BODY

O D Y

the fashion collective at asu

To clothe the body is to present to the world the materialized self. Fashion equates to a physiological purism: it is the splayed guts of recognition, the exposed entrails of identity, the essence of one’s being stripped bare. Between the wearer and the garment sizzles a tingling space, teeming with intent and rich with intimacy. Tangible and guttural, the visual representation of the self makes solid what exists in the clinically abstract, for how the individual presents their singular body – with adornment or embellishment, rejection or disdain – reveals the system of values put forth by the sociocultural body. Rife with economic exploitation, political tyranny, and patriarchal hegemony, our world is plagued by a propulsion to police authentic bodies. Authoritative powers seek to normalize, to suffocate, to constrain and obscure the image of the liberated being; they suggest difference to require regularization, queerness to necessitate castigation, otherness to demand suffocation. Categorized, ordered, made hierarchical, our bodies so trapped yearn to be set free.

queer inked bound abject peeled raw

It is fashion that imbibes within us a reclamation of the body to exist as nothing more than our own oneness. It is clothing that gasps when the space outside suffocates. A scream into the ether, a shout into the void, we swim forth in odd layers and mismatched fabrics, crooked skins and grotesque figures. We shatter beauty and binaries and boundaries. We celebrate the ugly and crooked, we steer into transgression and crave subversion as freedom from long rusted chains. Dressed in the layers of our selfhood– a genuine and unregulated form–the body finds liberation. Put on your clothes. sincerely, LM

For an interview with Details Magazine in 2009, American fashion designer Rick Owens (subversive, scathing, and renowned for his affinity for both aesthetic and ideological brutalism) notoriously claimed “working out is modern couture. No outfit is going to make you look or feel as good as having a fit body. Buy less clothing and go to the gym.”

It is impossible to excuse the overt body exclusion lining this comment, yet the raw foundation of this assumption –the body, rather than the garment as a form of couture– poses an intriguing concept: that rather than attributing stylistic value to clothing as a second skin, the utmost fashion statement is instead the skin itself.

Under this lens, tattoo art, as an embellishment of the skin, signifies the ultimate accessory. Ink the contemporary couture. An enduring one at that, with the tattoo outlasting even the most specialized or meticulously crafted piece.

The permanence of this deliberately marked body transcends the rapid turn of trend and endorses an authentic, individualized expression of self unmarred by societal pressures; while that Heaven by Marc Jacobs necklace may grow dated, ink endures season after season.

To tattoo the body is in a sense to commit to a slow fashion mentality in which style is not transient but lasting. To redefine Owens’ initial sentiment: buy less clothing and go get a tattoo. The only accessory without an ecological footprint.

I N K ED

shot by elio lynx art by aidan diaz

photographed: elio lynx aruna

B O U N D

styled by lily moskowitz

photographed: audrey coleman jacob heinkel elio lynx jake quenon sanjana pitti