'the madness issue' - fashion's problem with fetishising mental illness
‘Mental illness, but make it fashion’ was apparently the disappointing concept behind Vogue Portugal’s July 2020 issue. Releasing four covers in total, the publication later stated that each had been “designed to address different dimensions of human behaviour, during a time when the global pandemic has brought people to confinement.” The initial three covers offered largely unproblematic takes on surrealism, the inauthenticity of influencer culture, and gothic imagery. It was baffling, then, that the fourth cover – which has since been pulled – was so glaringly insensitive.
The cover exhibited a room akin to a Hollywood version of a psychiatric ward. Within the clinical hues and unsettling scarcity, a model (Simona Kirchnerova) cradles herself naked in a bath while two nurses in archaic uniforms stand above, bathing her. Critics were quick to point out that the cover echoed a time when notions surrounding female mental illness were steeped in misogyny and disturbing apathy. Paired with the title ‘The Madness Issue’, it was severely outdated in every way.
‘Mad’ as a term to describe mental illness is, to put it bluntly, redundant. Vogue Portugal’s choice of the word demonstrates favour for a snappy marketing slogan over empathetic dialogue. Intentional or not, the cover promoted a narrative of female hysteria that became a real source of trauma for women across the centuries, and which continues to be triggering.
Within the sphere of high fashion, this aestheticization of suffering and trauma is not uncommon. Milan Fashion Week hosted a similar incident in September, as Gucci had their models stand motionless and vacant on a conveyor belt whilst wearing various interpretations of a straitjacket. Again, the central ‘aesthetic’ seemed to be that of the psychiatric hospital. The show may not have been identified as problematic by the mainstream media had it not been for the silent protest of one model, Ayesha Tan-Jones, who held up their hands to reveal the words ‘mental health is not fashion' as they were being transported down the runway.
This insensitivity seems somewhat characteristic of the industry. The so-called ‘heroin chic’ phase of the mid-1990s was particularly emblematic of high fashion’s glamorisation of real societal concerns. It seemingly advertised addiction and mental instability as some form of it-girl currency, elevating a 'nihilistic vision of beauty'. Some argued that this aesthetic movement was a necessary representation of an uncomfortable reality, pushing against narrow stereotypes of beauty.
The argument went that these curated images of models like Kate Moss, with gaunt faces and bruised skin, were giving visibility to the misunderstood and the disenfranchised. The nature of fashion publications however, means that the versions of beauty they choose to portray become aspirational to the reader. To the many who consider Vogue, or Elle, or Harper’s Bazaar to be their bible, the images could translate into a kind of deification of the model(s) who best encompassed the newly approved ‘look’. Such images therefore trivialised substance abuse, reducing it to little more than a slick editorial concept to serve a capitalist agenda.
Putting out an issue dedicated to the discussion of mental health issues is not the problem. Indeed, it has the potential to aid in breaking stigma – particularly within an industry that has its own widely repressed problem with mental illness. There is an awful lot of nuance that is necessary in this conversation. Magazines and brands don’t have to simply choose between stigmatisation and glamorisation. If Vogue Portugal’s composition was featured within the magazine alongside a conversation with experts, it could have been met with a very different response.
In isolation, the cover does not try to be anything that it is not; it has no signs of opulence, it is not littered with thousands of pounds worth of designer items. But the fact remains that this image of trauma was on the cover of a high-end publication, and therefore the first thing that greeted people on newsstands. It is an image that would have potentially been consumed even by those with no interest in ever picking up a copy. A photograph like that needs explicit explanation and context, particularly when it bears the name of a brand traditionally associated with contemporary indulgence, consumerist fantasies, and unattainable visions of female ‘perfection’.
Perhaps there is an issue with the expectation that anything printed on gloss is synonymous with glamour and desirability. Should we shed our view of fashion publications as shallow luxury clothing catalogues? Should we readjust to appreciate them as evolving into proponents of very necessary social conversation? If the answer to these questions is yes, then it is even more important that consumers hold them to a higher standard.
Exposure of mental health issues within mainstream cultural production is crucial to the dismantling of stigma and breaking taboo. However, there is a colossal difference between art and literature that grapples with themes of mental health, and companies who use archaic and often triggering psychiatric stereotypes for publicity and profit. Fashion can seek to provoke and induce discomfort in order to positively realign discourse, but it must do so with immense care and with the responsible acknowledgement that there is so much more at stake than who wears what next season.
Sources quoted: [1]