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Men's versus Women's fashion

I used to never be interested in Men’s fashion, as I’m a woman and I wouldn’t really care to know if a man’s clothes were inspired by something he saw on the runway or not.

However, currently it is becoming more relevant to me.

First of all because I feel like every barrier in women’s fashion has at least been broken down twice. It has lost the excitement it must have had in the twenties (no more corsets), the sixties (mini-skirts and trousers for women) or the eighties (menswear for women). Secondly, because I’m starting to understand that sometimes men also want things that are only seen as appropriate for women. And one of these is fashion.

In my highschool men weren’t allowed to wear short trousers, no matter what the weather was.  Women can wear all kinds of men’s shoes, but not vice versa. Wearing a handbag is often seen as inappropriate, even though in some circumstances you really need one.

It’s remarkable how hard designers try to make groundbreaking fashion for women, while in the mean time their men’s fashion is extremely conservative. The innovation in men’s wear is in the details, the very small details, even though there are so many big changes that can be made.

However, I think times are changing. Fashion loving men have found each other on the blogoshere: from lonely outsider to fashion insider. Fashion brands are targeting these men and they are moving away from the formula of the obligatory suits, casual streetwear and a few looks that are original, but are obviously just supposed to make the entire collection look less boring.

Most fashion brands had handbags for the next season, even though I think handbags hold only a small risk. You can easily move these handbags to the women’s section if they don’t appear to be selling.

I think Raf Simons’s has made the most groundbreaking collection of all. First of all he’s one of the many that seem to have responded to Scott Schuman’s pleas to let short trousers enter the formal wear. Only those of Raf are a bit shorter than those of others. He also has included many elements of women’s fashion, but in a way it looks like a statement, not in a way it looks like they are dressed in drag.

Next to the men’s collection for his own brand his Haute Couture show for Dior looks extremely safe, but I think women deserve beautiful high quality clothes just as much as men deserve progressive clothes. For the past decades women have been under so much pressure to change, while men were told to remain the same. I think it’s time that men are allowed to change as well. 

Learn some Antwerp sayings to impress the Antwerp fashion world

Are you visiting the graduation shows of the Antwerp fashion academy? Do you want to act like a local, but are you incapable of pronouncing names like Dries van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester or Olivier Theyskens? Learn some sayings from Antwerp instead. It would surely impress the locals.

Guess what they mean and scroll down to see if you’ve got it right.

• She’s got pepper in his ass.
• He’s under the slipper. 
• The rabbits are loose in the hutch.
• He’s got water in his basement.
• Like an angel that pees on your tongue.
• My coin just dropped.
• She spent a lot of time in the garage.
• They can’t smell or see each other.

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• She’s got pepper in his ass. = She’s in a hurry.
• He’s under the slipper. = He doesn’t have anything to say at home.
• The rabbits are loose in the hutch = She’s not wearing a bra.
• He’s got water in his basement. = His pants are too short.
• Like an angel that pees on your tongue. = a delicious beverage
• My coin just dropped. = I just got it.
• She spent a lot of time in the garage. = She looks pretty for her age
• They can’t smell or see each other. = They can’t stand each other

Did anyone step on your toes and do you feel like telling them off? Do it like a real “Antwerpenaar”!

• Put your brain in a bird and it will fly backwards. (if you think someone is stupid)
• Your nose is so big, you can smoke a cigarette under the shower.
• If I had a face like yours, I would shave my ass and walk on my hands. (only applicable if you’re a man)

Have you met someone you really like? Tell them they are in your top drawer.

Are the new adaptations of the Snowwhite fairytale better than the original?

Fairytales are fictional stories that teach us a valuable lesson on the real world. When it comes to the fairytale of Snow White, many people seem to think that the moral of the story was that women should clean the house and that they should wait until prince charming saves them. Many people find this offensive because it would be a very suppressing and patriarchal view on women, but these people don’t understand what the fairytale is about.

The central figure in the fairy tale is the evil stepmom, not Snow White. The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t envy those that have more, but that you should be satisfied with what you have, especially when you already have a lot. The extreme passiveness of Snow White is just to emphasize that Snow White is innocent and did in no way deserve the way her stepmom treats her.

Because so little people seem to understand what the tale of Snow White is about, people keep on adapting the fairytale, so it makes more sense to them.

Disney made Snow White the leading character and pushed the evil stepmom to the background, because Disney only makes movies with ‘good’ people as the central figure.

In the Disney movie Snow White also is a more ‘real’ character than the evil Stepmom. In the fairytale Snow White is created to answer the prayers of a woman and the evil Stepmom her ‘witchcraft’ is limited to poisoning and owning a magic mirror. In the original fairytale the evil Stepmom is a real woman with feelings and Snow White is a kind of magical creature. In the Disney version the evil Stepmom turns into an evil witch with magical powers and no feelings and Snow White becomes a beautiful, innocent human being.

The latest two adaptations of the movie are a response to the desire to make Snow White less passive and they have turned Snow White into someone that fights back. In a way this bothers me, because Snow White now is just another story that emphasizes that you should stand up for yourself and I would rather see a movie that would make people want to stand up for others.

Judging from the trailers they also have changed the role of the evil Stepmom. I have the feeling they’ve given her a sense of humor. And in both adaptations the evil Stepmoms don’t act out of envy anymore, they want to kill Snow White because she is a threat to their throne. Both adaptations move the fairytale even further away from its original value and I regret it, because the fairytale of Snow White could teach this world a lot about the difference between ambition and envy. Ambition is striving to be the best you can be. Envy is striving to be better than anyone else by taking others down, but in a world with 8 billion people it’s a battle you’ll never win. 

Fashion hypocrisy

Sasha Grey for Equal Pay Day

Sasha Grey (a former porn star) is starred in an ad to draw attention to the fact that the only place where women make more money than men is in the porn industry. The goal of the entire campaign is to make girls aware that the study choices they make today determines their pay in the future. This however isn’t clear in the clip.

Their objective is to stimulate highschool girls more to choose for studies that are dominated by men, like engineering, and that boys should be more stimulated to join the care sector. And I have to admit that as a kid I was good at math and sciences and I would read books about animals and science all the time, but somehow I did end up studying Psychology. And it’s a choice I made, but I can’t really say that anyone ever really tried to convince me otherwise. I do am stubborn like hell, so most people that know me should know that changing my mind is as easy as turning water to wine, maybe that's why  nobody ever tried.

Here are some things that do make me think that it wasn’t entirely just my choice.

As a kid I once told my grandmother that you shouldn’t get to good grades, because else other kids don’t like you. I do think this is the same for men as well.

At highschool I’ve heard a guy that was in my class in primary school bragging about how he nearly always was the first to finish his test at primary school. It stunned me, because I would always wait until someone else would give his test to the teacher. When I would finish my test early, the teacher would tell me to go back to my place and check my answers, which I hated, so after a while I would just wait until someone else (usually him) gave his test to the teacher.

I’ve spent my senior years at 2 different colleges. One of them used to be a boy’s school and the last one was a girl’s school. So in the first one there still were more boys than girls and at the latter it was the inverse. At both schools they would give advice on what college degree was right for you. At the former boy’s school they would emphasize how much money you could make with each degree, how secure you would be of finding a job and they would rank all different engineering subjects based on difficulty and students were stimulated to choose the most difficult study that was within their capacities. At the girl’s school they wouldn’t talk about money or job security, they would help you to find what interests you the most. When I told them I wanted to go to the university to become a psychologist (master level), they’ve told me that you do would need to study there a lot and that it might be better to study for psychology assistant (bachelor level). I do think they’ve told this to everybody. They would also emphasize that you need to make sure it’s something you like doing, because you would need to do it for the rest of your life.

Women are barely stimulated to choose a well paid job, but men aren’t stimulated at all to do a job they enjoy. They are stimulated to do a full time job that gives them a nice paycheck every month. And this is what I like about the campaign. It’s also focused on giving men more opportunities to be more involved in the family life and to give people more opportunities to combine work and life. Working fulltime and overtime in a job you don’t enjoy and not being able to spend time with your children is not a privilege. Even though women are still under pressure to confirm to their traditional roles, men are under an even higher pressure. As long as a man that says he would rather spend more time with his children is called gay, a wussy or a paedophile you can’t talk about equality.

Look up how you can recognize a paedophile, apart from the obvious ‘they get aroused by children’, you also find things like ‘they regularly attend children’s events in the community’; ‘They volunteer in youth organizations’; ‘They seek jobs where children are easily accessible’ and so on. This seriously discourages men to do anything with children. If you go to the playground with your kid and moms warn their kids to stay away from you, you're not going to do that twice.

Note: When I would google ‘how to recognize a paedophile’, I saw that google suggested me ‘how to recognize a virgin’ and than I’ve found this: http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/HowTo:Spot_a_Virgin In one word: ugh. It’s not really that hard though. Ask her birthday. If she’s born between the 22^nd of August and the 22^nd of September, she’s a virgin for sure.


The website of the campaign: http://www.equalpayday.be
The website of the organization behind it: http://www.zij-kant.be/ (not in English)

Milan fashion week Spring 2012

Milan was inspired by the romanticised gypsy woman, a woman that loves her freedom, her family and her tradition, a woman that dances with her chin up instead of her ass up, a seductive, sensual and mysterious woman.

Blumarine had a bright colourful gypsy flowing down her runway. The cut-out flowers and the raffia gave it a playful feeling. It looked like something you would do yourself if you would want to personalize your outfit. And one point extra for Anna Molinari that would greet the audience with a smile that made you feel like she was very proud of her collection and that she enjoyed making it.

Peter Dundas (Pucci) had a more dark gypsy in his mind: torn between her religion, her tradition and her bodily desires. I’m also a big fan of the blue cloudy dress. It’s definitely a piece you’ll see in many fashion editorials. If I were rich, I would buy it and I would play Pucci ghost all day in my big empty house.

Why are classic boring advertisements always aimed at women?

Have you ever noticed how these days the quality of advertising has improved?

The commercial break often is more entertaining than the TV-shows that are interrupted by them. It’s because marketers feel like people have become so overexposed to advertising that people have become extremely hard to influence.

To respond to this marketers have adopted a new vision on their customers. They no longer see their customers as people that need to buy their products. They see their customers as people that need to enjoy their brand and products. They try to make as intelligent, original and entertaining advertising as they can in order to influence their potential customers.

Have you ever noticed how about 95% of this new original, creative and entertaining advertising is directed to men (or both men and women)?

Have you ever noticed how about 95% of the old classic boring advertising is directed at women?

Marketing actions directed to women are usually clearly made by marketers that seem to assume that their customers are a brainless herd that needs to be directed in the right direction, their direction.

It often excels in a lack of originality. If you’ve seen one advertisement for washing products you’ve seen them all. If it’s something you haven’t seen a zillion times before, it usually is because it wants to give you something new to be insecure about. ‘You may not smell how much your house stinks, but other people do.’ ‘Have you ever thought about how ugly your armpits are?’

On top of that advertisements that are aimed at women, usually have a woman that you are supposed to want to be. In Italy where everybody has brown hair, this woman you should aspire, usually is a blonde. In Asia, Africa and Latin-America she usually is fair-skinned. So the message of these advertisements is: ‘you may not ever be able to be blonde like me, but you do can have a house that smells like mine’ or ‘you won’t ever be white like me, but you do can get lovely armpits like mine.’ One of the few examples of a diverse advertising campaign is the Ikea-catalog, Ikea, coming from the country with all the natural blondes.

Advertising directed at women often assumes women are stupid. It encourages old insecurities and creates new ones. The marketing industry is not dominated by men. There are nearly just as many men as women in it. In companies aimed at women there usually are more women than men working in the marketing department.

So the problem isn’t that men use marketing to make women feel down so they can more easily suppress them. The problem is that there are too many women and men in the marketing industry that see (other) women as idiots. The problem is that there aren’t enough women and men that are brave enough to create a marketing strategy aimed at making women enjoy their brand.

Victoria's Secret

I have written this post because I am participating in the FFB round-up of this month. I had written a post earlier that I find better suited for the round-up, but you’re supposed to submit only recent blogposts (I think), so I have decided to join the club of people that nag about Victoria’s Secret.

I feel like Victoria’s Secret often is depicted as the enemy of women. It has turned into the symbol of how women are objectified, but I find this extremely exaggerated.

First of all, they have advertisements and catwalk shows with women in lingerie, because it’s a lingerie brand. I don’t know how else you’re going to show lingerie.

Secondly, they indeed use only beautiful women, but so do all other fashion/beauty brands and 90% of all non-fashion/beauty brands.

They could also indeed use more different body types, but they don’t make bras for different body types. Their bras only go up to DD. I don’t think they don’t make these, because they hate women with big breasts. I think it’s more likely because bigger breast have different needs. A larger version of a good bra for an A-cup is not a good bra for an F-cup, because it wouldn’t offer enough support. Bras for big breasts are another product and it requires another expertise, an expertise that Victoria’s Secret doesn’t have.

It also is true that only a few women can still feel comfortable with their own body after watching a Victoria’s Secret advertisement, but removing beautiful women from the streetview is not the right way to make women feel satisfied with their own bodies. You can’t blame beautiful women for making you feel ugly. There will always be people that are more beautiful than you and you should just get over that.

Victoria’s Secret sometimes is accused of exploiting their angels. These angels are usually already high-earning models. They don’t need to do a Victoria’s Secret runway show. They can easily say no. Compared to runway shows of other brands, Victoria’s Secret probably is one of the best employees. Other fashion brands use underaged models. Other fashion brands prefer models with a certain ‘aesthetic’ that you can only achieve by not eating. If a model doesn’t speak English it’s not a problem, because than she won’t be able to say she doesn’t want to do something or to complain she hasn’t been paid. That is what I call exploiting.

The Victoria’s Secret angels also are criticized for objectifying themselves, but I think if women want to walk around in their underwear it’s not wrong as long as it is their own decision. Some women want to wear a veil and some women want to wear mini-skirts and if you would ever have talked to either of them, you would know that both these women usually are blessed with an incredibly big mouth. What women wear says nothing about how much they submit themselves to men. It says something about where they draw the line on how much of their body they want to show to the world.

If you want to read the blogpost I had written earlier on fashion and sexuality, you can read it here.

Madonna and aging

As a woman gets older she is expected to keep her beauty and physical youth, but the pressure to do anything with her life experience is much lower if not non-existent. When Madonna turned 50 she received a big applause for having preserved her beauty, but I didn’t feel like applauding. I didn’t understand why a music artist that has never written a song on her own and that hardly ever sings live should deserve any applause. 

A lot of people found it sexist how the media was focused on her age and her looks. I was more disturbed that nobody seemed to notice that after all these years she didn’t ever try to be more than just the packaging of her songs. I can’t imagine a man would be taken serious as a music artist for over 25 years if he would be more focused on his looks than on his music.

Madonna is the prototype of the female music artist and when they look for a new female music artist, they look for a new Madonna. They will first search for someone with the right looks, good dancing skills and maybe good vocals too. Whether or not she writes her own songs is not even considered. Women are just packaging for songs men wrote and Madonna has perfected the art of being packaging.

But do people that listen to music from a female artist really care more about the packaging than the content? I think you find the answer in MySpace. If you discovered a song you would like on MySpace, it was easy to send it to your friends and they could easily send it to theirs. Nobody would consider how many other people might like it. The people would only consider how much they liked it themselves. It was a democracy far away from business decisions. And who did MySpace discover? Lilly Allen, the type of pretty girl you pass by, but a pretty girl that would just make good music. A pretty girl that gave up, because as soon as she left her space on MySpace it would turn out that the world cared more about her pregnancies and her weight than about the music she put her hart and soul in. And that’s what I thought was truly sexist. 

War and fashion

“…the charming full skirts falling to just below the knee did suggest a decorous army wife in olden times…” I think the person at style.com that commented on the Burberry Spring Summer 2012 doesn’t have a clue idea of what it’s like to be an army wife. If someone you love is at the battlefield, you couldn’t possibly care less about being ‘decorous’.

I don’t understand why the fashion world keeps on referring to the military and occasionally even glorifying it. War is something awful and if you would actually understand what it is, you couldn’t possibly feel ‘inspired’ by it. War only leads to the suffering of innocent people, while those that started the war hardly ever go to the battlefield. They rather enjoy their newly acquired status by surrounding themselves with bodyguards and women that are drawn to their power or women that know they don’t have a choice other than pretending they care about that.

Another example: the Michael Kors spring/summer 2012 fashion show seemed to be inspired by Africa and the military. Knowing how much the people in Africa suffer from armed conflicts, I find it two things you can’t put together. A few of the outfits of Michael Kors even looked very much like the uniform of Congolese soldiers: not really the greatest defendants of human rights. On top of that, the handles of his handbags reminded me of bullet belts for automatic guns. Even though I suspect he’s oblivious enough not to know whose look he’s copying. I still don’t understand how you can be inspired by the look of Congolese soldiers, even if it’s not consciously. The people from Congo that you should be inspired by are the ones that don’t carry guns.

Dutch on style.com

Hihi, style.com used a Dutch word on its website: 'echt' it means 'truly, real, geninuine'. Does this mean Dutch is the nouveau French?

London fashion week Spring 2012

London fashion week always if full of shows you either love or hate. And below are the 3 shows I loved the most.


Emilio de la Morena


Even though everybody is pressured to be pretty, wearing clothes that make you look prettier is often seen as unacceptable and superficial. In some subgroups eating disorders and plastic surgery are more tolerated than wearing clothes that make you look prettier. I think people that had plastic surgery or that have an eating disorder are ten times more vain and superficial than people that wear pretty clothes, because an eating disorder or plastic surgery is a much bigger sacrifice than wearing pretty clothes. For this reason I like it when a designer makes pretty wearable clothes, especially if their clothes say ‘I am a pretty girl’ instead of ‘I want to be a pretty girl’. Something I believe Emilio de la Morena has succeeded in.

Peter Jensen


When I looked at Peter Jensen's retro-inspired clothes, I felt like he had a real woman in his mind instead of just a girl that loves buying expensive quirky clothes. And he did have a real woman in his mind: Nina Simone, a black musician from the fifties with quite a reputation and a lot of soul. Fifties nostalgia always has more appeal, when the muse is a girl waiting to break free, than when the muse is the fifties housewife from the commercials waiting for her cupcakes to rise.

Roksanda Ilincic


Roksanda Ilinic warped women’s fashion of all decades since the forties in one collection: eighties pink, sixties blue, nineties grunge and silhouettes of the forties and fifties. A tribute to the women that learnt to take care of themselves, the women that were glad their men were back and the war was over, the women that wanted love, peace and understanding, the women that wanted more and the women that had enough.

New York fashion week Spring 2012

The centre point of NY fashion week was men. Either the clothes aimed to repel men, either the clothes were aimed at appealing to men, desperately. A total waste of time, if you ask me, straight men don’t really care about what clothes you put on. They picture you without clothes on anyway.

A few shows were aimed at appealing to little girls, which I did like. Because when I look at a fashion show I always wonder if I would have liked it just as much when I was a kid, if no, than I put it in the category ‘temporary fashion, eternally ugly’. Oscar de la Renta made a collection that would have made me swoon as a kid: big skirts, lace, feathers, everything. As an adult I still like those things and I still can’t afford them. Jenny Packham also made a collection I would have loved as a kid: flowy fabrics, fairy colors, flowers and sequins. As a grown-up I don’t love it as much as I would have as a kid, but I still like it. It makes me nostalgic about the times I would build camps with my friends, while we were dressed up like a princess.

The collections I liked the most were the ones from Vena Cava, Milly and Jason Wu, because I like them today just as much as I would have as a kid. Vena Cava was very much Classic Hollywood goes to Africa. The earthy colours made it grounded, the bright orange would light it up, the seventies glamour would add the chic and the big chunky jewelry would take the seriousness off. I find this one of the few collections that uses elements of traditional African wear without making it look like some kind of fetish.

Vena Cava Spring 2012

These pictures are property of Vena Cava. Do not republish without their permission.

I honestly never heard of Milly before, but I did like it. Because when I would try to find an outfit for a job interview, I would find it extremely hard to find one that would make me look like the interesting person I described in my resume, while I would still show that I would take the job seriously. Business like clothes would make me look like a little girl drowning in a suit that wasn’t meant for her and the more casual clothes would make me look as if my only 5 year plan was getting married and making babies. Catwalk outfits often are extremely inappropriate to wear in daily life, but the outfits of Milly were very wearable and a lot of them were even perfect for business.

When designers choose to revive the past, it often looks like nothing more than a ‘copy paste’ from the past. It often ends up looking even more old-fashioned than the original. Jason Wu is one of the few that knows how to translate it in a whole ‘new look’. Michelle Obama is a very smart woman with good taste in clothes and in men. I think Jason Wu deserves a position at Dior.

Fashion, drugs and fair trade

This month’s theme on the Feminist Fashion Bloggers’s website is ethics. And I’m a good girl so I always do as I’m told, unless I do the exact opposite. So below is my opinion on fair trade.

I think there are two things that don’t go together and that is: telling people they should buy fair trade and taking drugs. There is absolutely not a single industry in this world that causes more harm than the drugs industry. And I’m not talking about drug addicts. I’m talking about the people that make it and that bring it to you.

Below are some reasons why some people seem to think that the drugs industry isn’t that bad:

It’s not my fault. It’s because it’s illegal. If drugs would be legal, we could also make fair trade drugs.

• Using drugs is not going to make them legal.

The money from drugs trade is used to support rebel armies that try to overthrow the violent, cruel regime of their countries.

• They use violence to (try to) overthrow this regime. History will tell you that rebel armies that overthrow a regime with violence hardly ever become a democracy, if never.

It creates opportunities for a lot of people that really have no other solutions.

• So do sweatshops.

I also think it’s very suspicious that there is more demand for fair trade clothes and food than for fair trade oil. The oil industry is in my opinion the number two industry responsible for human suffering. And it do is legal, so there is no reason why oil can’t be made fair trade. I think it’s because clothes and food are seen as an expression of your personality and that oil isn’t: ‘You are what you eat’ and ‘Fine feathers make fine friends.’ There is no saying about how the kind of gas you tank says something about who you are. I think the reason people buy fair trade often isn’t because they are someone that wants to change the world, but because they want to be someone that tries to save the world.

I still think it’s a good thing to buy fair trade food or clothes, but if you want to change the world, you’re going to have to do more than just buy stuff. Buying fair trade food or clothes do are steps in the right direction, but it are small steps and you can take bigger ones.

What you want and what you can get

I want clothes

That flatter my body

That’ll always stay with me

That express how I’m feeling

That respect the world I live in

What you can get is clothes

That only fit some people

That only last a season

That are what everybody’s wearing

That above all, respect profit-making

Be a man. Are women's sports not real sports?

When feminists talk about the limited coverage of women’s sports, they usually focus on sports like soccer, football, basketball and so on, probably because these sports get the most coverage throughout the world. These are all sports that are considered as typically male sports. Apparently the world hasn’t noticed yet, that sports that are seen as typically female aren’t even anywhere to be found on the sports page.

Are traditional women’s sports less interesting to watch? No, I think people do enjoy watching cheerleading or dancing for example. Do we do want to watch typical women’s sports like cheerleading and dancing, but do we don’t like to see cheerleaders or dancers compete? Well no, judging by the incredible amount of movies about evil cheerleaders and dancers fighting each other to get a spot in the spotlight, I think most people love seeing cheerleaders and dancers compete.

So apparently we do enjoy watching cheerleaders or dancers compete with their friends/frennemies, but we don’t enjoy seeing them compete together with their friends/team-mates against other teams.

I think it’s because there is a tendency for people to enjoy things that confirm their vision on the world. Racist white people often enjoy black gangster hip hop a whole lot more than non-racist white people. Sexist men get turned off when their precious girlfriend enjoys football more than they do. And apparently people seem to like it when cheerleaders or dancers fight each other instead of being nice to each other, because they seem to assume that the only thing cheerleaders and dancers excel at are catfights.

Do people believe that cheerleaders and dancers love to catfight? Or is it based on truth, is cheerleading and dancing a sport appealing to those who love to catfight?

Even though there usually do is one cheerleader that leads the team, it still is mainly a team sport. A good cheerleading performance usually is one where everybody is perfectly in tune with each other. If it were all a bunch off divas doing their big solo-act at the same time, it would just look like a big mess and anything but spectacular and absolutely not like cheerleading. If you are a big solo diva that wants to kill everyone that is a better dancer than you, you’ll never reach a top level in dancing. Without the support of your mentors, you’ll never rise above their level. It’s something cheerleaders and dancers seem to consider as evident, but the rest of the world seems to assume that cheerleading and dancing is all about catfights and vomiting instead about team spirit, commitment and strength.

It’s the new shape of sexism. ‘Girly girls’ (or women that voluntarily do things that are seen as typical for women) are assumed to also correspond to the negative stereotype of women. 'Girly girls' are assumed to be superficial and to be evil manipulators that will never have any real ‘buddies’. It’s such a common believe that people don’t even notice it. It’s such a common believe, people don’t even see it as sexist.

My opinion on the first haute couture show of Dior without Galliano

You would expect that the first collection of a major fashion house like Dior without its lead designer would go back to its roots and present a collection that would look very much like the original Dior and that wouldn’t remind anyone of who used to design for Dior.

But the first Dior collection looked nothing like the style of the house of Dior. It more looked like a bad parody on the style of Galliano. It’s like it was a collection made to convince the last admirers of Galliano’s style that what Galliano added to Dior wasn’t so brilliant. It was a collection that is supposed to make people eager to embrace a Dior with a new face that isn’t Galliano.

If it would have happened in other circumstances, I would have been very excited about seeing what a new designer would do for Dior, but I just can’t stand how people either make a big deal out of it or either claim that it was just a silly joke and that Galliano is really just a nice guy with a weird sense of humor. What he did was racist and wrong, but it wasn’t the worst racist act of the year.

And I really don’t like how this all feels staged. The start of his trial was just in time to draw attention to the new Haute Couture collection of Dior and if the verdict falls just in time to promote the first new prêt-a-porter collection of Dior with its new face, they will likely have lost me. 

Is Galliano judged on his actions or on who he was?

I was very surprised when the whole world seemed to be in shock after Galliano’s racist slurs, because everyday I see so many racist acts that don’t seem to upset anyone. Most of these racist acts are more harmful to people than what Galliano said.

I guess most people will defend themselves by saying that Galliano had a celebrity status and that with it comes responsibility. But people don’t become celebrities because they are so responsible. They become celebrities because they made themselves celebrities or because they are made one.

And Galliano was made one. He would hardly ever give interviews. The parties he would attend were obligatory ones. And he certainly wouldn’t walk in front of the paparazzo. Yes, the outfits he would wear during his runway shows did certainly make him one of the most known faces of the fashion world. But the person behind his face would remain a complete mystery to most of us and he never really tried to change that.

You can be mad at Galliano for not being the role-model people assumed he was, but he didn’t call himself a role-model. He was called a role-model. So even though his actions were definitely wrong, he shouldn't be judged in any other way than a constructions worker very good at his job, because he never claimed to be anything else than a fashion designer very good at his job.

But if a construction worker would shout filthy Jew at a passenger-by, you wouldn't find a lot of witnesses that would spontaneously come testify in court. If you would call the police for something like that, I seriously doubt if they would take you serious. So why would the constructions worker’s deed go unpunished, while Galliano’s acts are severely punished.

If there were any justice in this world it wouldn’t be the notoriety that would determine whether someone will get punished for his/her racist actions, it would be how much the racist action affects the life of the victim. Calling someone Jewish during a fight is less harmful to someone than not hiring someone for being Jewish.

And when I ask my Moroccan friend I met while studying in France, it is quite hard to be hired as a salesperson in France if you’re coloured, even when you have more than the right qualifications. And this racist act goes unpunished and unnoticed, even though it impacts more people and more severely.


I think this whole trial will do nothing against anti-semitism. It will only increase anti-semitism among Arabs even more, because they feel like when Arabs are treated unfairly nothing happens and when a Jew gets insulted the whole world responds. 

What disappoints me about 'feminists'

When you start a new blog, you start thinking about in what frame it fits in. In the beginning I felt like it fits in the feminist frame and than I realised that the reason I feel disappointed in ‘feminism’, is that blogs like mine call themselves feminist blogs.

Back in the days when I wore pink skirts because I was proud of being a girl, I thought that being a feminist would mean that you cared about women’s rights. As I grew older, I started to get the feeling that feminists were women that had an opinion on how women should act.

One ‘feminist’ would talk about how women should act more like men and then another ‘feminist’ would talk on how women should act less like men. Another one would talk about how women should be sexier, because it would be empowering and than another one would talk about how women should avoid being sex objects.

I feel like they are all wrong. It are all just women telling women how to behave and it’s just as wrong as men telling women what to do. Women that feel like they are so morally superior that they can judge other women’s actions should realise that what they are doing is not a form of feminism. It’s a form of gossip.

‘Feminists’ that go on and on about whether or not women should be pretty and sexy or not are in my opinion the worst. Do they realise they think of women the same way as sexist men? Sexist men also only care about how beautiful or sexy a woman is.

Lastly I feel like these days, people that defend women’s rights are called human right activists instead of feminists. And I guess that means progress. It means women’s rights are seen as people’s rights.