the
show Perhaps the most succinct front-row seat for understanding fashion’s interplay with vaporwave is CosmePak’s 2019 self-release 1987 Beauty Pageant. From its album art dominated by a single model’s thousand-yard stare, to track names arranged from “Welcome And Greeting” to “Award Ceremony,” it’s a musical agenda for a viscerally fictional event. “With some of the other albums that I have heard in this vein…it usually puts the listener in the ‘customer’ seat, making them feel like they are being advertised to,” the North Carolina producer writes. “But with my album, I wanted to put the listener on the other side, already living and enjoying an elegant life. I tried to give them a look into the eyes of the kind of people you see in advertisements.” 1987 Beauty Pageant is rich with slowed soul and funk samples (“songs that you could unwind and have a nice time to,” CosmePak says), a staple vaporwave technique, with snares, subtle cymbals, and hissing speaker compression to bring the immersive experience alive. It’s dazzling and entrancing, with each song feeling like an exploded moment. “My biggest inspiration was the first 30 seconds of Saint Pepsi’s Skylar Spence. To me, the ambience sounded like some elegant, fancy dinner party, full of people in nice clothes, sipping expensive wine,” the artist adds. “I found the picture of the woman on an old newspaper, in a thrift store near where I used to live…I wanted to design it to look like it could be a flyer or poster advertising an actual pageant.” As for how he sees fashion as a glitzy facet of vaporwave, CosmePak indirectly describes the legacy of Chanel No. 5: Comfort, enjoyment, and fashion was a huge part of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Many commercials pushed that their product was the most ‘luxurious’ option,” he says. “There are countless commercials that try to tell you, ‘this is what beauty looks like,’ or telling you that their product will make you happier and better than other people.”
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