Fashion Coverage DL Fashion
When fashion designer Marc Jacobs announced that he would be casting 'real' people models via Twitter and Instagram back in April, we were intrigued by the idea. It was certainly a far cry from the brand's usual go-to formula that is Elle Fanning posing languidly against a perfume bottle on a daisy-blanketed field, or something like that.
The #CastMeMarc campaign attracted over 70,000 entries, lending truth to that much-circulated meme: 'Oh! You're a model. Who's your agency? Instagram?'
Of those tens of thousands of entries, 30 guys and gals from around the world, including Australia, Russia and South Korea, were flown to New York. And of those 30, the nine who made the final cut were gussied up, styled and photographed by David Sims.
The preview images dropped last week and to be honest, we were expecting more. Where are the models of colour? Only two were cast - a disappointing sum given the global pool of entrants - and most of the campaign's diversity comes by way of the models' technicolour hair.
There are unconventional elements, sure. There are male models with googly eyes, under-bites and acne scars, yet most of the female models are conventional babes. The clothes - giant bow necklines, kimonos and bandannas over mouths - are much more peculiar than the people wearing them. And doesn't this go against the point of social media call-outs in the first place?
Campaigns such as this promise to break the mould, bringing individual style and unique personalities to the homogenous world of high-fashion, yet more often than not we're left underwhelmed.
This certainly isn't the first time a brand has turned to social media for casting calls. ASOS plucked their latest Curve model, Lauren Punter, from an Instagram contest, which garnered more than 2,000 entries. And earlier this year, American clothing label Betabrand poached PhD students through a casting callout posted to Twitter and Facebook. Yet as Refinery29 pointed out in its cautionary critique, most of the models were young, pretty, slim and, for the most part, white. 'While we love the idea of featuring women who are brainy and high-achieving as well as beautiful, does choosing to highlight PhD candidates - 75 per cent of whom are white - in particular reproduce the racial inequalities of the traditional modelling world?'
The concept of social media casting is a novel idea, and it's also one with plenty of free advertising and press coverage built into the process. While it seems egalitarian, it doesn't necessarily equal out to casting people who aren't within the sample size and conventional beauty standards that we're used to seeing to the runway. The faces cast aren't necessarily more relatable.
While Marc Jacobs' latest effort is a welcome alternative to campaigns where everybody is so distractingly gorgeous (and made up and Photoshopped) that it renders the final product unnatural, we'd also like to see more diverse models. This latest shoot, for example, has nothing on Diesel's subversive Reboot campaign, which utilised the Tumblr hashtag #dieselreboot and saw the world introduced to wheelchair-bound model Jillian Mercado.
All fashion campaigns, however cast, are deserving of the same amount of scrutiny. The Closet Feminist has a few questions to get you started: Does it feature a racially diverse mix? Does it feature models above the average minus-size norm? Does the vision of the campaign/project speak to diversity, anti-racism, discrimination and anti-oppression in any way? Are the models of age? And finally, who is behind the campaign?
American Apparel, with its shop-girl models a few years back, was a leader in breaking away from the traditional model casting system, but as we all know, that didn't necessarily pay off with them championing a more realistic idea for women.
DailyStyle
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