The ridiculous school 

Here are some things I now know: that the school’s grounds, beyond those imposing gates, are large enough that they could comfortably contain at least three of my high school’s own in their entirety – and they include six separate cricket pitches. That there are staff employed to patrol the streets of the neighbouring suburbs in the mid-afternoon, purely to ensure those blazers are not taken off in public. That there are swimming trunks (and that is the word they use for them) as part of the school uniform – in the school’s colours and with its logo on one leg. 

That the admission fee, each year, is equal to what I earn. (I am not, for the record, in any way involved in its payment.) 

And also that none of this matters, not in the context of my family’s lives. I am, of course and for want of a better word, the stepmother to my girlfriend’s children, which is to say that my role is always supportive and not agential. I’m not the protagonist and do not want to be. The problem is that neither can I be antagonistic, nor should I.

I never thought that I would be here. Never imagined I might find myself driving through those massive gates on the occasional stormy afternoon and idling in a queue of European cars as the older boy swings his cricket kit onto my backseat (though I still curse those of their drivers who insist on trying to turn right when they return to the main road). Receiving the school’s monthly magazine with its thick, soft pages in my letterbox. Stitching name tags onto uniform trunks, the existence of which I couldn’t even fathom until last year. It is unsettling, to say the very least. 

And I hate it.

Perfect match

Art and fashion have long been co-conspirators, collaborating commercially and creatively to mutual benefit since the early twentieth century. At first glance, the disciplines appear to be fundamentally opposed. Where fashion has traditionally been seen as fickle, transient and driven by popular culture trends, designed to make itself redundant with each new collection, art is understood to be more thoughtful, intellectual and elitist, in pursuit of longevity – the nobler pursuit, owing to its intellectual and philosophical origins. Fashion embraces reinvention to make itself relevant, responding to consumer demands and the commercial imperative, whereas art, born of an artist’s creativity, has historically been regarded as the higher form, one that does not necessarily depend upon financial gain, nor require money for its creation.

Of course, these are outmoded, romantic notions – absolutes. Art is a commodity like any other, bought and sold as an investment. Art and fashion are economic systems with a great deal in common: both exist because they can, not because they serve a practical purpose.

Sovereign forever

I didn’t see many First Nations designers when I was growing up, but I suppose my saving grace was the few Black models working in the industry, such as Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks, Iman and Veronica Webb. They introduced me to luxury fashion, and I’d cut their pictures from magazines and plaster them on my wall. I’d study the unique tailoring and signature styles of the clothing they wore. Without even realising what I was doing, I’d started creating my personal lookbook to capture what I dreamed of wearing one day.

That J-Lo dress

I find high fashion fascinating, in particular what the beautiful people wear on the catwalk or the red carpet. Just as compelling, to my mind, are the twin pillars of fashion industry gossip and business analysis, including what clothes might reveal about culture and society. Take the famous J-Lo dress: diaphanous green material slit to the waist in both directions, held together by a big jewel-encrusted broach, worn with sparkly panties and strappy heels (please admire my technical knowledge). This is the dress J-Lo wore to the 2000 Grammy Awards. I mentioned that it broke the internet.

Go west

This fever dream of an afternoon is a standard Sunday at Broken Heel, the drag festival in the desert where queer culture meets outback Australiana. Held over a long weekend in September, Broken Heel is a five-day extrava- ganza hosted by Broken Hill’s Palace Hotel – the pub that makes a cameo appearance in Stephan Elliott’s iconic 1994 film, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Conceived as a tribute to Priscilla, which was largely filmed and partly set around Broken Hill, Broken Heel was launched by Palace owner Esther La Rovere in 2015 to coincide with the film’s twenty-first birthday. Nine years later, the drag festival had become an annual institution, attracting thousands of punters from around Australia and overseas. Thirty years after Hugo Weaving stopped traffic on Argent Street with a pink thong dress and matching wig, this storied mining town with a pub on every corner welcomed a veritable deluge of men in muumuus.

Dress right, act right

In The Fashion System, Roland Barthes argues that clothing is never just functional or decorative; it’s always a language, a system of signs. The revival of prairie-style high necklines and nunnishly low hems is a semiotic gesture that can’t be divorced from its meaning. Joan Scott’s theory of gender as a historical sign system is also useful when analysing the forms and silhouettes that mark this new (or, rather, old) style era: in resurrecting the prim-and-proper silhouettes of the ’40s and the flouncy A-line dresses of the ’50s, with their exaggerated waists and corsetry-inspired bodices, we act in subtle ways to reinscribe historical gender roles.

Body doubles

While Borisov’s softcore porn captivates a global audience, Meta, Instagram’s parent company, polices other accounts it claims are sharing ‘sexually suggestive’ content. In 2019, Salty – an online newsletter and platform for women, trans and non-binary people – released research that indicates certain marginalised groups – such as women, sex workers, people of colour, plus-sized creators, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community – appear unfairly patrolled online when it comes to the sort of content they post. I myself have received ample warnings from Meta given I write regularly about women, abortion, sex and its many hiccups.

The trenches

The first time we visit Elie Wiesel Square on a weekend, I’m staggered by the density of modish young families: neat-hipped milfs in belted jeans and little embroidered jackets; lightly stubbled dilfs in tailored, earth-toned clothing; children dressed either like something out of Frances Hodgson Burnett or a Yeezy drop. One lambent-skinned mother in a soft-looking oatmeal set, rimless oval sunglasses and a geo-print headscarf in as many shades of brown as a chocolate box, snaps photos of two little girls in matching oatmeal smocks, white stockings and shiny black Mary Janes, their long black hair in intricate braids.

Buyer beware

I’d heard murmurings of the quality crisis, noticed things here and there in my own purchases. But it wasn’t until I consulted shopping subreddits, TikToks and Instagram comments that the scale of the issue became apparent. Brands of all sorts were implicated. Items were stretching out, losing their shape or fading after a few washes; jumpers were rapidly pilling; dresses turned out to be sheer in daylight; shirts would refuse to relinquish oil stains. Everyone seemed to agree: clothes were better a decade ago.

My body is the gallery – enjoy the exhibition!

CELEBRITY CULTURE HAS slowly eroded the negative connotations associated with tattoos. In the ’80s, punk and heavy-metal rockers used body art to cement their anti-consumer images into mainstream minds. Since the turn of the century, reality TV shows including Miami Ink and Ink Master have accelerated the normalisation of tattoos. Now, partly thanks to social media, tattoos have become another kind of commodity to show off to the world. Outside of the job stoppers (hands, neck, face), tattoos can be seen on lawyers, corporate drones and even White House staff.

 
But tattoos have always been more than fashion statements. They connect people to subcultures. They express commitment to particular ideals and fandoms. They’re the ultimate form of self-expression. Even a tattoo you get impulsively can make a statement. Tattoos become stories shared at social gatherings. Icebreakers to get the conversation going when you meet someone new. Gruelling, painful rituals that highlight how strong the human spirit can be. Dedications to a belief or a thought or a love that you wish to always be reminded of. Signifiers of who you are. 

Suffer for fashion

There were plenty of boys in Brisbane in 2001 who dressed in attentive and interesting ways. But you’d have to be sure of yourself, which I wasn’t, or you’d have to have been straight. For the rest of us, survival meant the avoidance of colour; you had to avoid flourishes, avoid anything tight, avoid the sense of a considered style. My vision of an appropriate male dresser involved jeans, in the tropical heat, and a T-shirt, again dark. Sneakers were the acceptable form of shoe, skate shoes if you were chancy, with a pair of Holeproof Heroes in black or grey.

Change room

The story currently being told by the vast majority of the fashion industry is that plus-size bodies simply don’t exist. Looking to runways and fashion magazines, I see no bodies that even vaguely resemble my own. Not one B-shaped belly, not one roll, not even a hint of back fat. The shame and isolation that exists around fatness everywhere else also exists on runways, in fashion houses, in shopping centres. In my wardrobe.