Welcome to the final week of Fashion as Design: Expression. Every time we put something on, we're obviously communicating something, even if we're communicating that we don't want to participate in fashion. We're saying something. It's a decision we make to put on clothes. And so that's why we're concluding the course with this particular subject because it's sort of a culmination of everything that we've been looking at. But we've chosen a handful of items that we feel convey just a little bit more of a meaning, perhaps. One of my favorite items of the course is the door-knocker earring. The door-knocker earring takes on a lot of different forms, but the most salient aspect of it is that it's big. It's meant to look like a door-knocker when you go to visit a friend. It could be a hoop. It could be a square. It could just be something very large that dangles. It's something I first discovered when I started getting into hip-hop as a kid. And Salt-N-Pepa, famously wore these big huge earrings. Do you remember? Actually, I was in the UK at that point in time. So Salt-N-Pepa, I didn't know so well. So I came to them later. But thinking about the ways in which that style has now traversed, I came to them first through Sex and the City. So that was an appropriation of some sort. Yes. So that's really what we're going to be focusing on when we look at the door-knockers this week. They are very much so at the forefront of a conversation about appropriation. So they're an earring that has had a deeply rooted cultural significance to women of color, Latina women, and black women. And in 2001, the American television show, Sex and the City, the star of that show, Carrie Bradshaw was outfitted in a pair of door-knocker hoops that said Carrie right across them. And it was viewed as an insensitive form of appropriation because this is an earring that meant very specific things to certain people. Right. And so when we think about expression, it's not only about expressing ourselves, but who else we might be expressing when we put on certain items of clothing or accessories. So we move from appropriation to subversion in terms of expression. This is a favorite of yours. Really, a lot of my favorites in this week. So the slip dress is one of my all-time favorite items of fashion. I am a big Courtney Love fan. And as many of us know, she often wore slip dresses while performing. It sort of looks a bit like an undergarment. And so for that reason, at its core, it's a very sort of sensual garment. But the women who have worn it and have made it kind of codified its meaning as something that's a little more tough or women that have worn it with leather jackets and boots, and they really kind of subverted this idea of a sexualized feminine body. They took the received or expected expression of the slip dress, which is feminine, soft, sensual. And they completely flipped that expression on its head as a recourse to power around their bodies in public and in private. Very well put. You taught me everything I know. We'll then look at message. And so one of my favorites of this entire course is the lapel pin. Something that I think is tiny but mighty. And so you may be wearing one right now, or you may have one on your coat that you wear out of doors. You might think of the cross ribbon, most associated with the early 1990s and the AIDS awareness campaigns. And so becomes this very powerful signifier, really powerful sartorial symbol of messaging, and therefore, expressing one's, perhaps, identity, allegiance, remembrance, or other types of emotions. So in this week, thinking about identity. And one of the garments that we'll look at is kente. Something that has had a real significance on the West Coast of Africa, specifically in Ghana and Togo for many centuries, but really came to prominence in many ways in a kind of global pan-African consciousness after independence in Ghana in 1957. And so we will look at the ways in which expression at a national level can be made through a specific types of clothing and dress. And kente stands as a lens through which to have that conversation. So to conclude this week, and indeed the course, we're going to be going to the studio of Asher Levine who's here in New York. And we'll look at him and his creation of a biker jacket. We looked at the biker jacket in the Coutures week. And here, we'll look at a prototype that he's made. He is someone who designs not only in fashion, but designs costume for a very well known performance as well. So, often, what he's thinking about is how these can be read on stage as signifiers of very large expressions. And the biker jacket that he's created is beautiful. It's white. And it looks almost like a kind of a molten scaled texture through which glows certain colors. He's thinking about it for practical reasons. When one's on the back of the motor bike, you can signal which way you're going by using the light function that's inherent to the biker jacket. But it's also much more about expressing a certain type of sartorial style. So we hope you've enjoyed this final week in the course, and that you've learned a little bit about how expression and fashion go together, and, indeed, confirmed many of the ways in which you yourself express through clothing.
