your-feed-fashion

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Taylor Swift Gives a Fashion Brand a Boost at the Super Bowl

      by

      Who says Area is just about the concept and not the clothes?About half an hour after the Area show ended in New York on Super Bowl Sunday, Taylor Swift appeared in Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas wearing a pair of the brand’s “crystal slit jeans” — a high-waist denim style sliced diagonally at the center of each thigh, the patently faux “rip” framed by diamanté. It was like a runway-to-real-life feature happening in actual time — or Super time.Area, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, is generally one of those fashion week brands that most nonfashion people see and say, “But who would wear that?” (Well, other than Simone Biles making a viral statement at the Met Gala.) Ms. Swift was the perfect answer. The designer Piotrek Panszczyk — and indeed all of fashion, which sometimes suffers from a clothes-concept perception gap — could not have planned it better had he tried.Mr. Panszczyk sits firmly in the Moschino-Schiaparelli fashion tradition of wielding sartorial humor as a commentary on contemporary life, though he tends to sit on the punny performance art end of that spectrum. Last season he used “Flintstones” bones and “Dynasty” faux furs to symbolize the evolution of luxury and caste signaling, which came after a season built around the idea of fruit and mortality, mostly in the form of banana skirts. The looks attract the sort of person who does not mind going on a milk run in Bushwick draped in rhinestones and not much else.Ms. Swift, however, is an endorsement of a different kind. It’s not the first time she has worn Area denim. Last April she wore the brand’s crystal butterfly jeans in New York, and in October she wore a pair of Area embellished jeans shorts to another Chiefs game. (She does like a bit of sparkle.) But this is the first time she wore its denim when more than 100 million people were watching. It’s a potent, and deserved, argument for the future of Area as a credible business, rather than merely a fashion week gimmick.AreaAreaAreaAreaAreaAreaAs was the latest collection, which chose as its hot topic the peculiarly modern state of endless watching — of looking, and being looked at in turn. One that seemed notably apropos given the attention being paid to Ms. Swift and everything she does. It’s a serious subject, but the clothes were awfully fun.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      How Vintage Won the Grammys Red Carpet

      by

      Miley Cyrus, Laverne Cox, Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish — big stars in old clothes was the trend of the night. Because it’s not just about the gowns.The awards show red carpet has become such an access game, such a race of clout and connections to see who can wear the most never-before-seen or sizzlingly-hot-off-the-runway look — the answer, this time, was Beyoncé, in Louis Vuitton men’s wear from Pharrell Williams’s January show — that any other approach can seem like a shock.But recently a different trend has been emerging, and at the 66th Grammys it reached critical mass. Indeed, it’s so applause worthy, here’s hoping it isn’t a trend at all but rather the signal of a permanent shift in the fashion-Hollywood industrial complex.I am speaking of the rise of vintage. Or as it is apparently now known, “archival” fashion. “Archival” here is being used to refer to anything that simply isn’t new. (Well, it was getting a little ridiculous to refer to two-season-old clothes as “vintage.”) That could mean clothes from a brand archive, or a personal one. Sometimes also known as a “closet.”Laverne Cox in 2015 Comme des Garçons.Jordan Strauss/Invision, via Associated PressOlivia Rodrigo in a Versace siren gown from 1995.Jordan Strauss/Invision, via Associated PressAt the Grammys, Laverne Cox, the E! red carpet host, led the way, as she also did at the Emmy Awards, in a Valentine’s Day red contraption from 2015 Comme des Garçons. She chose the look, she said, because that collection had been about “blood and roses” and finding beauty in pain, and, well, it felt particularly apropos.Then there was Olivia Rodrigo, another vintage disciple (remember the 1995 Chanel suit she wore to the White House?), in a white 1995 Versace siren gown. Also Caroline Polachek in gothic 1998 Olivier Theyskens coursing with crimson veins and arteries. Billie Eilish in an upcycled and customized Chrome Hearts “Barbie” baseball jacket. Lana Del Rey in a found-it-herself puff-sleeve black vintage floral number. Coi Leray in a 2019 Saint Laurent jacket and leotards, no pants.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Is Selling Pieces of His Mug Shot Suit

      by

      It’s not just a piece of political memorabilia — it’s a strategy.When Donald J. Trump walked into a Georgia courthouse on Aug. 24 to be booked as part of his fourth criminal indictment, becoming the first former president (and only current presidential candidate) to have a mug shot taken, the picture seemed destined to become a symbol of this fraught, unprecedented moment in American history. As has become increasingly clear, however, Mr. Trump and his team have come to see the mug shot in a different way.Specifically, as the source material for a new strain of political pop culture mythmaking and memorabilia.Almost overnight they splashed the image, with Mr. Trump’s signature glower, across mugs, T-shirts and posters in their campaign store, using it and all it represents as a key component of their fund-raising. Then, this week, NFT INT, the official licensee of the Trump name and image for digital trading cards, began selling a special “Mugshot Edition” NFT set that includes, for a certain few willing to buy the whole thing, pieces of the blue suit and red tie Mr. Trump wore in the photo.Or, as the NFT INT website calls the garment, “The most historically significant artifact in American history.”The 47 cards on offer were created by the artist Clark Mitchell and depict Mr. Trump as, for example, Captain America, and sitting in for Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. Cards can be bought individually for $99 or as a full set that runs for $4,653 and includes a physical trading card (some of which will be signed by Mr. Trump) with a swatch of suit fabric and an invitation to a special dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Those who buy 100 of the NFT cards receive a swatch of the jacket or pants, plus a swatch of the tie and the dinner at Mar-a-Lago.According to the NFT INT website, the suit is “priceless.” There are enough tiny suit pieces for 2,024 buyers (because, you know, election year), and enough tie pieces for 225.In other words, it’s not just a suit. It’s a font of potential relics — one that positions the mug shot suit as the most important suit of Mr. Trump’s career so far, rather than, say, Mr. Trump’s inauguration suit.The mug shot edition is just the latest in a series of NFT cards released on the site portraying former President Donald J. Trump.NFT INTThe mug shot edition is the third set of NFT cards released, with the first two drops selling out in “a little more than 24 hours,” according to Kevin Mercuri, a spokesman for NFT INT and the chief executive of Propheta Communications. The new offering comes complete with a video of Mr. Trump endorsing the drop — and the suit — at the top of the web page. Mr. Mercuri said the idea for selling the suit swatches came from NFT INT and was inspired by the way sports figures sell pieces of their jerseys to fans. Mr. Trump was “aware of the trend and receptive” to the proposal, he said, and “generously gave the suit to NFT INT. He felt that members of the public would want to have a piece of history.”The suit was then authenticated by MEARS, a company that specializes in validating sports memorabilia. Troy R. Kinunen, the chief executive of the company, said that “the team at CollectTrumpCards provided the suit directly from the President” and that MEARS then verified certain design elements of the garment against photos and video, including pocket placement, buttons, and the collar of the suit jacket, which Mr. Trump had sewn down in the back to keep it in place. (Though given the number of blue suits Mr. Trump appears to own, it is hard to know how anyone could tell them apart.)Selling the mug shot suit tracks, to a certain extent, with other examples of fan culture. Paige Rubin, an assistant vice president and the head of sale for handbags at Christie’s, said there was an almost insatiable public appetite for souvenirs of the famous and infamous, and often the most valuable pieces of memorabilia at auction are determined by provenance: “Does the object you are selling resonate with the fan base? Does it connect to an iconic moment in a career?”Similarly, there is a long tradition of auctioning memorabilia from public figures, including many presidents, as Summer Anne Lee, a historian of presidential dress at the Fashion Institute of Technology, noted. Scraps of Abraham Lincoln’s bloodstained bedsheets regularly come up for auction, and a pair of Richard Nixon’s eyeglasses from around the time of his resignation were sold in 2005 for $1,955. In 2019, a pair of underpants believed to have belonged to Eva Braun, Hitler’s wife, were gaveled at almost $5,000.However, despite the fact that Melania Trump likewise sold one of her most notable White House outfits — the white hat she wore during the French state visit in 2018 — as part of her own NFT drop, and despite Mr. Trump’s own history of monetizing his own brand in a way other political candidates might not dare, it is almost unheard-of for a living president to hawk his own memorabilia for his own profits, Ms. Lee said. Though NFT INT is not related to the Trump organization and Mr. Trump is not a part of the company, as a licenser Mr. Trump would probably receive a percentage of sales.Which makes it in his interest to divide the suit into as many pieces as possible — both financially and, even more pointedly, conceptually.After all, if a garment is considered “historic,” keeping it whole would seem the more desirable choice. That would allow it to be exhibited in a museum, or a presidential library (or, in the case of Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” dress, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum).On the other hand, most tiny scraps of clothing that exist in collections are religious curios, fragments of martyrs’ gowns. Treating the mug shot suit in the same way “suggests Trump believes the suit he wore for his mug shot will be even more motivational to his fans than any other,” Ms. Lee said. “They are offering it like pieces of religious clothing, which implies Mr. Trump is a saint who has been through trials and tribulations for the country.”Indeed, said Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University, the sale suggests a “quasi-religious element, as if the suit Trump wore in court has special charismatic qualities.”Well, one of the cards in the set does depict Mr. Trump as a golden god. More

    • 63 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      The Undoing of George Santos

      by

      Lying is one thing in politics. But lying and stealing for the sake of Ferragamo and Hermès?In the end, it may have been the luxury goods that brought down George Santos.Not the lies about going to Baruch College and being a volleyball star or working for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Not the claims of being Jewish and having grandparents who were killed in the Holocaust and a mother who died of cancer as result of 9/11. (Not true, it turned out.) Not the fibs about having founded an animal charity or owning substantial real estate assets. None of the falsehoods that have been exposed since Mr. Santos’s election last year. After all, he did survive two previous votes by his peers to expel him from Congress, one back in May, one earlier in November.Listen to This ArticleOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.At this point, the discussion around lies and politics is so familiar, it has become almost background noise.But taking $6,000 of his campaign contributions and spending it on personal shopping at Ferragamo? Dropping another couple thousand at Hermès? At Sephora? On Botox?Those revelations, documented in the House Ethics Committee report released Nov. 16, seemed simply too much. Despite the fact that Mr. Santos had announced that he would not seek re-election, despite the fact that he is still facing a 23-count federal indictment, Representative Michael Guest, the chairman of the House Ethics Committee, introduced a resolution the week before Thanksgiving calling for Mr. Santos’s expulsion from Congress. On Friday, the House voted in favor — 311 to 114, with two voting present — making Mr. Santos only the third representative since the Civil War to be ejected from that legislative body.George Santos Lost His Job. The Lies, Charges and Questions Remaining.George Santos, who was expelled from Congress, has told so many stories they can be hard to keep straight. We cataloged them, including major questions about his personal finances and his campaign fund-raising and spending.As Michael Blake, a professor of philosophy, public policy and governance at the University of Washington, wrote in The Conversation, Mr. Santos’s lies provoked “resentment and outrage, which suggests that they are somehow unlike the usual forms of deceptive practice undertaken during political campaigns.”It was in part the ties that had done it. The vanity. The unabashed display of greed contained in the silken self-indulgence of a luxury good.“Material objects are at the heart of this thing,” said Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University. “They expose what is seen as a universal character flaw and make it concrete.”Mr. Santos appeared in his trademark prep school attire at the federal courthouse in Central Islip, N.Y., in May, when he pleaded not guilty to federal charges of wire fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesWhite collar crime is often abstract and confusing. Tax evasion is not sexy. (Nothing about taxes is sexy.) It may get prosecutors excited, but the general public finds it boring. To be sure, the House Ethics Committee report, all 55 pages of it, went far beyond the juicy details of designer goods (not to mention an OnlyFans expense), but it is those details that have been plastered across the headlines and stick in the imagination. They make the narrative of wrongdoing personal, because one thing almost everyone can relate to is luxury goods.These days they are everywhere: unboxed on TikTok with all the seductive allure of a striptease; dangling by celebrities on Instagram; glittering from store windows for the holidays. Lusted after and dismissed in equal measure for what they reveal about our own base desires and human weaknesses, they are representative of aspiration, achievement, elitism, wealth, indulgence, escapism, desire, envy, frivolity. Also the growing and extreme wealth gap and the traditions of royalty and dictators — the very people the settlers (not to mention the Puritans) came to America to oppose.There’s a reason even Richard Nixon boasted in a 1952 speech that his wife, Pat, didn’t “have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat.”As Mr. Wilentz said, it has been, and still is, “unseemly to appear too rich in Washington.” (At least for anyone not named Trump. In this, as in so many things, the former president appears to be an exception to the rule.)In the myth of the country — the story America tells itself about itself — our elected officials, above all, are not supposed to care about the trappings of wealth; they are supposed to care about the health of the country. “The notion of elected officials being public servants may be a polite fiction, but it is a polite fiction we expect politicians to maintain,” Mr. Blake said.Even if, as David Axelrod, the former Democratic strategist and senior fellow at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, points out, speaking of the amount of money needed to run for office these days, “office holders and candidates spend an awful lot of time rubbing shoulders with people of celebrity and wealth and often grow a taste for those lifestyles — the material things; the private planes and lavish vacations.”Mr. Santos at the Capitol in November, just before his third expulsion resolution was introduced.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesIndeed, Mr. Santos is simply the latest elected official whose filching of funds to finance a posh lifestyle brought them to an ignominious end.In 2014, for example, a former governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, was found guilty on federal bribery charges of accepting $175,000 worth of cash and gifts, including a Rolex watch and Louis Vuitton handbags and Oscar de la Renta gowns for his wife from the businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr., and sentenced to two years in prison. (The Supreme Court later vacated the sentence.) During the trial, the products were entered as exhibits by the prosecution — glossy stains on the soul of the electorate.In 2018, Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, was convicted on eight counts of bank fraud and tax crimes after a Justice Department investigation revealed that he had spent $1.3 million on clothes, mostly at the House of Bijan in Beverly Hills, including a $15,000 ostrich jacket that set the social media world alight with scorn. More recently, Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey was accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz, among other bribes, in return for political favors.In each case, while the financial chicanery was bad, it was the details of the stuff — the objects themselves — that became the smoking gun, the indefensible revelation of moral weakness. And so it was with Mr. Santos.Even if, at one point, his appreciation of a good look may have made him seem more accessible — he reviewed NASA’s spacesuit and created a best- and worst-dressed list for the White House Correspondent’s dinner, both on X — it also proved his undoing. As the House Ethics Committee report read: “He blatantly stole from his campaign. He deceived donors into providing what they thought were contributions to his campaign but were in fact payments for his personal benefit.”And worse — for vanity, reeking of ostentation. That’s not just an alleged crime. It’s an affront to democracy.Audio produced by More

    • 63 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Nikki Haley Wears the Skirts

      by

      Whether on the debate stage or “The Daily Show,” the Republican presidential candidate is strategic about standing out — in every way.In a crowded field of Republican presidential candidates, Nikki R. Haley is starting to stand out. Such, anyway, seems to be the conclusion of pollsters, voters and donors alike, who have helped bolster her numbers since she first took to the debate stage back in August. She’s on enough of an upswing that “Saturday Night Live” has started to prep a Haley character in anticipation.But as the third debate — and, perhaps, Ms. Haley’s debut as an “S.N.L.” character — looms, it’s worth considering just how tactically she has used the fact that she unmistakably stands out, even before she has opened her mouth to show off her foreign policy experience, or scold a competitor, to her advantage.Yes, I am talking about gender. Being a woman has always been seen as an issue to manage in a presidential race. Ms. Haley is using it as an asset. She announced, in the first debate, as her opponents were sniping at each other, “This is exactly why Margaret Thatcher said, ‘If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.’”And where is that woman? Just open your eyes and look.Mr. Ramaswamy, left, in the typical Republican uniform, next to Ms. Haley, in a uniform of her own choosing, at the debate in August. Morry Gash/Associated PressIn that initial debate, surrounded by seven men in the exact same outfits — dark blue suits, white shirts, red ties, tiny flag pins, otherwise known as the political uniform of the non-debating Donald J. Trump — Ms. Haley was a beacon in a light blue bouclé skirt suit and high heels.In the second debate, with the men in pretty much the same outfits (Tim Scott did wear a red and navy striped tie that time), there she was, in gleaming crimson silk shantung and pumps. And chances are, as the field shrinks in the third debate, such distinctions will become even more apparent.“Political campaigns are about differentiation,” said Cheri Bustos, a former congresswoman from Illinois, who said she also wore skirts and heels during her first primary campaign, when she was the only woman in a field of six. “The best candidates look for every opportunity. Nikki Haley has taken advantage of the situation.”Ms. Haley in crimson at the second Republican presidential debate in September. Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd she has done so while repudiating conventional wisdom when it comes to women seeking the highest office. You know, the truism that trouser suits should be the uniform of choice for women as well as men, the better to fit in with the group and downplay the whole gender issue.Hillary Clinton was, of course, the ultimate pantsuit champion, though she swapped her signature rainbow of trouser suits for basic black when she was on the debate stage in 2016, segueing to symbolic suffragist white only after she had won the nomination and setting a tone that has defined the American female political wardrobe ever since.Indeed, in the 2020 election cycle Kamala Harris, Tulsi Gabbard and Marianne Williamson stuck almost entirely to the clothing script, Ms. Harris in dark suits and Ms. Gabbard and Ms. Williamson in white. Since Ms. Harris became vice president, she has worn dark pantsuits almost entirely.But Ms. Haley wears the skirts. And not just any old skirts: knee-length skirts. The kind of skirts often referred to as “demure,” that suggest legs crossed at the ankle, and traditional gender roles. The irony is, in adopting this more classically female garment in this context, she looks both acceptably conservative and radical at the same time.Ms. Haley at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Annual Leadership summit in Las Vegas in October, in her trademark skirt and high heels.Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesAfter all, you’re not exactly fooling anyone in a pantsuit. So why not upend the status quo and wear something your rivals cannot?Besides, the pantsuit is in part a Democratic convention. Republican women have hewed more to the sheath dress-skirt suit tradition in presidential politics. When Sarah Palin was John McCain’s vice-presidential running mate in 2008, she wore skirts and skirt suits for most of her major public appearances, including her debate with Joe Biden. Ditto Elizabeth Dole in 2000 for her presidential run.Many Republican candidates seem to buy into the idea, expressed by Mr. Trump during his term in office, that the women who worked for him should “dress like women,” in the most clichéd sense. Though Ms. Haley’s interpretation of that idea is less Fox News presenter and more Thatcherite. (Ms. Haley did title her 2022 book on female leadership “If You Want Something Done.”)Still, clichés, generally shared, are also a subtle way for Ms. Haley to plant a seed in viewers’ minds without anyone necessarily being conscious of what is going on. “Her presentation adds to her credibility,” said Frank Luntz, a political communications strategist. “Her verbal strategy and her visual strategy are in sync.”Ms. Haley may have flip-flopped in her positions on Mr. Trump and his transgressions, especially the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, but she has always stuck to certain core principles, at least when it comes to her image: color, heels, skirt or dress (when not at the Iowa State Fair, where she we wore jeans). She grew up working in her mother’s clothing store in Bamberg, S.C. Her husband is a commissioned officer in the South Carolina Army National Guard, currently serving in Africa. She understands the impact of uniform.Ms. Haley at the Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia in June.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesOne of her favorite lines, first trotted out in 2012 when she was the governor of South Carolina, is about her shoe preference. “I wear high heels, and it’s not a fashion statement — it’s for ammunition,” she said back then, adding: “I’ve got a completely male Senate. Do I want to use these for kicking? Sometimes, I do.’’She recycled the line, with a few edits, when addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in 2017: “I wear heels. It’s not for a fashion statement. It’s because if I see something wrong, we’re going to kick them every single time.”Then she made it the capstone of her February announcement video: “You should know this about me: I don’t put up with bullies, and when you kick back, it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels.” And just last week, she discussed it on “The Daily Show” in reference to resurfaced rumors that Ron DeSantis wore lifts in his cowboy boots to make himself taller — an allegation the DeSantis campaign has denied but which his opponents, especially Mr. Trump, have somewhat gleefully embraced.When Charlamagne Tha God, a host of the show, asked if Ms. Haley would be wearing higher heels than Mr. DeSantis so she could be taller, Ms. Haley replied: “I’ve always said, ‘Don’t wear ’em if you can’t run in ’em,’ so we’ll see if he can run in ’em.”It’s probably not a coincidence that Tom Broecker, the costume designer for “House of Cards” (and “S.N. L.”) said he always dressed Robin Wright Penn’s character in pointed high heels when she was president.“She felt in control when she had them on,” Mr. Broecker said. “High heels make you walk, and stand, a certain way, as if you can go toe to toe with a person.”Given the cloud of suspicion hanging over Mr. DeSantis’s shoes, and what they may reveal about his insecurities, it’s not a bad time to have a facility with strategically wielded footwear. Like Hillary Clinton, who after years of pushing back against discussion around her clothes, finally started joking about it and thus neutralized it as an issue to be used again her, Ms. Haley has pre-emptively weaponized her wardrobe for herself. She owns the heels in this race, just as she owns the skirt.It may seem like a minor detail, but it is starting to become a telling one. More

    • 63 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      The Secrets of Debate Swag

      by

      Oh, the games campaigns play with political merch. They may surprise you.Whatever happens at the first Republican presidential primary debate on Aug. 23, whatever revelations emerge from the melee of eight (count ’em) contenders, whatever slings and arrows are thrown, and whoever is declared the winner, one thing is certain: There will be a viral moment or two; a riposte that becomes a meme. Campaign staff will be watching. And before you can say “in my prime” or “too honest,” it will end up on a T-shirt in a candidate’s store.These days, retail politics has a whole new meaning. At a point in the electoral cycle when candidates are desperate to distinguish themselves and have only minutes onstage to do so, being able to deliver a zinger that will play on via swag is a key advantage.Ever since the inauguration of George Washington, voters have been participating in the electoral process by means of merch. Back then, it was fancy commemorative buttons that were sewn onto clothes (and were, largely, accessible only to the well-off).Over the years, the “store” — effectively an alternate way for candidates to elicit small-dollar donations and add to their supporter base by appealing to consumer culture — has grown in importance as technology has transformed our ability to make stuff, sell stuff and mine data. Now, almost as soon as presidential contenders declare their candidacy and their websites go live, the shops go live with them.“It’s one of the biggest changes over the last 20 years,” said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist and a founder of ROKK, a public affairs firm.By their stuff ye shall know them. Or at least know something about their strategy. It’s no longer just bumper stickers and baseball caps with a candidate’s name and the electoral year, but a constantly evolving stream of purpose-made product.And because of that, by their merch they are also finding new ways to know you.Casey DeSantis in her “Where Woke Goes to Die” leather jacket on a campaign stop in Iowa in June.Hannah Fingerhut/Associated PressA quarter-zip sweatshirt on offer in the DeSantis for President store inspired by Casey DeSantis’s jacket.Campaign store offerings have essentially become Rorschach tests for the electorate: What people buy, the slogans that get their shopping juices flowing, help determine how the candidates sell their ideas.“It’s a way to trial how candidates market themselves and how people respond to that,” said Claire Jerry, a curator of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, who had been scouting the landscape at the Iowa State Fair.Which is why campaign store offerings are getting so, well, tailored, the better to put their own spin on the popular conversation. Not the one taking place about policy among talking heads, but the one taking place on Instagram, X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) and TikTok. It’s a bona fide trend.Get Ready for the RevolutionJust in time for the debate, Vivek Ramaswamy’s team rebranded his main product stream (he offers about 65 total SKUs, as stock-keeping units of an item are called) to move away from his original focus on woke-ness, or anti-wokeness, to a new “Revolutions” theme., including what Tricia McLaughlin, a senior adviser on the campaign, called “Thomas Paine-style” campaign literature and slogans, with 18th-century script and sepia tones.At the Iowa State fair, Nikki Haley (about 70 SKUs), who has had great success with products featuring the slogan “In Her Prime” — a reference to Don Lemon’s much criticized comment that she was past her prime — modeled her “Underestimate me, that’ll be fun” T-shirt, which became its own talking point.Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota (about 40 SKUs), has “Doug Who?” shirts, playing up his underdog status. When Casey DeSantis wore a leather jacket with an alligator on the back superimposed over a map of Florida with the words “Where Woke Goes to Die” on it, the image went viral — and ended up on a quarter-zip sweatshirt in the store. The DeSantis campaign boasts it is the fastest selling of its more than 70 products.Clockwise from top left, candidate merchandise that exploits a moment from Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence and Doug Burgum.And when the federal indictment against Donald Trump was opened and included a quotation from Mr. Trump calling Mike Pence “too honest” for insisting there was no constitutional basis for rejecting Biden electoral votes in the 2020 election, the Pence campaign jumped on the phrase and made it the centerpiece of his store.This kind of quick reaction “allows you to meet people where they are, rather than trying to drag them over to where you are,” Ms. McLaughlin said. (The “Dark Brandon” phenomenon, which President Biden’s team has appropriated to great success, is a prime example.)Arguably, where people are — in the middle of cancel culture, locked in their own social media echo chambers — is not the most positive place, and making it into merch is a cynical move to exploit our factionalism and us-versus-them mentality. But then, fashion is often the locale where culture and politics meet. Swag just makes it obvious.Indeed, the shop has become so central to campaigning that not long after a group of Republican strategists created WinRed, the party’s donation-processing digital platform, in 2019, it has included support for opening storefronts available free of charge to every candidate. That helped erase any barrier to entry for a campaign that may not have the complex operations needed to design, source, produce and distribute merch. (Democrats have had a similar entity, ActBlue, since 2004.)Every Republican candidate who has qualified for the debate on Wednesday night uses WinRed for their shop, except Chris Christie, the rare candidate, Republican or Democratic, to not have a store, viewing it as a drain on personnel resources. Donald J. Trump, who qualified for the debate but has decided not to appear, also uses the platform.WinRed vets its recommended vendors, like Ace Specialties, “known for making the MAGA hat,” and Merch Raise, allowing candidates to state that products are “made in the U.S.A.” And all of them work on a drop-ship model, meaning they produce items only after they are ordered, so campaigns can test as many designs as they want without the expense of holding inventory.That has allowed campaigns to be ultra-responsive to buzzword moments and to weaponize them for their own purposes. After all, sites like Redbubble and Etsy have built their business on exploiting virality, including viral political moments. Why shouldn’t the protagonists themselves profit from the give-and-take between publicity and product? Not to mention exploit our desire for stuff.Reading the Merch Leaves“People like the tangible sense of participating in a campaign,” Ms. Jerry, of the Smithsonian, said. And we have become conditioned to appreciate acquisition.“If someone just asks if you want to donate, you might say no,” Ms. Jerry continued. “But if you can get a T-shirt?” Tim Scott has even sent out direct mailings asking supporters what “new piece of Tim Scott merchandise” they would like to see. (The socks are kind of fun.)Merch turns individuals into billboards in a cycle of shopping satiation and public support. “When you see people in a crowd identified as being on your side, it creates a sense of excitement,” Ms. Jerry said. Case in point, the ocean of red baseball caps at Trump rallies, which sends a visual message that is, to many in our current environment, more convincing than any poll.Even more significantly, merch allows candidates to see what is resonating with voters and adjust their message accordingly, much like a focus group. When you buy some merch, you are giving a candidate not just your money, email and address, but (whether you realize it or not) psychographic information that can be used to geo-target mailings and commercials. The more varied the offerings, the more information they elicit.If you buy, say, a camo hat in the Burgum store, you may suddenly find yourself on the receiving end of lots of Second Amendment information. If you buy a “Joe Biden Makes Me Cry” baby onesie at the DeSantis store, or a “Mamas for DeSantis” T-shirt, you may be inundated with information about the battle over school curriculums and abortion. If you buy a “Faith” tee from Tim Scott, it’s understood as a signal that you care about religious freedoms.Clockwise from top left, candidate merchandise from Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Pence, Doug Burgum and Ron DeSantis, on what appear to be the same computer-generated bodies.There’s only one problem: The WinRed-effected ease of shop creation, in which every candidate’s store is powered by the same platform, means that they all look pretty much the same.Down to the structure (four horizontal squares of products), the color scheme (red, white and blue, duh, with some gray, black, white and pink thrown in for good measure) and the chubby baby torso depicted in each onesie, or the generic female and male torsos, all of which resemble A.I.-generated fake humans from a very bland heartland. It can make going from one shop to the other a bit like entering the Twilight Zone.And, given the need to stand out from the crowd, having a storefront that looks just like the other guy’s — and is populated with the same bots as the other guy’s — can also seem less than ideal.“I don’t think anyone notices,” said Mr. Bonjean, the strategist (he is not working for any of the candidates). Which may be true for those already decided, but given the early stage of the campaign cycle, anyone … um, shopping around for a candidate and visiting the sites may have a different opinion.Still, the current reality has led to a situation in which, Mr. Bonjean said, not only are campaigns primed to jump on any one-liner that can easily translate into merch, but also they are likely teeing them up, seeding quips in debate responses, the better to jump-start a new political product placement cycle.“We don’t think it’s ever going away,” Ms. Jerry said.Watch for it Wednesday, and then see what sentiment ends up on the sleeves, socks or sunglasses strap coming soon to a voter near you. More

    • 63 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      The Costuming of George Santos

      by

      George Santos used fashion to flout the rules.There is a scene at the beginning of “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” the 1999 film adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith book, in which Tom Ripley, the young man who becomes one of fiction’s greatest fakers, borrows a Princeton jacket from a friend to sit in for the piano player at a ritzy garden party. From that assumed finery, an entire novel’s worth of cons are born.It’s not unlike Frank Abagnale shrugging on a PanAm pilot’s uniform in “Catch Me If You Can” to convince the watching world he is a pilot, or Anna Sorokin, a.k.a. Anna Delvey, the fake heiress of recent grift, swanning through New York society in Celine sunglasses and Gucci sandals. Or even Elizabeth Holmes assuming the black turtleneck of Steve Jobs, and with it his mystique.Throughout history, the greatest grifters have understood that dressing the part is half the game. And so it has been with George Santos, the Republican congressman representing parts of Long Island and Queens, who has been unmasked as having fabricated pretty much his entire résumé in his quest to get elected, potentially committing campaign finance fraud in the process.Why, people keep asking, did it take so long for his lies to be revealed? Why did no one think to poke deeper? Why did the people who did know something fishy was going on not speak up?In part because he just looked so darn convincing.He went to Horace Mann, Baruch and N.Y.U. and came from money? Behold, the uniform of preppy private-school boys everywhere: the button-up white shirt, crew-neck sweater (most often in the old-school colors of periwinkle and gray), blue blazer and khaki trousers, like something straight out of “Dead Poets Society.”More on the George Santos ControversyBehind The Times’s Investigation: The Times journalists Michael Gold and Grace Ashford discuss how Representative George Santos was elected to Congress and how they discovered that he was a fraud.Split View: New York Republicans are ready to rid themselves of the newly elected representative after his pattern of deception was revealed. But House Republican leaders badly need his vote.Facing Inquiries: Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether Mr. Santos committed crimes involving his finances or made misleading statements, while authorities in Brazil said they would revive a 2008 fraud case against him.Alternate Identities: A newly surfaced video shows Mr. Santos in 2019 using one of his alternate identities and urging members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community to embrace Republicans. The clip offers insight into Mr. Santos’s early forays into public political life.He was a financier, who had worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs? Lo, the three-quarter zip sweater and fleece (or fleece-like) vest, uniform of bankers everywhere. Just consider the last six seasons of “Billions.”The semiotics of sweater dressing: Mr. Santos in zip-front knitwear. Tom Brenner for The New York TimesHe went deep into the costume department of the popular culture hive mind and built his cover story layer by layer, garment by garment.He may wear suits sometimes, but it is the sweaters, in their various permutations, that have been the telling detail, along with the horn-rimmed glasses — visual shorthand, in pretty much every medium, for intellectual. Both are props that push the buttons of stereotype buried in our subconscious. We are so much more likely to believe a story if it is embedded in the codes we expect, dress code being among the first.Yes, it’s a cliché. That doesn’t mean it isn’t effective. Clothes are the camouflage that gets you in the door. Especially in a world in which the line between visual truth and fiction is increasingly filtered.It would not be surprising then, that Mr. Santos is alleged to have bought hundreds of dollars worth of garments and shoes in Brazil using checks stolen from his mother’s handbag. And that a former roommate claimed in The New York Post that the Burberry scarf Mr. Santos wore to a Stop the Steal rally in 2021 didn’t actually belong to him but to the roommate, and Mr. Santos took it when the two men shared an apartment. That another said Mr. Santos had taken some of his dress shirts, including an Armani number. Mr. Santos clearly understood that no matter the character you are playing, what you wear tells the story.So he dressed up his story of embodying the American dream in the fashion vernacular of archetypes. By indulging public preconceptions of how someone with his résumé should look, Mr. Santos was implicitly underscoring his own credibility.And he is still doing it. It is not an accident that since his fabrications have been revealed, he has stuck largely to his preppy layering. See the periwinkle blue crew neck he wore over a white shirt and navy-and-white tie and under a navy suit during the House swearing-in; it’s a uniform both protective and promising. One that had a Pavlovian association with words like “wholesome,” “polite,” “youthful,” “well intentioned.” It’s the kind of style that conjures up images of grandmothers saying, “But he looks like such a nice boy.” (He even arrived for the ceremony toting a backpack.)Outside a Stop & Shop in a fleece-adjacent look. Mary Altaffer/Associated PressJust as when writers sometimes clean up the language of interviewees to make the written statement easier to read than the spoken one — which can often seem garbled on the page — dressing to satisfy expectations rather than reflect everyday reality is a form of sleight of hand.(The practice of quote amelioration became something of a cause célèbre when the psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson sued the journalist Janet Malcolm for libel for massaging his words.)But in fact, while bankers may love a logo fleece, it’s usually one that advertises the institutions to which they belong or the invite-only conferences that they attend (Sun Valley! Davos!). Mr. Santos’s version, worn mostly on the campaign trail as he was selling his myth, advertised his own candidacy.And according to Lisa Birnbach, the author of “The Official Preppy Handbook,” Mr. Santos’s version of preppy style is too groomed, too layered, too contrived to be that of a genuine prepster. She said she hadn’t seen a crew neck under a blazer over a tie since George Plimpton ran The Paris Review in the second half of the 20th century. Mr. Santos, she said, looks like an extra in “Family Ties,” the sitcom that starred Michael J. Fox as a teenage Republican. He’s trying too hard.Some are now beginning to speculate that even the glasses are fakes, donned to complete the picture, that they don’t have the distortions associated with corrective lenses.That we should have realized, really, they were too easy to see through. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      John Fetterman Got a New Suit for His Senate Swearing-In

      by

      The Pennsylvania lawmaker joins the Washington establishment. Sort of.John Fetterman has a new suit. On Jan. 3, the junior senator from Pennsylvania, whose penchant for Carhartt sweatshirts, Dickies and baggy shorts was as much a part of his political brand as any stump speech, was sworn in as part of the 118th Congress wearing a relatively tailored, previously unseen light gray two-button number. This is a big deal, in part because during his time as lieutenant governor, Mr. Fetterman had made a point of stating that he had only one dark suit. On a day notable for the chaos around the election of Speaker of the House, that suit, as well as the light blue striped tie and polished black lace-ups Mr. Fetterman also wore, may have been the biggest political fashion statement of the incoming class. It was more symbolic even than Nancy Pelosi’s bright pink passing-of-the-baton outfit, or the smattering of suffragist white worn by some women in the House, or even J.D. Vance’s Trumpian uniform of navy suit, white shirt and glowing red tie. And it confirms Mr. Fetterman as one of the more unexpected image makers in Washington. It’s not that he dresses particularly well, though the new suit was a step up. It’s that he dresses with purpose.Indeed, Mr. Fetterman’s new suit was as notable as any of the fashion statements made by various members of Congress since clothes began to play a bigger role in electoral communications. To wit: January 2019, when a large group of women of the newly elected 116th Congress wore white to their swearing-in in honor of their suffragist predecessors (and as a counterstrike to the image-making focus of the Trump administration).Or, for that matter, almost every State of the Union and major public event since then — most recently in December, when a number of lawmakers wore yellow and blue to Volodymyr Zelensky’s congressional speech. If there’s a photo op involved, there’s generally a fashion decision aforethought.The silent communication that comes via clothing has become a standard part of the political toolbox. It’s wielded with increasing dexterity by, for example, elected officials like Kyrsten Sinema, who used her kooky wardrobe of sleeveless tops, colored wigs and the occasional denim vest to telegraph her independence from political norms long before she officially became an independent. Also Jim Jordan, who symbolized his willingness to fight during committee hearings by abandoning his jackets and rolling up his shirt sleeves. The Washington wardrobe is so standardized that any deviation from the norm stands out, especially on TV.Unless, of course, your default position is deviation from the norm — in which case a return to business as usual becomes the surprise. As Mr. Fetterman well knows.Before heading off to the Capitol for his swearing-in, he tweeted, “For those of you asking, yes, there will be a Fetterman in shorts today, but it’s not me.” (It was one of his sons, gamely continuing the family campaign to free the knee.) Rather than deny the idea that he thinks about what he wears, or having his staff deny it for him, Mr. Fetterman long ago turned his wardrobe into an asset: the subject of self-deprecating funny asides, social media jokes and pretty potent public appeal.He has blogged that he can’t roll up his sleeves because he only wears short sleeves. He has tweeted that his outfits are “Western PA business casual” and celebrated his new “Formal Hoodie.” (His wife, Gisele, has made fun of him for it; political couples — they’re just like us.) He was never exactly a working man — he was a mayor with a master’s degree from Harvard — but he dressed like one, and it helped humanize him, get him recognized and make a name for himself that resonated beyond the borders of Pennsylvania and into the realm of late-night TV even before he won his election. Arguably it helped win the election.And it meant that when he showed up on Capitol Hill in November for his orientation in a dark suit and blue tie, he got the sort of excited attention not normally bestowed on a senator-elect making a drive-by visit to his new workplace. Rather he resembled some sort of semi-celebrity, even as his willingness to play by Senate dress code rules and fit into the institution can’t have escaped his new colleagues.Nor, probably, could the sleight of hand that managed to make wearing a conservative suit look like a radical move. And they can expect more where this came from: According to his office, the new suit is one of three Mr. Fetterman has purchased, along with six — count ’em — ties. More