High Fashion Feminism

On Tuesday, Sept. 30. a crowd of women gathered in Paris, France, brandishing placards and raising rallying cries for women’s rights through megaphones. No, this wasn’t a revolutionary moment in the women’s movement. It was the scene of Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel catwalk at Paris Fashion Week.

The crowd, which included celebrity models Gisele Bündchen and Cara Delevingne, strutted down a catwalk designed to resemble a stylish Paris street called “Boulevard Chanel No.5.” Now if the slogans (see: “boys should get pregnant too!”) weren’t enough of a clue as to how much I was going to hate this, the pant-suits, plaid and ‘70s-style glasses definitely did it.

Famous model Cara Delevingne (holding megaphone on right) leads crowd.

I can definitely sympathize with a lot of the arguments people made in defense of the show. We live in a world where feminism is an ugly word, synonymous with aggressive, man-hating and unattractive. This makes many women, particularly young women, reluctant to identify as a feminist. So anything that portrays the movement in a better way can hardly be a bad thing. And the fact that feminism has become so big in popular culture that it’s made it onto the catwalk, which notoriously avoids current “trends,” is monumental.

I think if the catwalk had been done by a powerful, woman designer, I might have been able to be moderately pleased about it. But it wasn’t. It was orchestrated by none other than the misogynistic stain upon humanity that is Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld.

Models led by designer Karl Lagerfeld. Sign on left reads “Boys should get pregnant too.”

Lagerfeld is the man who felt the need to say that Adele, one of the most body-positive role models of today, was “a little too fat,” and who said it would be “difficult to have an ugly daughter.”

When a German magazine announced it would no longer be using stick thin models, Lagerfeld was quoted with the response, “No one wants to see curvy women.” According to him, people who dislike bony models are “fat mothers with their bags of chips sitting in front of the television.”

Lagerfeld is an out-and-out sexist who seeks attention and publicity by making overtly offensive remarks. You can’t say that Coco Chanel couldn’t have been a feminist because she “was never ugly enough for that,” and then try and use feminism to sell your clothes.

I don’t think it’s particularly radical of me to say that a man like that shouldn’t be allowed to capitalize on feminism to make money. It might be a tad radical of me to suggest that Lagerfeld should be fired and not allowed to be a part of the fashion industry ever again.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the famously anti-feminist Lagerfeld has had a epiphany, realized the error of his ways and is now an icon of the women’s movement. Maybe. But it’s far more likely that he noticed the growing popularity of feminism and decided to exploit women’s fight against oppression to sell his overpriced clothes. And while people herald his actions as revolutionary, he sits at home laughing about how stupid women are.