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.
2 comments:
As a "crazy fashion kid" myself (who doesn't guzzle champagne or sniff coke)...i have to admit, that I actually like the images you've shown on here.
Although I 100% understand your point of showing off a black man with a hell of a scar on his face in this day and age, I honestly think that this could be quite a big step for the fashion industry.
If you think of all the saga's that have happened within the fashion industry with regards to models (the size zero issue being the main one) in recent months, it's nice to see that the fashion industry has moved along and has shown a FRESH approach to fashion. This in a sense shows that not EVERYONE is perfect. We are all "perfectly flawed" in one way or another and why shouldn't this be represented by today's models??
Great post though! VERY controversial!
R.Sinclair of Flashlight PR
www.flashlightpr.blogspot.com
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