When you join the words fashion and comics I'm willing to bet that the result that assaults your head is pretty much the one where superheroes dominate the stories. This means a picture full of glaring colors and capes.
And no, not just the men. Zooming into some feminine characters, what we see is tight Lycra, nearly invisible shorts or skirts, curve fitting leather attire, sparkly bralets and the occasional high heel. It looks comfy and practical to go after or actually being one of the bad girls in this garments, doesn't it?
Women fashion has been always stereotyped, even when it's not filtered by fantasy or superhero settings. In narratives passed on the real world we jump from the "off-the-rack" bookworms, to the "funny/graphic t-shirts" geeks and the occasional "hot and preppy" cheerleaders. In other words an over simplified typification. That's the problem: we're not talking about types of things, we're talking about characters that represent people with deep, ever evolving personalities.
But I'm not going to get all fussy about the way women are (sometimes brutally) stereotyped on most comic books. After all, we're not short of examples (mainly from indie publishers, but nonetheless worthy for that!) of strong idiosyncratic female characters! Hurray for that!
No, I'm going to tell you how happily surprise I was when I found out an example not only of fashion in comics, but of couture: delicate, swoon worthy high fashion.
"Girl in Dior", by Annie Goetzinger , shows us the creative buzz behind the beginnings of the Dior house of fashion, through the story of new chronicler Clara, rapidly turned model. Following this fictional character leads us deep into Dior's fashion world. Flowing gowns are flaunt on delicate characters and water colored realistic backgrounds.
We are given a front row seat in Christian Dior's adventure in high fashion, between 1947 and 1957.
This book alone is reason to bring a whole group of fashionistas to the world of comics. The accurate biography with its beautiful illustrations, allows for a healthy voyeuristic peek into the high fashion universe.
I'm not saying this is the best book ever. But if you know someone who loves fashion and might not be into comics yet, get them a copy. I've tried and it worked: a fashion blogger has recently been converted into a comic junkie!
Of course that if you yourself are a fashion addict, odds are you've already heard about Goetzinger venture through Vogueor a comic review somewhere else.
This shows the importance of the variety of themes, genres and artwork on graphic novels. There's one for every subject in our life and they'll be featured on the right news outlet - even if you have to dig a little bit for an over simplified two-liner piece of news, but hey, it's better than seeing these works being constantly ignored. Sometimes you just haven't found the right artist or the narrative that will resonate with you and suck you into the rich universe comic books.
S.G.
P.S.: Check out the previous posts of this series: I Was a Comic Book Fan All Along and Didn’t Know,How OE changed my perception of Comic Booksand Diversity of Graphic Novel Genres: From Biographies to Philosophical Essays.
Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
