The Walking Chanel

I know my posts are a little short and shitty today but bear with me as I’m mowing through a mountain of work.  No doubt, a lot of you will have been tuning into SHOWstudio’s March-April season of short films on the subject of Political Fashion contributed by many a fashion industry, art world and celeb type.  I haven’t mowed through them all yet (missed the trick of watching them from the beginning of March and doing one a day…..doh!) but favourites that have emerged include Boudicca’s film about protesting at the G8 summit in Genoa, stylist Camille Bidault Waddington on why she doesn’t want to be politically correct on fashion shoots and Aitor Throup’s film about the backpack and how it got Jean Charles de Menezes killed in July 2005 after the 7/7 attacks in London.  The films are not all heavy, weighty and tear-inducing affairs though, as Fred Butler’s film ‘Conspicuous Consumption’ where she sends up the ‘IT’ bag and for once, the bag gets turned away from Harrods department store.

A Chanel quilted bag is the original icon from which she is inspired to produce a supersize version made out of stitched together photocopied Chanel ads.  Fred then goes about London dressed up in the giant bag, taking a taxi to the Sloane Street Chanel store and then walking along busy Knightsbridge, trying to get into Harrods to no avail and finally the giant Chanel quilted bag is on the streets looking a little lost, rejected and quite simply all too much for the world to take. 

Perhaps a foreboding warning of times to come when the ‘IT’ bag will be rejected, look a little irrelevant and people will hold their hands up and say ‘Stop!  It’s too much!’.