned with ‘good,' but with ‘attractive' work; it is the pleasing effect that is most important,” he said. Kitsch is usually the characteristic of a object—the Balenciaga handbag and the Tom Ford sweatshirt are prime examples. Often filed under tacky, something that appeals to a mass audience over those with better taste, it is an aesthetic that one loves to hate.

By Hasina Jeelani

By Sanaa Sharma

By Piya Dhiman

Camp on the other hand is a term most often used in reference to art, and celebrates exaggeration and lack of pretence. “Camp is esoteric—something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques,” wrote Susan Sontag in her essay Notes On “Camp”. “The hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance. Camp is a woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers. Camp is the paintings of Carlo Crivelli, with their real jewels and trompe-l'œil insects and cracks in the masonry. Camp is the outrageous aestheticism of Steinberg's six American movies with Dietrich, all six, but especially the last, The Devil Is A Woman. In Camp there is often something démesuré in the quality of the ambition, not only in the style of the work itself. Gaudí's lurid and beautiful buildings in Barcelona are Camp not only because of their style, but because they reveal—most notably in the Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia—the ambition on the part of one man to do what it takes a generation, a whole culture to accomplish.”

Camp and kitsch overlap constantly, and despite the literature separating one from the other, what both aesthetic sensibilities succeed in delivering is a sense of pride in subverting the norm. For instance, while Kawakubo's clothing is a product that can be worn and hence categorised under kitsch, the designer addresses a sensibility that's not entirely practical and offers the wearer a story, instead of being just another object in their wardrobe.

Why does fashion, an industry deeply vested in correcting aesthetic flaws, even associate with these? The answer is simple. Style is never just about clothing. Fashion is the collective emotion of thinkers and trend spotters reacting to their current environment. Think of RuPaul's Drag Race—well in its 10th season and taking over Netflix feeds worldwide. Think of the unraveling gender binaries, the strengthening dialogue around inclusivity, and of the pressing need to find one's identity in the vast, open expanse of social media—however radical it might be. Think of meme accounts like Freddiemade and Siduations, which offer humorous commentary on pop culture fashion. Somewhere in a world full of people hellbent on projecting the most ideal version of themselves, is a counterculture questioning this very chase for perfection. We may not see camp or kitsch in their traditional definitions now, but their presence in the current context can't be ignored—which is kind of their point.

By Hasina Jeelani

By Sanaa Sharma

By Piya Dhiman

Sontag wrote, “Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a “lamp”; not a woman, but a “woman”. To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theatre.” Did anyone say Off-White?