One of the most troubling aspects of human nature is the tendency for people to become blind to the darker facets of their culture’s past. How does an American maintain pride while their history is punctuated with destructive racial inequalities? How does a German reconcile their country’s role in one of the greatest genocides the world has ever seen? And for those who succeed –-if they truly do -– has this water under the bridge been cleaned with time, or is it dead water, festering and seeping into the soil of future growth? Helle Fuglsang’s performance piece “Clothes Make the Man” suggests the latter, creating overwhelming tension that drives the audience member to question -– during freshly minted fashion capital Copenhagen’s week in the spotlight -– if their own clothing may be soaked in that dead water.
Fuglsang’s piece adopts the framework of a fashion show: a catwalk, spotlights, pulsating music, lines of chairs for audience members, a DJ booth, and highly fashionable looking men briskly walking back and forth behind stage. The show begins with an African woman standing on a catwalk, wrapped in a starkly white cloth save her face, neck, and feet. She speaks in sharp, guttural clicks with an erratic rhythm, almost metronomic in both pacing and tonal quality. A man enters with a sewing machine, and a woman begins to spin the cloaked figure, unwinding her garments as if she were a bolt of cloth. As time passes, her sounds become more frantic, and eventually transform into shrill screams. When her fingers emerge, they spring rigid, spread wide like locusts of the frenetic energy flooding from her body. She turns in place, guided along by the constant chewing of her sewing machine and a ritualistic throb of a bass drum.
Once fully unraveled the woman lets out her most violent scream, encapsulating the room in absolute terror. And then, like victims of unspeakable tragedy often do, she cycles through primal fits of nearly every emotion, from sadness to despair and, eventually, a calm joy. She begins to rock back and forth, undulating with an almost regal force, and it appears that somehow the prolonged torture has left her outwardly content.
The rest of the piece takes a sharp turn, with figures striding onto the catwalk in flashy, modern clothing – something far more expected during Copenhagen Fashion Week. As these figures danced, spun, and posed, though, the original figure continued her ostensibly delightful movement, unfazed by the young, chic models around her. And then, she suddenly breaks out in simple, warm, wordless song reminiscent of a lullaby, and exits, stepping off the stage and out of the venue, almost as if preparing for a wedding rather than exiting a fashion show. But, as her deathly wails suggested only fifteen minutes before, one cannot help but wonder: a wedding to what?
The central figure’s departure marked the end of the show’s strongest dialogue, and unfortunately the remainder of Fuglsang’s piece failed to maintain a fraction of its thematic depth. The show continued with cheesy, banal puppetry atop a balcony, a predictable soliloquy by a man on his love for expensive clothing, and karaoke to a setting of models posing in front of green screens for badly designed out.
The strongest aspect of the performance was most certainly the beginning with its progression of the cloaked woman, its clearest purpose to portray the exploitation of African women in the fashion industry. But as the show continued, it lost any sense of narrative and if anything seemed to disrespect the story told by the tortured woman. In a week in Copenhagen dedicated to fashion, the onset of the show seemed to offer an artful and brutally honest critique of the fashion industry’s deepest history, but instead led to a second-rate attempt at humor and acting. Audience members were split along diverse lines of participation throughout, with some horrified and uncomfortable, others chuckling, and a surprising number marveling at the clothing of the prancing models only moments after the central woman’s shrieks died down. The strength that the main scene built up set the stage immensely for dialogue concerning the portrayal and role of Africa in the fashion world, but the events following slowly diminished the power of the performance until it was left empty, lost, and directionless.
Fuglsang’s Clothes Makes the Man achieved stellar heights in execution with flawless harmony between lighting, sound, and stage performance, and powerful depth with the performance of the cloaked woman. However, it ultimately failed to leave a mark on Copenhagen’s Fashion Week, left to drown beneath memories of brighter runways and more deftly articulated critiques of the Fashion industry. Fuglsang certainly succeeds at providing a sharp view of the troubling understory and history of African representation in fashion, but unfortunately leaves the water under the bridge simply as it was: rotting.
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