Fashion Symbols with Aynura Maye

Bringing together the opposites

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Fashionable U-turn – Elegance and feminine flair a la Couture

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Cheers to the fantasy function of our mind not to let us die from the cold reality.

I can’t attest for others but what my eyes saw was a different kind of couture from the last year’s. This was definite comeback of the elegant feminine flair, sometimes exaggerated, but in general quite wearable in fact.

Chanel Couture Spring Summer 2019 Paris, Photo: NowFashion.com

This couture was feast of sequins, feathers, layers and layers of organza and tulle put together with painstakingly delicate hand-work. Colors deserve a special mention – from pastel colors of tranquility to splash of bright colors (yes, talking about Chanel and Valentino). Sincerely, I see this U-turn as a manifestation of the regenerative and compensatory function of our psyche for the latest tumultuous couple of years we’ve lived. Our longing for hope.

Balmain Couture Spring Summer 2019 Paris
Photo: NowFashion.com

The Mirror of Our Times a la Couture

Well, until Maison Margiela hit the runway. Right at the U-turn are exactly two radically different tendencies (oh, that regular contradictory nature of opposites, right?) – Comeback of elegance – soberly composed yet delicately suggestive feminine flair on one side expressing cry of our soul to pull our fragmented mind together and John Galliano yet again artistically putting on runway the cold reality – our already disturbingly fragmented state of mind. He rightfully calls his work the show of the excess, the artifice, the decay. Yes, the whole show is very colorful and artisanal but clogged, just like our clogged mind and badly functioning memory. I can’t help seeing striking similarities with the works of Marta Minujin, an Argentine artist, who is famous for recreating the “mess” of our fragmented mind and clogged memory.

Maison Margiela Couture Spring 2019 Paris
Photo: NowFashion.com

His previous couture horrified me a year ago, not that it was bad, just because it was like a not loved mirror that reflected the flaws one doesn’t want to see. This time around he has taken it to a whole new level – sincerely, I find it as a theater inside a fragmented mind living a trauma or I must say the concussion came with digital disruption in the era of consumerism.

Schiaparelli, Couture Spring 2019, Paris. Photo: NowFashion.com

Beauty Stripped Off Its Beauty

Talking about the concussion of disruption, I think we are still good. True, suddenly the fashion herd had painfully revealed that it can’t survive in its isolated glossy bubble anymore, the “ideal beauty” had a major blow while fashion turned into tool and chaotic platform of resistance against canonized societal restrictions and flaws. At another note, the silent majority got a platform to scrutinize and question the once-cherished-but–turned-to-hypocritical-cliché liberal values, which gave rise to populism leading to the most unexpected election results in certain key places.

Which naturally was followed by “high way – my way” attitude that led to borders and nations suffer from isolation and race for self-gain. Big masses simply preferred to shut doors and windows tight, burying the sense of collaboration and empathy, the greatest lessons of the devastating two world wars. We literally live memory concussion intensified by the disruption. And living with the bare reality as John Galliano has put it is really tough. It is freezing cold there.

Givenchy Couture Spring Summer 2019 Paris, Photo: NowFashion.com

But again, I think we are still good. Sometimes it seems to me the great world wars had somehow stemmed from the industrial revolution, the disruption of those days. Of course, the speed of time was different back then. I mean the concussion and memory clog caused by disruptions could be that bad if we choose to roll with the one-sided cold reality.

Valentino Couture Spring Summer 2019 Paris, Photo: Internet

Again, back to fashion. Last year the Anglo-Saxon fashion and media played a crucial role in bringing fashion down to the terrestrial dimension where we mortals live and struggle with social issues every single day. As I said above, the “ideal-beauty” had its quite duly generous dose of scrutiny. Being well-grounded and tackling social issues through the grace of fashion is a strong weapon to readjust already canonized rules and frames.

Desire for Fantasyland

However, burning the bridge to our fantasyland, the source of our hope would backfire. We can’t uproot ourselves off. Our cold and meaningless reality is too much for us to carry. Call it hope, beauty, ideal, fantasy  – whatever label we put on – it is the source of hope. It is what gives meaning to our gray reality and reason to roll into the next day. How we have canonized this concept (hanger thin silhouette or curvy, fluffy softness) doesn’t matter. It is the compensatory function of our mind. The more we suppress it, the stronger it makes its comeback.

Last year the fashion world was swept by the cold reality of flaws and wrongs of our earthly life and viola. This year we are flooded by the products of our fantasy land to compensate the bitterness of reality – sequins, layer and layers of tulle, organza, feathers. The pieces might have been exaggerated, but they were elegantly composed and even suggestive. Even mens’ collections from the previous weeks were somehow soberly composed.

This time I saw cry of our soul for some fantasy, wishfulness. I saw our need for fairy tale that will house our unprotected soul in face of our disturbing reality. The sheer attempt of our mind to compensate for what is missing in our physical dimension.

The Untold Story of Hermès

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Sky-rocketing price and unaffordability aside who doesn’t love the sight of the Hermès Birkin bag and the stories revolving around it? Even my Google news feed sometimes pops up articles about the celebrities who were seen with it. The enigma of this House is not only about its products, but also its name. The general story is that the Fashion House took its name from the namesake Messenger God. Obviously Hermès was born as a brand specialized in travel accessories (back in times when travel accessories meant horse tack and supplies). So the name of The God who is believed to travel all the time seems to be the right fit. But what kind of messages he used to deliver?

Hermès as a symbol of full transcendence – coming from the depth of underground going upwards to paradise.
Photo: the Internet

The God Hermès that everybody knows

The typical description of the God Hermès goes like this: Hermès is a “psycho-pomp” – that is to say soul-guide. Its statue is a piece of stone – Herm that has Twined Snake around a staff on one side and an Erect Phallus on the other. Next to him there is a sort of tree in a very simple form. Let’s call this composition statue. This statue used to be placed in crossroads alluding to its capacity to travel between worlds. Because like a shaman, Hermès used to guide the dead to the underworld and bring messages from there (bizarre huh?)

Let’s leave behind the logical reasoning and dive into a dimension where concepts transcend the rational and limited meaning we ascribe to them. Then we’ll see what Hermès really represents for us.

Design detail – winged feet of Hermès. Photo: the Internet

If I have to sum up in simple words, Hermès symbolizes the transmutation of soul through the history of evolution.

Not Messenger Only God Hermès

This myth talks us about times when an early man started to rise from the darkness of instinctual life (symbolized as the underground world) towards his/her way to acquire rational thinking (terrestrial life). This young Hermès has a metamorphose nature. He is not a underground force only (meaning, the purely instinctual element of the unconscious). He is also connected to the conscious life. However with capacity to still descend into the dark layers. He symbolizes the process of transcendence. While having a foot in the underground he travels from one dimension to another. How? This part is really funny.

Herm – the initial and simple version of the God Hermès. Photo: Man and His Symbols, C.G.Jung

He penetrates thru darkness of the unconscious into the light of terrestrial life (a.k.a light of reasoning) with his Erect Phallus. I know you are laughing now. But it turns out this is how our mind works at very deep levels. That childish and archaic mode of thinking is still there. Erect phallus is overly sexual of course. But in that dimension, phallus translates into fertility and not physical fertility only, but creative power of the psyche, fecundating, life giving power as well. The twined serpents are in sexual union. Again, sexual not taken literally, but equal union of the opposites that is transcendental, wholesomeness.

Almost as a rule, terrestrial and water animals symbolize our instinctual drives, forces of the “underground”. Reptiles being intermediate creatures with a capacity to live in two different environments, allude to this transcendence – arising from the depth of dark uncontrolled mass towards the world of light – the conscious reasoning.

Hermès – the symbol of full transcendence

Hermès is a living symbol that has been subject to elaboration. In middle ages, it acquired wings which denotes to rising from terrestrial life towards spiritual transcendence.  Wings symbolize this transformation. Even the caduceus in his hand that is a symbol of healing got wings at the top of the serpents. Thus our little fellow acquired a power of full transcendence – coming from the depth of underground going upwards to the paradise.

Not by chance, in the chain of living things we are the only ones who come from darkness of instinctual world of animals with aspirations to mature into spirituality of paradise. We are the terrestrial beings just between underground compulsive forces and heavenly angles.

To close, the soul each of us carry is Hermès destined to evolve through these stages. So, every time, you see an Hermès item, remember, there is a small Hermès inside you too and is way more valuable than anything money can buy.

Fendi’s show on Fontana Trevi and hidden mysticism

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I have moved to Rome in the beginning of 2016. Pregnant. The baby was due in July. While I was trying to settle down and make space (literally) for the new member of the family, something incredible was happening in Rome of which I became aware quite late. More precisely, that thing was happening in the same month that I was giving light to the new addition of our family. Fendi put on a spectacular show called Legends and Fairy Tales on the iconic Fontana Trevi to celebrate the Fashion House’s 90 years of heritage.

Fendi celebrating 90 years with subtle mythic show – Heroes and Fairy Tales
7 July 2016, Rome, Fontana Trevi
Photo: Internet (Victor Boyko/Getty Images)

To tell the truth, I was too busy with family duties back then. In fact even the idea of this blog hadn’t been born yet. But the thought of me being in Rome during that event and not knowing about it somehow pains me. When I write it down I realize how mean I sound.

Cut to the chase, Fendi’s show was majestic, mythical and obviously very much appraised. Now, almost more than two years later I am going back to that event to share why I would have loved to know about it and why it made people “wow”.

Fendi celebrating 90 years with a subtle mythic show – Heroes and Fairy Tales
7 July 2016, Rome, Fontana Trevi
Photo: Internet (Victor Boyko/Getty Images )

We, unknowingly, tend to reproduce exact same images that were “living realities” of our ancestors, which still are secret realities of our psychic life. You wonder what I am talking about and what it has to do with Fendi’s iconic show. Here it goes:

The Water.  And Fendi models walking over the water or “being born out of water”.


Fendi celebrating 90 years with a subtle mythic show – Heroes and Fairy Tales
7 July 2016, Rome, Fontana Trevi
Photo: Internet (Victor Boyko/Getty Images)

Water in our dreams (and psychoanalysis) symbolizes our unconscious – the dark depth of our psyche. The source or the container of everything from destructive to regenerative, from devilish to divine. In this sense, it is related to “Great Mother” as well. Because our little, tiny, fragile consciousness nourishes on the unconscious. When we feel exhausted, burnt out in life, we shut off to the world and retrieve to that source to recharge and regenerate our life energy.

Now, how this whole spectacle resembles the images and living things I was talking above? Let’s now dig a bit into mythological side of it to see how this relationship to the unconscious manifested itself as mythological symbol. Or just scratch the surface, it is a very complicated symbol.

No need to remind that since we, as mankind, became aware of ourselves, water has been an ever present symbol. Among many other things, it is symbol of regeneration, rebirth and purification. It is that baptismal water that means rebirth in Christianity. Ablution rituals in Islam that stands for purity. There is long list of strict rituals entailing water in Judaism. Regardless religion or faith, full immersion in water is about being reborn out of divine waters to where we will return. In this sense, it is related to the Great Mother, the divine uterus or in psychological terms the unconscious. (Does it explain why there are so many spells and exorcism rituals done with water? Thousand and One Nights series are full of it) I know, it sounds quite absurd when I write like this because it is hard to digest such metaphoric things consciously. But in our unconscious realm where everything gets associated pictorially on feeling-base it makes perfect sense.

Fontana Trevi – divine uterus


Fendi celebrating 90 years with a subtle mythic show – Heroes and Fairy Tales
7 July 2016, Rome, Fontana Trevi
Photo: Internet (Victor Boyko/Getty Images)

Moreover, this scene was over Fontana Trevi. Yes, Trevi is iconic because it is one of the symbols of Rome. But it has its own peculiar significance. People travel hundreds of miles to drop a coin in this water to “make their dreams come true”. With all the mythological monuments that are part of the fountain, Fontana Trevi symbolizes that divine vessel, waters of which hold secrets, recharge, and give hope and new life.

That’s why the whole show with models walking over the water or “being reborn out of water” resembled a ritual of rebirth, where initiator would be immersed in water to be reborn. This is the reason that it had people “wow”.

Abnormal sexual desire, art and Louis Vuitton…

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 Her polka dots are not mere dots:
For her troubled mind dots are female genitals, tentacle-like structures phallus.

About six years ago some concept stores of Louis Vuitton got decorated with sublime and fascinating art works by one of the most renowned Japanese artists Yayoi Kusama. They were so beautiful and enticing that I’d be surprised if high fashion nerds forgot them.

Yayoi Kusama pumpkins with polka dots. Pumpkin by its form is similar to "vessel", the receiver - the female quality. Polka dots symbolize female genital. Photo: the Internet
Yayoi Kusama pumpkins with polka dots. Pumpkin by its shape resembles alchemic “vessel”, the recipient – the female quality, the womb. Polka dots symbolize female genital. Even more subtle here, dots on the pumpkins are arranged in snake-like shape. Besides being a classical symbols of the unconscious, the snake is also an unmistakable symbol of the androgynous nature of the human psyche.  Photo: the Internet
 

A year forward and I am busy with my studies on psychoanalysis, especially Freud’s theory on repression of sexuality in Buenos Aires. The place where I lived was very close to the largest modern gallery in the city called Malba. One day while passing by I see the trees in front of Malba dressed in red with white polka dots – that remarkable signature design I remember from a year ago. Malba was hosting an exhibition of Yayoi Kusama. The trees looked intriguing and beautiful. I resolved to go and see what it is about.

Shoes with phallus. the complimentary detail to red polka dots of Japanese artist who also designed for Louis Vuitton.
Yayoi Kusama shoes with phallus as demonstrated in Malba, Buenos Aires, 2013.  Photo: The Internet

In Museum: polka dots, but also phallus

Next day, I enter Malba and the first impression I have was – God, this is what classical Freudian wish fulfillment of excessive sexual desire and irrepressible conflicting impulses looks like. Interestingly, her polka dots became famous and made it all the way to the world of high fashion and beyond just the way they were. However, another important detail accompanying those dots was so beautifully disguised into unsuspecting snake-like shapes, or tentacles as critics called them, in Louis Vuitton installations and went almost unnoticed – her obsession with phallus. Maybe, for a reason, otherwise that would have been too perverse, who knows. Maybe not. 

 
Chairs covered with phallus, the complimentary detail to red polka dots of Japanese artist who also designed for Louis Vuitton.
Yayoi Kusama art – chairs covered with myriad of phallus exhibited in Malba, Buenos Aires, 2013.
Photo: The Internet

Tentacle-like art and polka dots: penetrator and recipient

Unlike her fashion installations, the view of tentacle-like elements covering every object was more prominent in the exhibition venue. These objects covered the things that we normally use to lay over, sit upon or wear such as sofas, couches, chairs, shirts even shoes. They basically covered everything one can imagine, even pasta, anything that we can touch. The photos with herself covered in dots laying over these thorny sofas decorated the walls.

By now, it is pretty much clear that polka dots all over her, analogous to the genital organs, represent vagina.  On the other hand, everything else that we can touch has grown innumerable phallus. It was a classical portrait of Freudian wish fulfillment of incompatible sexual desire. The vividness with which she depicted her troubled state of mind was chilling. These art works were explosive manifestation of deeply repressed conflicts. The curiosity took me to study her life. In some places she talks openly about her revulsion to sex. Maybe, it rooted in her troubled childhood experiences of the relationship between her parents too.

So her art, to me, was basically free ride of deeply conflicting urges. On one side, her revulsion of sex, on the other side, her strong desire for it. On top of all, she had to numb this internal storm against the backdrop of strict social frame. It feels like, it has been too much to stomach and at some point, she has let it go.

Obsession – Morbid dark impulses in psyche

It seems she had full divine experience in dots and phallus, she felt the creative power of universe in them. Here comes to mind Indian Gods Shiva and Shakti. However, her experience was reverse, regressive and destructive. Instead of leading them towards a fruitful and meaningful experience, she became overwhelmed by them. She lived it not in the form of celestial experience, but as morbid obsessive forces chasing her to insanity. She kind of talked about it openly through art and this is what she labels as “obsession” – let it be her phallus chair, mirror rooms or dotted pumpkins – automated instinctual impulses that tend to magnify, augment and overwhelm. 

Sexuality and Spirituality – why are the same thing in the depth of our mind? – Read this post to see why Kusama’s art made me think of God Shiva and Goddess Shakti