Fashion Plays Peekaboo, Once Again

By ERIC WILSON
Published: September 12, 2008
NO one blinked at the Marc Jacobs fashion show last week when the model Freja Beha Erichsen appeared in a sheer black top that revealed that she was wearing a nipple ring. No one blushed at the Chris Benz show when Sasha Luss and Ekat Kiseleva posed in see-through camisoles. No one seemed particularly hot or bothered that Ali Stephens’s breasts were clearly visible through her dress when she walked for Derek Lam. No one was outraged that Francisco Costa showed a transparent raincoat at Calvin Klein with nothing but a thong underneath.

Evan Sung for The New York Times
TRANSPARENCY The Preen collection included many revealing outfits, some with harnesses.
Spring 2009 Collections

Richard Termine for The New York Times
DEGREES OF MODESTY A dress from the Marc Jacobs collection.

Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times
TOWARD LIBERATION? At Ohne Titel, sequins embroidered on a sheer top looked like body art.

Erin Baiano for The New York Times
A blackout bar across the breasts of a sheer top from Cushnie et Ochs.

Peek-a-boo was the biggest trend at the New York Fashion Week that ended on Friday, though you would have thought the shows were taking place on the Riviera given the blasé response of most editors and retailers. Blouses that reveal? Yves Saint Laurent was doing that in the 1970s. Yawn.
It is a paradox of the times that during a presidential election that has been shaped in large measure by women, when a female candidate was ridiculed for wearing pantsuits and the mere mention of lipstick takes on a sexist connotation, the political implications of the public display of breasts went by largely unnoticed as the fashion world was deciding what women will be wearing at the beginning of the next administration.
In 1968 (and not incidentally just after the Democratic National Convention that year), a feminist group called the New York Radical Women disavowed the traditional trappings of femininity at a protest of the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. News media coverage of the event gave rise to the term “bra burning,” though no bras were actually burned.
In 2008, it is fashion designers who are jettisoning the undergarments. And some of those whose models were unburdened of their bras said they were consciously doing so to make a political statement.
“Don’t you feel that we as a society are almost at war about which way we choose to go?” asked Alexa Adams, a designer of an edgy new label called Ohne Titel, and one of the minority of women’s wear designers who happens to be a woman. “There is this question hanging over us: Are we going to remain in this conservative period, or are we going to choose to be more liberated.”
Judging by the sheer number of sheer fabrics shown at collections last week, it was not difficult to gauge which side the designers were on. Ms. Adams and her partner, Flora Gill, showed transparent bodysuits and leggings covered with sequins that made the models look as if they were tattooed. There were breast-revealing outfits at Preen and Jeremy Laing, and sheer looks that covered only the parts of interest to Playboy readers at Vera Wang, Thakoon and Proenza Schouler, making it difficult at times to find photographs suitable for publication in this newspaper. It was like watching Fashion Week through one of those new airport screening machines that can see through clothes.
“This was a reaction to conservative ideas,” Ms. Adams said. “We felt we had been surrounded by something so restrictive for the last few years, and we wanted to start with the idea of lightness this season.”
Mr. Benz, similarly, was thinking about transparency after spending the summer in Greece around women who were comfortable with that sort of exposure. He was surprised when the models arrived for his fittings and told him that sheer was the biggest trend of the season. None of them complained about the outfits, either.
“I feel that living in New York and being in this blue state bubble, we’re saying ‘This is us, and this is what we’re standing for,’ ” he said. “Maybe that’s the direction.”
But nudity, like fashion, has lost much of its power to shock.
We have become so desensitized to images of naked celebrities, sex tapes and Internet pornography that designers are hard-pressed to create anything that seems really transgressive. Even a strong undercurrent of bondage in the spring collections, with harnesses at Proenza Schouler and Rodarte, caging stripes at Narciso Rodriguez and Thakoon and blackout bars across the breasts of a sheer top from Cushnie et Ochs, a new label by recent fashion school graduates Carly Cushnie and Michelle Ochs, failed to whip up a frenzy.
One could argue that American tastes have become less puritanical, but it seems more likely that they have simply become dulled.
“I hadn’t even noticed,” said Julie Gilhart, the fashion director of Barneys New York.
“It’s almost expected at a fashion show today,” said Ken Downing, her counterpart at Neiman Marcus.
“It’s a cliché that American women are covering up,” said Roopal Patel, the women’s fashion director at Bergdorf Goodman.
Actually, Ms. Patel hastened to add, the sheer look might just be a boon to lingerie sales, since actual customers not walking a 100-foot catwalk would be likely to buy a slip or at least a bra to wear underneath.
It would seem that if it was the designers’ intention to provoke the sort of social reaction that led to women’s liberation four decades ago, they might have done better trying to put lipstick on a pig.