Oraine Barrett

Rod 2.0 reports on Jamaican model Oraine Barrett's latest snaps, in which he's draped in the rags of Phat Farm (why didn't they spell Farm with a Ph too?)

Mr Barrett is different from other manikins because he has a distinctive facial scar. Lots of people like facial scars; it presents them with a fantasy of violence and brutality, without having to take the journey themselves (source: The ka-os School Of $2 Psychology).

Over at Rod 2.0 they're excited that Barrett's scar hasn't been airbrushed out ("it is very refreshing to observe some honesty in the fantasy-driven fashion industry"), but it seems to me that they're missing the point. Since when did serious tissue damage become a selling point for rags? Or could it be that the selling point is that Oraine Barret is being presented as a Big Black Buck, A-Brutal-Street-Thug-Who'll-Throw-You-Down-And-Drill-You-With-His-Big-Black-Dick.

Those crazy kids in the fashion industry, what! Knocking back glasses of champagne and snorting up lines of coke - and in doing so feeding the kind of crime they're fetishising. It's all quite ironic.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Maybe Barrett is just a handsome man who happens to have a facial scar, and the world's suddenly such a wonderful, tolerant place and that doesn't matter anymore. Or maybe it really is as f**k-up as I think it is.

On the surface, the pictures are sexy. But what they stand for makes me sick. Sorry, Phat Farm, but I don't buy it.