![]() It's enough to put anyone off fashion – but by god, is it beautiful.īelow, McAnena tells us about five of her favourite images from Fear & Clothing.Let’s get real: Finding stylish clothes larger than XL isn’t easy. One of the most haunting images in the Fear & Clothing is a still from the film after a particularly tense casting session, Abbey Lee Kershaw (a real-life model and actress) crouches on the bathroom floor amid shards of broken mirror, mouth red after sucking the blood (and literal lifeblood) of Elle Fanning what unfolds is a twisted fairytale of narcissism, necrophilia and cannibalism. 'Plenty of filmmakers have explored this relationship too movies like Blood and Black Lace or Eyes of Laura Mars are classics.' The most perverted movie to mix fashion and horror in recent years is The Neon Demon (2016), Nicolas Winding Refn's nightmarish tale of aspiring model Jesse's (played by Elle Fanning) ascent in LA's deviant fashion industry. 'I’m definitely not the first person to pair fashion with the macabre - brilliant historians like Caroline Evans, Marketa Uhlirova and Rebecca Arnold have written on similar themes,' she says. Case in point: McAnena draws an uncanny connection between the 'tuberculosis beauty' of the 19th century and a feverish kind of look favoured by e-girls on TikTok – something championed by Doja Cat in a Vogue makeup tutorial from 2019. It’s eerie and comforting, which is a good combination,' she says. 'Finding connections that span time is the most exciting thing about studying history. Plus, the fashion parallels to be discovered throughout history are a bonus. Nymphet Alumni is a great podcast for post-internet fashion discussion,' she says. 'I usually just see something and it reminds me of something else, but not in a Diet Prada, "one person did it first/better" way,' explains McAnena.Ĭonsidering her background as a fashion historian, does McAnena prefer flicking through books, or scrolling TikTok? 'For better or worse, there’s a lot we can learn from TikTok. ![]() An image of a wide-eyed Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs is juxtaposed with a runway look from Gareth Pugh's A/W 16 show, where models wore similar cannibal muzzles in another spread, Naomi Campbell points a gun at the Versace S/S 98 show next to an image of Chanel silver platform shoes with guns for heels. McAnena takes this macabre subject matter and elevates it, by carefully pairing images together on double page spreads, organised by theme or visual signifier. The photographs in Fear & Clothing are eclectic, traversing time periods, trends, and subject matter: there's eBay listings, high fashion campaigns, ancient anatomical drawings, magazine covers, film stills, YouTube tutorials and book excerpts. There's Glen Luchford's frosty The Shining-inspired Prada A/W 1997 campaign, the viral mugshot of 'hot convict' Jeremy Meeks, Linda Evangelista going under the knife for Steven Meisel's notorious 'Makeover Madness' Vogue Italia editorial, and a photo of 'Soho Grifter' Anna Delvey in a black Zara dress and Céline glasses, handcuffed in court. ![]() Taking images that toe the line between 'glamour and grime', the 88-page zine is filled with fashion's most cursed, violent, gory and horrific images, contemporary and old-fashioned – but in this case, scary need not mean ugly. ‘What is it about clothing that provides such an irresistible outlet for our most morbid fascination?’ So opens the introductory essay in a new, self-published fanzine from fashion historian Liberty McAnena called Fear & Clothing.
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