The Thread Magazine Spring/Summer 2015

THREAD

ISSUE NO. VI

THE ART HISTORY ISSUE

SPRING / SUMMER 2015

Spirit, Cornell Style

store.cornell.edu

Front & Back Covers Graphics Charlene Luo Photography Jessa Chargois

Arthur Peterson Editor-in-Chief Larissa-Helen Mahaga-Ajala President

Ariel Hsu Creative Director

Sisi Peng Vice President

Ada To Technical Director

TEAMS CREATIVE

TECHNICAL

Art

Business & Marketing

Director Kate Chen Clara Eizayaga Beth Tesfaye Kieran Haruta Alisa Tiong Jerry Liu George Tsouronakis Sean Steed

Beauty

Director Kelly Guo Angelique Brownlie Carley Steckel Simone Chen Diane Tsang Dikshing Lama Nelson Handan Xu

Creative

Rachael Biggane Josephine Chu Jackie DeVito Alice Hong Yoon Jeong

Hannah Kim Tracey Kong Agnes Shin Steven Switzer Eugenia Xiao

Editorial Associate Editor-in-Chief Alexandra Clement Siobhรกn Brandman Julia Pearson Addy Cooper Camila Salazar Nicolette Jones Sisi Yu Daniel Preston

Photography

Director Yodai Yasunaga Andrew Aquino Christopher Andras Jessa Chargois Katherine Chen

Stephanie Cheung Devin Jameson Cameron Pollack Frank Wang

Styling

Director Emily Gartenberg Sloane Applebaum Jehireh Peraza-Williams Andrew Geddings Sonal Rastogi Brenna Louie Tessa Schneider

Director Stacy Jeong Finance Director Cynthia Sun Associate Finance Director Hannah Babb Krysta Brown Stephanie Chow Jess Lee Kristina Linares

Sophie Meyers Alexis Neng Qian Katrine Trampe Peiru Zhu

Web

AK Erinne Charlene Luo Jenny Gray

Special thanks to:

Association Cayuga Press The Cornell Store Cornell Undergraduate Research Board Cornell University College of Human Ecology Department of Fiber Science and Apparel Design Prof. Dale Grossman John E. Hill J.B. Hoffman Prof. Sofia Krimizi Student Assembly Finance Commission Velvet Cakes Judy Wiiki Gavin Zhang

Advisor

Prof. Denise Green dng22@cornell.edu

Thread, an independent student organization located at Cornell University, produced and is responsible for the content of this publication. This publication was not reviewed or approved by, nor does it necessarily express or reflect the policies or opinions of, Cornell University or its designated representatives.

table of c o n t e n t s

Letters Editor Creative Director

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Editorial A Requisite Art The Portrait of an Outfit Frida The Victors Write the History Typewriters, Twitter, and Tees Finding Feminism in Fashion Wearing her Soul on her Sleeve

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Photography Candied Realized Hustled Striped

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Graphic Warped Glint Fashioned

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letter from the

editor

I don’t remember how I got there nor why I was upset, but I do remember it being an oppressively hot night as I, age 16, sat crying hysterically atop a stoop somewhere on the Lower East Side. Newly publicly out and, more importantly, out of parochial school and out of a uniform, I felt in transition. The image of that evening has stayed with me, and now appears as a kind of reckoning.

Something critical felt at stake there, as though when I resolved to hike back uptown I also had resolved to go a little farther, to rally myself.

I suppose that’s where the spirit of this issue arose: with the feeling that selfhood is a labor of becoming, a labor that I’ve discovered is facilitated partly by and through fashion. A conversation on the relationship between art and fashion provided the genesis of our Spring/Summer 2015 issue, but insofar as it concerns the editorial side of our publication, the conversation has transmuted into one on the relationship between style and the performative art of identity across contemporary and historical contexts. Fashion functions as a vehicle for the construction and articulation of selfhood, in an embodied mode unrivaled by the other visual arts. Look for my spiel on the topic on page 8. Fashion has endured as a discursive medium for students to assert their identities, particularly against a style landscape as rocky as Cornell’s.

For insight into how your forbearers

weathered the Ithaca chill with punch and panache, check Daniel Preston’s feature on page 27. For a deeply felt meditation on how fashion relates to inhabiting an empowered, feminist religious identity, see Addy Cooper’s piece on page 39.

Nicolette Jones reports on the interplay between fashion and feminism on page 31, exploring how fashion is both facilitating and inhibiting the feminist imagination. Associate Editor-in-Chief

“Fashion functions as a vehicle for the construction and articulation of selfhood...”

Allie Clement seeks out Frida Kahlo on page 19, offering insight into the art and thought of her pioneering life. Siobhán Brandman, Camila Salazar, and Sisi Yu trace the histories of individual fashion items and how they’ve related to the identity constructions of their times on page 23. Julia Pearson casts a light into storefront windows on page 15, illuminating how window dressing has articulated brand and consumer identity from the shops of 18th century London to the grandeur of Palm Beach’s Worth Avenue.

After five semesters with Thread, this is my first and last as Editor-in-Chief.

It has been a real treat. I’d be remiss not to thank our phenomenal team, particularly Kate Chen, Allie Clement, Emily Gartenberg, Kelly Guo, Ariel Hsu, and Yodai Yasunaga, each of whom has left me staggered at the breadth of their commitments to this publication. Thank you. Y’all done good. If I have learned anything in my scant 21 years - and I have not - it is to believe that the best is yet to come. No matter how brilliant or dismal the present moment may be, nothing motivates me more than a 7 AM wakeup, a hot cup of coffee, a Marlboro Menthol 100, and the quiet promise of another day. Be mindful of the present and keep an eye on the future. Be relentless, unhesitating, and certain of your competence, knowing that the only way out is not above, below, or around, but through.

— Arthur Peterson

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letter from the

When I found Thread, I had no idea what I was looking for. And by “found,” I mean I found ten people in a room in Human Ecology planning out a magazine that ran under the name “The Thread.”

Everybody confused us with CFC. Those were our humble beginnings.

Since then, we’ve grown to a tremendous team, rebranded, and created a presence for ourselves. Now people actually know who we are. Just kidding, they still think we’re CFC. We had established our club but what was the future of our magazine? How could we enhance our magazine further and continue our upward trend? This semester, I tried to elevate Thread’s visual identity through extending our themes past the scope of fashion. In the past, we had designed photo shoots based on an overall theme relating to fashion categories (“punk,” “athletic,” etc.). We found that this strategy was limiting and that we could only push a style so far.

The previous Creative Director, Gavin Zhang, forged a new path for us by introducing broader themes to our issues.

In that vein, we thought this issue’s theme should be related to history to coincide with the sesquicentennial. To add more depth to our issue, we decided that this issue’s theme would be Art History, giving a reverent nod to how fashion has always been documented through art.

We hosted a preliminary “Think Tank” in

creative director

which our associates could pitch ideas relating to potential artists, movements, styling goals, student collaborations and the like. After sifting through those ideas, I began to plan our issue. I started with artists and photographers that were mentioned in our “Think Tank,” then those I personally liked – Albers, Klimt, Andrew B. Myers – and lastly, artists who had a particularly notable impact on art history or whose work supported specific styling

“...treating fashion as another medium in the larger scheme of creating an artistic...series.” ideas or artistic techniques we wanted to pursue this semester.

With this theme, the philosophy of our approach was not necessarily to focus on fashion as the driver of ideas, but to take inspiration from specific artists and art movements and to reinterpret them, treating fashion as another medium in the larger scheme of creating an artistic or photographic series. With such a rich collection of works to draw from, we had the opportunity to explore a diverse set

of styles, techniques, and aesthetics.

This issue is a culmination of visual and conceptual explorations of how fashion and art relate and how they often parallel each other.

Last but not least, a big thank you to our staff. Thank you to our associates for joining along for the ride and making this magazine happen. And of course, a special thanks must be extended to all the Executive Board members for their dedication and shared vision of what Thread can be.

— Ariel Hsu

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Graphic Sean Steed

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A Requisite Art

A reflection on the relationship between art, fashion and identity.

Arthur Peterson As the first three letters of my name, “art” has colored my expectations of who I am meant to be. I’ve been called “Art,” “Artie,” and, most aptly, “Farty Arty,” but seldom have I been called an artist.

I am not an actor, a musician, or a visual artist, or at least I am none of those in a prevailing, passionate sense. Lord, how I’ve ached to be. As a creative person, “being an artist” has been the gadfly at my ear. Writing always has come most naturally to me, but I’ve wanted to be more than a mere writer. Authorship feels like a largely solitary occupation, lacking the physical embodiment and witnessed audience response that make visual art so presentable and forceful. If writing seems to offer an unrequited audience, where do I get my kicks? From the pair hanging off my shoe tree.

The pair I’m eyeing now as I write is a jet black Oxford-trainer hybrid with orange accents, and it’s far sleeker than my description suggests. When I wear it, I’m surer of my step and a touch more forward-bound in my gait, more likely to hop over a curb or a sidewalk glacier. The half-inch heel and synthetic sole make me feel buoyant. Yet if I were to slip on a pair of Havaianas, my pancake-flat feet would burn and my stride would be reduced to a schlepp. What I wear influences how I interface with the environment and how I feel in my skin, allowing some spatial and cognitive possibilities and constraining others. As a worn art, dress feels most immediately “me.” It suggests certain ways of being in the world; how to move, how to think of myself, how to imagine that others might think of me. The impact is pervasive and inescapable, in part because clothing itself is.

Dress is a requisite art. As Twain remarked, “naked people have little or no influence on society,” and you’d have to weather both the Ithaca chill and the frigid glares of your peers if you were to walk around bare-assed. Life demands that you dress. That you do so is integral to your daily negotiation of a society propped up by apparatuses of power and perception.

As much as dress reveals you to yourself, it discloses you to others, constructing and articulating your self-identity. You might have made a pass at performance in your youth, stiffening your parents’ backs as you crooned out mawkish show tunes for the seasonal musical. Yet you’ve been called to performance every time that you’ve consulted your closet before braving the day. As one line of your performance, dress is an accent that betrays your origins, your subculture, your means, your aspirations. Dress suggests that identity is more fluid than static, more a way of doing than a mode of being, constituted and reconstituted in your everyday performance of yourself.

The identity performance that clothes embody surpasses the more traditional visual arts in corporeality and personification. Style empowers you to occupy space and to express yourself boldly, with a physicality that is immediately associable with your person.

As near to the skin as a lover and much more consistent, dress is a constant reminder of the space you hope to inhabit and actualize an identity within. It is the best vehicle for the performativity of selfhood.

Dress liberates you to reimagine the possibilities of that performance, and ultimately of yourself. Fashion is a location through which and in which identities are represented; they are facilitated or delimited, freed or constrained, allowing or disallowing new ways of being in the real world. Dress is a discursive space to forge identities that go beyond the possible. A striking composition can distort reality and suggest a synthesis of self that might not have been inhabited before, a silhouette accomplishing the violent work of creating and reclaiming space. Dress can suggest imagined intimacies and private kinships, vocal contestations and public disavowals. No artistic platform is more public, more discursive, and more literally felt than dress.

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Crisp confections and accented accessories make for a palette so delectable, you can’t believe it’s not Instagram.

Meringues courtesy of Velvet Cakes

Photography Stephanie Cheung Cameron Pollack

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The portrait of an outfit: On the interest of window shopping

A brief history on the appeal of window shopping. The fashionable displays remain an onset of sartorial stupor, art pieces to be admired with the ability to be bought.

Julia Pearson

Every year, at Christmas time, Bergdorf Goodman transforms their storefront windows into an opus of embellishment and whimsy. It takes the talent of over 100 artists, 2 weeks of installation and 11 months of preparation for these grandiose visions to be unveiled. And then, as the air crisps in late November, children and adults alike stand enchanted in the face of lavish productions. In one window a mannequin, draped in an expensive outfit, is overwhelmed by a kaleidoscope of neon lights. Another stands center in a combustion of chrome instruments. A third fronts a background of traditional portraits stacked and saturated in red.

Display windows have a much humbler introduction. In the late 1700s, merchandisers began fronting their shops with glass. Products took on the role of an artful exhibition, enticing customers to venture inside. Now shopping districts are an experience just to be explored— anyone can amble by stores to enjoy the beauty of clothes as a spectator, and not necessarily as a purchaser. The glamour is immediate and attainable. It is tailored art

for the masses, rousing reveries about the day when that Céline bag, the new pair of Miu Mius, the Chanel dress are affordable.

Windows have become a kind of sartorial element of the American Dream—the promise of that expensive jacket, tangible by sight, transitive in time—if only you work hard for success.

Today’s technological world has created a complex of intersecting faces.

Tacked onto the runway show and the magazine campaigns, brands create a Facebook page, Twitter account, Instagram feed, Tumblrs...an everexpanding list of social media platforms.

Each a question of expression, they are the perfect canvases for artistic labels to paint their vision. And the image grows more important as the selection grows more elaborate. Many brands were born in the entrepreneurial Internet age.

Labels like Nastygal and Tobi offer cheap of-the-moment fashion delivered in 3-5 business days. The department store era has dimmed in the shadows of the bright screens holding the instantaneous industry of online shopping. But windows have remained a relic from the past, and

have always been a constant, physical interpretation. It is something Tobi can’t achieve—the three-dimensional promise of products, an allure that can be met with touchable gratification.

Windows have the unchanging ability to allow everyone to take part in the fashion world, regardless of wealth.

The style is present. And they are one of the best embodiments of a brand.

Anthropologie’s summer line is abridged in eclectic, artistic murals; Pinkyotto’s store is always fronted by quirky, bearheaded mannequins sporting bright shifts; Allsaints cool mystique is portrayed in rows of vintage sewing machines.

Now stores like these populate whole streets and squares and districts. It is an experience just to stroll along the sidewalks of spots like Newbury Street, Worth Avenue, Rodeo Drive, and SoHo. They help maintain that American dream, a dream that seems to be fading in the face of our wired world. Windows are still so relevant, perhaps because they remain a material creation, the visual and market features of fashion converging in corporeal representation.

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Photographs courtesy of Moschino, All Saints, Bergdorf Goodman, and Anthropologie.

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“I hope the exit is joyful — and I hope never to return.”

Frida Kahlo

Beauty Hannah Babb Simone Chen Kelly Guo Dikshing Lama Nelson Diane Tsang Handan Xu

Models Kristina Dunworth Victoria Purcell Lauren Slowskei

Photography Chris Andras Alisa Tiong

FRIDA

After a crippling accident as a teen, Frida Kahlo expressed her pain by painting self-portraits. Her work depicts the depth of her character — her strength, brashness, and passion.

Alexandra Clement Bedridden and trapped in a full body cast, a young woman started painting.

Indefinable expressions of life and pain emerged on canvas, unconstrained by normative concepts of visual reality. With her body in agony, Frida Kahlo combined traditional Mexican art with personal experience and produced breathtaking self-portraits and other manifestations of her reality.

As an adolescent, Frida lived with all she had, knowing and understanding her own desires more deeply than a teenager typically would. She had a strong sense of self — she told her father with certainty that she would become a doctor. She was sexually active, bold, and confident.

Frida could never be considered a healthy child; she suffered through a bout of polio when she was six years old, which disfigured her body and affected her growth. Yet the accident that arguably precipitated her artistic success occurred when she was 18 years old.

On her afternoon commute home from the prestigious Escuela Nacional Preparatoria in her native Mexico City, a trolley car struck the bus that Frida rode. Along with several broken bones and serious injuries, a metal pole drove through Frida’s vagina, impacting her ability to bear children. Months of suffering and a poor prognosis for her regaining the ability to walk could not restrain Frida. She fully regained her mobility and forged a new purpose in her life: her art.

Frida took on Diego Rivera as a mentor, a passionate Mexican muralist whose strident socialist beliefs often made him more enemies than friends.

Despite his being twice divorced and apologetically adulterous, Frida found her visionary equal in Rivera and embarked on a sexual relationship with him. Kahlo esteemed loyalty of the spirit over fidelity of the body and accepted Rivera’s transgressions. With full knowledge of his character, Frida nonetheless married him, and many say she devoted her life to him: she called him “my child, my lover, my universe.”

As the couple traveled to the United States, Europe, and China for Diego’s commissioned work, Frida often found her husband hurried and herself alone.

She took many lovers of both sexes, expressing her identification as a sexual being who forged connection through intimate, passionate, and short-lived relationships. Despite her own behavior and explicit acceptance of her husband’s, Frida often felt anguished over Rivera’s infidelities. She possessed the courage to be vulnerable but passed on the pity party. Never succumbing to desperation, she remained resolved in her own needs and negotiated her marriage deliberately, advocating for herself bluntly. Frida felt fundamentally alone in her pain, both corporeal and psychological, grounding her work in a strong sense of self and knowing, singular isolation. In her later, sicker years, Frida reached out to past lovers and friends, in desperate attempts to maintain connections, begging for visits and urging them not to forget her.

Throughout her travels, Frida remained a strong supporter of the Young Communist Party. Her disgust for social status made it difficult for Frida to live in cities like New York and Paris, where excess surrounded her. Abroad, luminaries received Frida as Diego’s pretty little wife, but back home, she became known for her dirty jokes, drinking, chainsmoking, and gossip. Frida predicated her somewhat crass fashion of living on honesty to one’s self. She painted unedited depictions of the truest version of herself. She once said, “I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”

Frida’s paintings offer a glimpse into the real masterpiece of her life - herself.

She is remembered as a strong, beautiful, unrelenting artist whose immense ability to feel emotion defined her. She left the world at age 47, leaving behind at least 140 paintings and dozens of drawings.

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The Victors Write the History: The items that have endured

Eyeglasses, headgear, and the kitten heel have persisted across time and context.

Here’s how.

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Eyeglasses Camila Salazar

Eyeglasses: what was once worn only out of necessity has in recent years become a quintessential accessory; quintessential, of course, for any individual who considers him or herself educated, stylish, and modern. How comical that the rebirth of this antique technology is now a trademark for the modern man and woman—the everyday millennial.

While sunglasses have always been iconic for their style and function—Audrey Hepburn’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s tortoise shell Manhattans by Oliver Goldsmith, Tom Cruise’s Top Gun Ray Ban Aviators, to name but a couple—eyeglasses have taken a bit longer to catch on.

From the bullying taunt of “foureyes” to extremely high prices that make misplacing a pair costly, there have been multiple reasons for why people flock towards contacts and have traditionally left their glasses at home for a lazy Sunday.

A few resilient and iconic eyeglass wearers, like John Lennon, Spike Lee, and Truman Capote, however, have withstood negative stereotypes and the test of time—and consequently, have left their mark on fashion. They have become iconic because of their signature accessory. They are the empirical proof that functionality can be stylish and cool.

And this has taken off—I personally wear a pair of oversized Ray-Bans in order to be able to see the board in classrooms (and to legally drive, of course…). Take a stroll down any street in New York City, London, or Paris, and see hundreds of young, smartly dressed millennials— regardless if they’re en route to work or to the bar—rocking a trendy set of frames. A Parisian I befriended during an extended

stay in the City of Love was so passionate about his relationship with his glasses that he couldn’t stress enough how critical they were to his style, to his visual identity.

He owns about five pairs of glasses, all equally trendy, to be able to cater to the day’s outfit, or even the day’s mood.

Yet this new rise in eyewear popularity has brought about a new problem: the expensive lifestyle with which it associates. The frames and styles that dominate the market are designer brands that, with lenses, are usually $600$700 a pop. Absolutely ridiculous—how does a bit of plastic cost more than my high-tech smartphone? And how about individuals who want the true utility of accessories in their eyewear; how can they express themselves accurately with such a high cost to own even one pair of eyeglasses, let alone multiple? A gap in the market exists here, and the innovators at Warby Parker have jumped at the chance to fill it.

“Warby Parker combines classic design with a groundbreaking pricing model, something the glasses world hasn’t seen in decades,” says co-CEO Neil Blumenthal. Their designs are best described as contemporary with a twist— trendy and stylish enough to transcend functionality, yet timeless and quality enough to last for ages. After all, the Warby Parker duo claim they won’t design anything that they personally would be embarrassed to wear in 20 years. And at $99 a pop (and that’s frames and lenses together), they make new, fresh forms of stylistic expression accessible to a wider swath of the fashion conscious audience.

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Headgear Sisi Yu

Whereas 21st century headgear may be iconized by Kate Middleton’s boundless, extensive collection of hats, 20th century headgear underwent numerous transitions. Traditionally, hats had served a practical need, shielding the face from the sun and wind. Yet in the 20th century, headgear served a symbolic function; to identify with particular political movements, as a representation of one’s social position, or simply as a fashion statement.

For women, headgear also correlated with hairstyle trends. Big, amplified hair defined the 1800s and fueled the popularity of large-crowned bonnets, as one’s majestic mane could fit under the crown handily. Yet at the turn of the century, stylish young women sought a sleeker look. Turbans and toques were well-received, as they excluded the prominent brim of a bonnet. Headgear took another turn with the start of the First World War. Hairstyles were reduced in size to accommodate a simpler lifestyle, and plainer, more practical looks with sparse or no ornamentation prevailed.

The Roaring Twenties brought with it the representative bob cut. The short, clean style signified freedom and functioned as a symbolic celebration of newly gained women’s rights. While silver screen stars like Louise Brooks and Anna Wong went for the bob, other luminaries like Coco Chanel opted for cropped curls. This variety of popular, short styles ushered in a new era of headwear.

Small hats that hugged the head and enveloped the hair - cloches - became commonplace At the close of the Second World War, headgear became less of a fashion statement. Although more extravagant styles were introduced, they failed to gain much traction, and the social order placed less emphasis on what

you balanced atop your head. Hats remained small and were contextualized as occasional accessories, not essential staples.

The 1960s witnessed the transgression of traditional cultural norms and an explosion of counterculture.

The relaxation of long held taboos and the exploration of greater individual freedoms resulted in a leniency of social etiquette. Previously, the quality and style of a wearer’s hat had been an indicator of class. As class distinctions became frowned upon, the wearing of hats became less popular.

At the close of the century, hats practically disappeared as statement accessories, save for the ubiquitous, unisex baseball cap.

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The Kitten Heel Siobhán Brandman

Kitten heel— those two words in that order may make your skin crawl, may nauseate you, or even may induce amorous excitement, yet the history of this hotly contested item is too often overlooked. Once upon a time, in a land far, far away— Medieval Europe, to be both fantastical and precise —both men and women wore high heels to flaunt their wealth and status. Yet by the 20th century, high heels were associated exclusively with feminine sensuality and beauty. The stiletto became the loose daughter and the kitten heel, her gawky sister. The prevailing social order thought of the stiletto as the height of sexuality, and reserved the kitten heel as “training heels” for non-courageous women and young girls. In the 1950s, kitten heels were made to be small, light, and slender, averaging a heel of 1.5-1.75 inches. Kitten heels featured a slight curve that set the heel in from the edge of the shoe to create a pointed toe, so as to flatter girls’ femininity.

Originally, designers marketed the kitten heel as the middle ground between the girlish flat and the more womanly high heel. The beloved Audrey Hepburn popularized the kitten heel, yet it fell out of favor as the platform shoes of the 1960s prevailed. The kitten heel staged a comeback in the 2000s and nowadays seems to be a lasting staple, continually reinvented by innovative, new styles. There are actually really cute pairs

of kitten heels out there in the world!

Check out Saint Laurent’s studded kitten heel, an inventive version with a punkrock flare. Stella McCartney’s Fall 2010 minimalist kitten heel also offers much to love. Instead of the classic mini-stiletto heel, chunky or platform heeled pairs also pack panache. And when do you indulge in a kitten heel, consider styling it with a cropped pant.

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Photographs courtesy of Chanel, Miu Miu, Warby Parker, and Yves Saint Laurent.

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Typewriters, Twitter, and Tees: A Century and a Half of Cornell Fashion Fashion doesn’t define a generation; it is a physical manifestation of a future of unrest and uncertainty scribed in mankind’s innate obsession with expression. As a campus we use fashion as a preface to the inevitable changes in society, policies, and technology, turning our bodies into mechanisms of progress.

Daniel Preston

Gay Pride rally on Ho Plaza (1993).

Courtesy of the Rare and Manuscript Collection, Kroch Library.

Both male and female bodies became sites of communication and political contestation.

Beyond technological advances in apparel manufacturing, Cornell students have integrated contemporary technology into their aesthetics more and more, particularly the millennial generation. The ways in which we wear our headphones or how we accessorize the latest iPhone reflect our ever-changing definitions of style. Green locates the history of the typewriter as an early piece of technology to be incorporated into fashion. At its inception, the typewriter was heavy and stationary and served solely as an accessory on one’s dorm room desk, but then evolved into the portable electronic typewriter and ultimately into the laptop computer, now a staple of every student’s persona. Green describes the clamshell iBook, debuted in the late 1990s, as exemplifying a technological fashion statement. Available in several fluorescent colors and even sporting an integrated handle so as to be carried like a purse, the iBook was one of the first pieces of technology to be fully integrated into the realm of fashion design. Wearable technologies such as smart watches, statement headphones, and even the choice of sleek metals when picking out a new iPhone have expanded the purview of fashion-forward technology.

The advent of digital technology constitutes a newly egalitarian and increasingly dynamic fashion discourse.

Magazine editors and fashion moguls no longer spearhead the visual and physical production of style, as social media has liberated the public to deploy style in a discursive space. That which is “in vogue” changes daily, as digital media establishes platforms to continually imagine and reimagine our style identities in a disembodied medium. The fast clip of contemporary technology has transformed “fast fashion” from a faux pas into a mode of being. Fashion is no longer physical, but is a fluctuating, frantic function of community creation, affiliation, and vocalization across media.

Consistency is difficult to locate within the mix, prompting style hounds to straddle the line of immaterial discourse and grounded fashion. As Green puts it, “we use clothing, we use textiles, and we use our bodies as a way to negotiate the uncertainty of the future.” Uncertainty is the crux of what moves fashion forward.

By negotiating the tensions of the past, the present, and the future, college students employ the medium of fashion as a means of illuminating stability and instability within oneself and within a community.

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What is a sesquicentennial if not a celebration of scrunchies, tie-dye tees, and velour jumpsuits? The Cornell campus has seen 150 years of political upheaval, educational reforms and social revolutions, but just as apparent is the century and a half of fashion evolution, both good and bad, that has manifested itself in the day-to-day street wear of the university’s students.

For several decades now, the department of Fiber Science and Apparel Design (FSAD) has been amassing a collection of over 10,000 garments, apparel, flat textiles and accessories dating from as far back as the late eighteenth century. Focused on the ethnographic characteristics of the collection, which serve to reflect the Cornell community as a whole, the curators of the collection are interested in the cultural and social history of the garments and what they say about a particular community during a particular moment – one such community happens to be Cornell. Cornell is a phenomenal conglomeration of students from across the nation and the globe, each with their own individual style and cultural background, who upon arriving at Cornell renegotiate with one another in regards to what becomes fashion. Assistant Professor and Director of the Cornell Costume and Textile Collection, Denise Green (’07) describes the ongoing collection as a way of “documenting history as it unfolds.” The collection serves as a dynamic reminder of the mundane fashion choices of the student body, which in their moment seem ordinary and unimportant but in retrospect serve as landmarks of political achievement, technological advances, and social reforms.

A major fashion revolution, stirred by women’s rights movements, civil rights activism, and anti-war protests, shook the campus in fall of 1968. Until the early 1960s women were restricted to wearing solely dresses on campus, meaning no trousers, and most certainly, no denim.

However, like the rest of the nation, Cornell bore witness to major political and social revolutions during the late 1960s and partook in major evolutions in fashion and style. Many women completely abandoned dresses and wholeheartedly adopted blue jeans, precipitating the rise of denim as a symbol of liberation and respect. In conjunction with the rise of denim, another staple of 1970s fashion, the graphic tee, emerged. According to Green, technological advances in screen printing made the production of graphic tees easy and economical and thus they quickly began to become popular as a means of using the body as a way of conveying political messages and ideas.

Prof. Sofia Krimizi Architecture

After taking in formaldehyde fumes and intractable tomes, our professors emerge from the depths of the academy to find the landscape swirling.

w a r p e d

Prof. Dale Grossman Applied Economics and Management

w a r p e d Photography Alisa Tiong Yodai Yasunaga

Architectural Graphics “Fucked Facade” J. B. Hoffman

Graphics Kate Chen Alisa Tiong

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Finding Feminism in Fashion A look at the role of gender norms and feminism in the fashion industry.

Nicolette Jones The fashion industry functions as a progressive platform for a broad conversation on the evolution of culture and style, yet many construe feminism as antithetical to that conversation.

Misconceptions about the relationship between fashion, feminism, and personal style might boil down to a larger misconception of what feminism is. As hundreds of women add photos daily to the Women Against Feminism Tumblr, and as prominent celebrities like Shailene Woodley proclaim that they are not feminists, it appears that we are deeply confused.

Feminism is equality. As MerriamWebster puts succinctly, feminism is “the

His collection implicitly revealed that masculinity and femininity are sociallyconstructed roles that we can adhere to or subvert. Gender and sex are separate.

While sex is chromosomally determined, gender is a series of social performances and roles that we construct in our enacting of them. Gender is not what you are, but what you do, and Jacobs illuminated that there are infinite possibilities of how to “do” gender.

Far more infamous was Chanel’s Spring/Summer 2015 collection. Karl Lagerfeld orchestrated a full-blown feminist rally, complete with “Ladies First” signs and a megaphone-wielding Cara Delevigne. Models dressed in pantsuits paraded down the runway waving signs of equality. It was fun, yes, and it was different, but it felt more like a reflection of feminism’s recent popularity in the cultural imagination than a sincere feminist statement. Yet Coco Chanel herself could be considered a subtle feminist. Borrowing from menswear and emphasizing comfort over fashion, the suits she made were revolutionary.

Perhaps Madame Coco was an inspiration for Lagerfeld. But with hashtags like #allwomen trending on Twitter, the Chanel show undeniably was trying to be trendy.

Instead of being a revolutionary moment in feminist history, the show was instead a glitzy display of dolled-up models playing feminists for the day.

While feminism can mean being feminine, it also means dressing in a fashion that is not confined to gender stereotypes. Now more than ever, everyday women and celebrities alike are challenging the status quo definitions of gender. While we are a long way from total societal acceptance, our generation is realizing that we do not have to conform to the traditional male/female modes of dress, and the fashion industry is responding to our evolving thoughts.

There isn’t a certain look that defines masculinity or femininity, and designers are creating less normative styles.

Feminism in fashion means wearing whatever the hell you want.

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theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes;” additionally feminism is “organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.” Feminism aims to eliminate patriarchal modes of oppression that have historically limited the opportunities available to women and have corrupted their understandings of themselves. Surprisingly, feminism in fashion and beauty is rarely discussed.

For some, this would mean eradicating the notion that women need makeup and high heels to be beautiful. Yet feminism does not mean losing one’s femininity.

To be a feminist you are not required to forsake the color pink or cut off all your hair. If instead you prefer to wear all black and rock a crew cut, that’s awesome, too.

Feminism gives women the power to construct femininity on their own terms, free of arbitrarily imposed conceptions of what acting or looking like a woman should entail.

Ideologically, I maintain that most, if not all, women would agree with the underlying principles of feminism. What kind of person would say no to equality?

Yet negative stereotypes about feminists – that they have hairy legs or an aversion to anything “girly”- have been perpetuated by our patriarchal society. Luckily, role models like Emma Watson are combatting the standard patriarchal limitations on women’s bodies, images, and selfconstructs. She is a beautiful, fashion forward woman who also happens to give speeches about feminism to the United Nations. Watson is a prime example that anyone and everyone should support women’s rights.

Still, we must be careful in praising Watson as a feminist savior. Her wealth and friends in high (fashion) places make Watson far from representative of most feminists, let alone most women. There are many more people that do not fit societally imposed beauty and gender norms who are working towards equality while getting far less publicity. The media might focus on a pretty face, but feminists come in all varieties. We should have the freedom to choose feminine or masculine clothes, a full face of makeup or none at all, and still self-identify as feminists.

The world of high fashion continues to both counter and reinforce gender norms. Designers often play with androgynous and masculine-inspired looks, even if it’s only to standout. In his Spring 2015 show, Marc Jacobs focused on the contrast between masculinity and femininity. Despite a runway decked out in ultra-girly pink shag carpeting, the models wore masculine, military-inspired designs.

Jacobs’ contrast highlighted the beauty of women in traditionally non-feminine attire.

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Beauty Hannah Babb Angelique Brownlie Carley Steckel Handan Xu Graphics Kate Chen Models Adrian Jones Beth Tesfaye Photography Kate Chen Alisa Tiong

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glint Bold prints and punchy citrus hues caress with a Midas touch.

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REALIZED The private domains and the public selves of the dashing.

Photography Yoon Jeong Yodai Yasunaga Gavin Zhang

I. What trait do you most deplore in yourself?

II. What is your greatest extravagance?

III. On what occasion(s) do you lie?

IV. If you could change one thing about your family what would it be?

V. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

ADDY COOPER

USAMAH SHAFI ANDRABI

I. I am the most impatient person.

II. Trips to visit my boyfriend.

III. I lie all the time but I’m working on it.

IV. Make it even bigger!

V. Waiting in line for a really long time at a bathroom at the opera.

I. Irritability.

II. My conditioner. It smells so good.

III. To my mom, about leisurely activities.

IV. That my mom had more time to relax.

V. Being alone forever.

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JEHIREH PERAZA-WILLIAMS

LEVI SCHOENFELD

I. I’m scatterbrained and too clumsy.

II. Shoes, shoes, shoes!

III. I lie when I forget to do things because of the fact that I am scatterbrained.

IV. I wouldn’t change a thing about my family. One thing that would be cool is if my family were immigrants from some cool country where I could strongly identify with one culture.

V. The lowest depth of misery is not being able to love and be loved.

I. My sometime inability to withhold judgment.

II. Gaming while wine drunk.

III. When it helps start conversations with boys.

IV. For all of them to live within driving distance.

V. The idea of being motionless for your entire life.

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Wearing her Soul on her Sleeve: How Addy Cooper unites fashion and orthodoxy “Dressing modestly has allowed me to elevate my love of clothes beyond the material so that what I wear (on the good days) shows people less of my skin and more of my soul.”

Addy Cooper Photography Yodai Yasunaga

My path to the prairie: How I went from tank tops to turtle necks The first time I heard the word “tznius,” I thought someone had sneezed.

And when I found out what tznius meant, I felt sick. Tznius is the word Jews use to describe a modest way of dressing and acting. The idea derives from the sacred and ancient text, the Torah, which explains that women and men should dress, speak, and act in specific ways in order to allow certain things to be seen, and others to be hidden. In the case of women, the body is the hidden part. To me, it was obviously a no-go. Being told what to wear represented that angry part of a New York City street corner when you’re trying to make the street your catwalk and you get a catcall instead. Your strut turns to a shuffle and embarrassment sets in.

Being told to cover drew me back to a quiet corner in eighth grade when there were dress codes, but only for the girls, and when I first learned what it meant to be slut-shamed.

I was on a beautiful *spiritual* journey, where I was un-learning how

to judge others and re-learning what it meant to be Jewish. But when I was told that it would empower me to cover up, I was just as squinty-eye skeptical of “tznius” as you are now.

So I didn’t do it. I didn’t cover up, because I’m a Vagina Monologues empowered lady who doesn’t listen to rules. I do what I want, and to be a feminist you have to talk about sex, show some skin, and say it proud, right? I went to orthodox Shul (church for Jews) and learned Pirkei Avot (a part of the Torah which talks about ethics) and Farbrenged (late night talks about super-deepspiritual-stuff) in my overalls and a t-shirt. I practiced my Judaism in whatever clothes I dared. The women around me, covered elbow to elbow, didn’t give me quite the G-d fearing reaction I had hoped. They judged me so little it was jarring. While I was around them I saw that they didn’t follow this “rule” from that embarrassed 8th grade place. They didn’t do it from a place of fear that what you wear will be used as incriminating evidence against you. To them, tznius wasn’t a rule to follow. It wasn’t about what they

were hiding, but about what they were showing.

Feminism takes many forms, and this was one of them. These women stood so proud, so big-mama-empowered. After weeks of observing, I let my growling subside along with my judgment; I actually got to learn about tznius and discover why women educated at Oxford, wearing “Kiss” socks, might choose to wear more rather than less.

What is Tznius?

A central tenant of Jewish thought is that the body is not to be negated and denied, but elevated. We do not suggest leaving the physical world and its pleasures. We don’t believe in sitting on the top of a mountain and saying, “it was too spiritual to talk about.” We talk about it. We actualize it. We drink wine. We eat, a lot. We have sex. But we do these earthy things with a spiritual goal. As my Rabbi’s end-of-email-saying reads, we “spiritualize the material and materialize the spiritual.” Tznius is a set of guidelines on how to spiritualize what we wear.

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One major misunderstanding about tznius is that you have to dress in matronly, all-black clothes. Both in halacha (Jewish law) and in practice the opposite is true. There is no law against being beautiful. There is no law that suggests wearing black. Jewish women dress just as uniquely as the rest of us. In fact, Jewish women are urged to dress like “daughters of the king” and should walk out of the house robed and shining and gloriously empowered. Easier said than done.

Coming Home I had finally arrived, exhausted, at my own theory of feminism, at that sticky finish line that we women all have been told to run to: empowerment (as if we don’t have power in the first place?). But people were as critical as ever. Back in Ithaca, my quinoa-eating family didn’t see how I could feel empowered by wearing long sleeves in the summer. My activist friends saw right past my excitement and to what they thought was oppression.

My religious family in Israel didn’t quite see how women could be empowered by wearing heels in the snow. I realized that for both worlds I now belonged to, I owed an explanation. And my poor, poor, closet and I deserved a shopping spree. I had nothing modest in my closet that was Daughter-of-the-King worthy, and I refused to sacrifice my style or my religion.

Making “Frum” Fashionable

Judaism suggests that when we dress modestly, we allow others and ourselves to more clearly focus on the person’s true essence: their soul. Our bodies are covered so that our souls, our faces, our hands, our life’s work can shine. Unlike other religions, we are required to show the two parts of our bodies that are inherently human: our able hands and our unique faces. I saw that by covering certain things you allow other things to come into focus. I committed to the idea, which, months ago, from that window-peek position, looked so wrong.

Frum is a word used to describe observant Jews. I’m still queasy in my self-definitions, wavering from “hippie” to “mindfully observant Jew,” but the word frum has always felt a little dull to me.

It just brings to mind the stereotype of all-black skirts and Jewish sects in tucked away dusty corners of the earth. Frum-py is not what orthodox women are and it’s definitely not what they look like. Jewish women are urged to dress like regal queens, and if you go to any community of Jews, you’ll see we really take this to heart. A broad woman in Queens in a huge white robe, which flows behind her like a slippery memory. A small Persian Jew dancing around barefoot in a garden with a gold head wrap.

In my journey to re-stock my Collegetown closet with more modest clothing, I had as many mentors as I did skeptics. My memories of these street

women were inspirations, but as soon as I Googled tznius, I found many more.

“Adi,” a top-notch tznius blogger, goes to the biggest NYC and Paris runways.

She’s funky, fancy, modest, (and we have the same name). Two powerful ladies from Australia who started a booming clothing line called MimuMaxi illustrate how far the orthodox community has come in expressing their understanding of Judaism to the secular world. There are dozens of other great bloggers, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish alike who inspired me to take modesty and make it magnificent.

But I was still struggling with how to match my spirituality with my clothes.

SimchaTznius On the shoulders of these modest fashionista giants I launched my very own online inspiration board called SimchaTznius.com. I put the website up in one night, and by the next day had thousands of viewers. The website is a little sillier and a little sassier than the others. It was for myself, so that I could wake up excited and raring to go to bars in a maxi skirt. SimchaTznius was also a visual explanation and exploration for all my critiques. Hey you, Nancy Drew, trying to sniff out some secret oppression under my dress: No, I’m not hiding from my body. Yes, I can be beautiful and dress modestly. I’m using these clothes to make it easier for me and for you to see my soul (I promise the super-spiritual-TLC will end soon).

My spin on modesty, as you might notice if you run into me red-eyed on campus, is Salvation Army chick. 99-cent skirt chillin’. A military cargo coat with the name “Pacheco” on the front. I don’t mind stains. I edit almost all of my clothes.

Stealing the bottom hem of a skirt to create a head wrap or taking an XXL dress and downsizing. I love anything flowing and white and under 5 dollars.

Now when I get dressed I try to close my eyes and imagine the Tel Aviv sea smiling at me and washing away the Ithaca grey. On less inspired days, I just try to remember that clothes are fun, expressive and can show people my energy without showing them my body.

Tznius has allowed me to elevate my love of clothes beyond the material so that what I wear (on the good days) shows people less of my skin and more of my soul.

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See more visuals and get inspired at simchatznius.com

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fashioned

Parsed through, pieced together, and dispersed throughout.

Graphics Clara Eizayaga

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Beauty Hannah Babb Kelly Guo Dikshing Lama Nelson

Models Sean Cartwright Nalee Phommachanh Samuel Schirvar

Photography Jessa Chargois Cameron Pollack Sisi Yu

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HUSTLED No one wants to be defeated Showin’ how funky, strong is your fight It doesn’t matter who’s wrong or right Just beat it.

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thread 048 Beauty Hannah Babb Kelly Guo Dikshing Lama Nelson Models Eric Ding Adler Faulkner Kieran Haruta Photography Andrew Aquino Cameron Pollack Frank Wang Sisi Yu

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No holds barred and tough as nails, Jenny and Handan keep their pimp hands strong.

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striped

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Body Art Kate Chen Emily Gartenberg Ariel Hsu Yoon Jeong Tracey Kong Larissa-Helen Mahaga-Ajala Ada To Models Udoka Eze Jenny Gray Handan Xu Graphics Kate Chen Alisa Tiong Photography Chris Andras Cameron Pollack Yodai Yasunaga

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Thread is an independent student publication and the only fashion and lifestyle magazine at Cornell. Thread is a conglomeration of studentmade fashion, art, photography, styling, and design. It is published semesterly, and aims to showcase the interdisciplinary talents of individuals within the Cornell community through its attention to compelling visual and written storytelling.

Thread encourages students of all disciplines to join our team. If you are interested in working on Thread, please contact us.

Web thethreadmagazine.com Email thethreadmagazine@gmail.com Facebook facebook.com/thethreadmagazine Instagram @threadmag

Graphic George Tsourounakis