Vogue Italia’s ‘Haute Mess:’ Racist, Ignorant, or Brilliant?

The image above is from Fail Blog’s Poorly Dressed. I wonder why the magazine didn’t cite this (he said, sarcastically). It doesn’t seem malicious because its not something that appears mocking, at least in the Vogue image. But to include something from “ghetto fabulous” culture that is one of the most infamous posts of Poorly Dressed, has to be tremendously inept or quite savvy. Still, with this obvious allusion, I still found Italia’s Skittles model pretty, like maybe Meisel was trying to show that beauty exists in all cultures of fashion. I was beginning to think the Internet rumblings could be an overreaction …

… at least, until I got to the above image. Good golly miss molly, Vogue is implying the woman above is a urinal.

This intensely misogynistic image transcends race and brilliance and lands right into the “What were they thinking” bin. This is the one of two images of cover model Joan Smalls in which she appears as the star. Vogue released the cover about a week before, along with a few animated gifs from the shoot, and Joan was enjoying some publicity for being the first black model on the cover of Vogue Italia since The Black Issue in 2008. All that good grace for not diversifying for so long was thrown out the window the moment they decided to publish the cover model in this way– with Tweety Bird and Spongebob Squarepants as the image border for an exceedingly disturbing juxtaposition. And frankly, my eyes will never unsee the toenail situation. But then again, is this just a display of how ugly displaying your money on yourself can be?

A lot of these images remind me of an old classmate, Ryan Trecartin, a video and performance artist who’s characters solely of wildly absurd individuals. His work is all an absurd look on consumption, the Internet, and life today. Did Meisel have a similar message in mind, or did he just want to take high-class wares to an aggressively salacious place?

My goal in looking at the images was to be as impartial as possible, taking each at face value until the end judgement. But, what I notice here is gold accessories appear frequently throughout the shoot. But is merely showing an abundance of gold racist? Of course not, but pairing it with chola brows, the oft recreated and symbolic teardrop tattoo, the fringe jacket, the exposed weave tracks, and her expression makes it hard for some not to see it that way.

Whether its racist, ignorant or brilliant is up to the general public to decry, or if it’s brilliant, prop up. I, for one, feel that “Haute Mess” gave me an impression of ignorance– with a spot of brilliance, to be honest. If you decide to obscure some faces (including a baby) like an episode of Cops, show unattended weaves in doorways, bathroom stalls and hand dryers, and include multiple images of toenail press-ons, you must not care about the distaste you’re going to bestow. Frankly it begs the question why so many of the images were included. If this was edited town to the moments of brilliance and not those few images that went too far, is could have been a crazy fabulous 8 page spread. But this, 16 spreads in all, and upwards of 40 separate images are too much.

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