Kurt Vonnegut called artists the “canaries of society’s coal mine,” sensitive enough to detect toxicity before it reaches levels harmful to humans. If the canaries start falling off their perches, you know it’s time to hightail them to safer ground.
Toronto-based fashion designer Breeyn McCarney has been on high-alert for much of the past few years, particularly after the election of our city’s latest mayor. In her snug breakfast nook, adjacent to a modest studio space, she explains why fashion, as a form of artistic expression, is the direct result of its social context.
“As much as I hate to attribute anything good to Rob Ford,” she says, “I think Toronto’s artistic time is coming, because the more he tries to stamp it out, the more pronounced it will be. The anger that’s resulting in a lot of talented artists in Toronto will fuel some of the best work coming out of this city. I believe art comes from authenticity, not originality.” For this artist, her work is a sincere expression of the social fabric from which it is born.
Considering its reputation as the art world’s snotty little cousin — hot and flashy but mostly devoid of genuine emotion or relevance — fashion fits in quite well with the hallmarks of a 2011 existence. It is trendy by virtue, bored easily, concerned with the now while looking constantly to the next. It is highly responsive to the elements surrounding it, and its skill for disorienting its audience with quick turnarounds is reflective of its transient, temporal environment.
Toronto fashion in particular is coloured by this cultural environment. What we wear and what is designed for us is a direct result of the influences that went into creating it. Marcus Kan, fashion director of Ukamaku, an online fashion community featuring Canadian designers, concedes that diversity is the most sensational aspect of a Toronto-based designer’s aesthetic: “[On our website] we have designers from Romania, France, and Korea who are now based in Toronto to create fashion pieces which are influenced by their cultural background.”
Left: Corrie, dress by AnotherWordforPink $150. Right: Jasmine, dress by Breeyn McCarney $650
While utilitarian in nature, what we choose to put on our bodies is the most steadfast indicator of our emotional state and economic condition as well as the emotional state and economic condition of the designer. It is a constantly self-regulating reflection of our existence — the culmination of a community’s reaction to the state of society. It is art imitating life to the highest degree, rarely presuming to be original, but striving to be authentic. For example, the HBO drama Boardwalk Empire can be credited with the influx of bow hats, stoles, and vintage-inspired draped gowns in every relevant catalogue and LOOKBOOK of the past few seasons. The creepy delicacy of feathered headpieces and bodices in an array of muted blush-tones seen on the spring 2011 runways has Black Swan written all over it. Viktor & Rolf’s spring 2010 ready-to-wear collection featured tulle ball gowns quite literally sliced and cut: a wearable display of “cutting back” in the harsh economic climate. Fashion may be the most relevant form of immediately accessible artistic expression available in modern times, simply due to its malleability and capricious sensitivity to its social environment.
From internationally renowned to locally produced, this intense sensitivity dominates the medium. “I set out to create a collection inspired by beaches and sun, called ‘Deep Sea Creatures,’” McCarney explains. “It turned out to be a lot darker than originally intended because around the time I was designing it, the [BP] oil spill was all you’d see on TV. The images made me weep.”
Because of McCarney’s lone experience crying in response to the largest accidental marine oil spill on record, your trip to the beach may be more cynical and outraged than you realize.
So if fashion really is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we must alter it every six months, it’s because our entire twenty-first century existence is just as ever-changing — a dizzying mess of uncertainty and danger, inundated with incomprehensible large-scale disasters, intrusive airport screenings, and the threat of the rug being pulled right from under you every time you’re summoned to your boss’ office. If it’s not a car it’ll be cancer that hits you, your education won’t satisfy your creative ambitions, and your chequing account simultaneously, and the only consistent thing about your relationships is that they end. Daily life is at once simplified and complicated by any number of twenty-first century conveniences at the average person’s disposal. It’s an exercise in navigating the grey spaces in between. And it’s not cynicism, it’s reality. There’s no such thing as planning anymore. Fashion is currently responding to this reality. The tragedies and triumphs of modern existence are reflected, if not necessarily anticipated, in the visions of self-expressive designers with more than bare-bone functionality on their minds.
