[ ENCOUNTER ] ; Whose Vision Is It, Anyway?

THEY SEEMED, IN PRINCIPLE, LIKE WORTHY ADVERSARIES: Linda Nochlin, the distinguished feminist art historian and critic, a professor of modern art at New York University whose thought-provoking essays on women as depicted in 19th-century painting have pioneered a new way of looking at familiar works by Courbet, Degas and other artists; Thierry Mugler, the Paris fashion designer, admired for his intricate cuts and notorious for his theatrical runway shows — a cavalcade of Amazons, mermaids, angels, dominatrixes, space-age sex goddesses, vampires and other female stock characters, clothed in such elaborate fantasies as a quilted leather bustier and matching hot pants with motorcycle handlebars protruding from the waist. Nochlin turned up for their meeting in a West Side apartment wearing red socks patterned with black Scotties. Mugler reacted with mock horror. The photographer taking their picture told him not to wrinkle his brow. “I’m supposed to be the aging intellectual,” Nochlin joked. They went on to talk about images of women, about femininity as an enterprise, about the uses of fashion, which Mugler calls “a trick and a game.” If fashion is in fact “a trick and a game,” what does the game tell us about the women who play it? MUGLER: So many things. A lot, I think. NOCHLIN: Well, that’s if you think there’s such a thing as women. I’m more inclined to agree with somebody like Joan Riviere, who was a student of Freud and said that femininity is a condition of disguise. I mean, there may be women, but femininity you dress up for. You learn how to be feminine — it’s not something natural, ever. So I would say that the great designer of clothing is always providing additional disguises to create new forms of the feminine. And I would say that clothes tell you something about the choice of the woman who’s wearing them, but they don’t tell you anything about the quote-unquote real woman, because I don’t think there is a real woman. There’s a real person, but I don’t think it’s a woman. MUGLER: Very true. There is only the person who chooses to play the feminine role, to experience different aspects of femininity. And do you feel, Thierry, that you’re furnishing women with disguises that they can pick and choose and use? MUGLER: Completely. Completely. It’s like directing your own everyday movie. Baudelaire said, “La femme est naturelle, c’est-a-dire abominable.” “Woman is natural — that is, abominable.” Do you agree? MUGLER: No, because — well, the body is beautiful. It’s as simple as that. And for a fashion designer, it’s the base. I mean, I think a pair of breasts is so gorgeous and I just can’t resist when they’re pushed up like this — you know? It’s so seductive. It’s very sexual. NOCHLIN: How do you get them so round? MUGLER: Well, the minute you push them up and together, they go round. And then we pad them underneath and on the side, just to make them a little more perfect. NOCHLIN: I see. Linda, do you agree with Baudelaire? NOCHLIN: You know, Baudelaire’s an old pal of mine, in a certain sense. And when he said that about women, he was being his usual perverse self. Understandably. He was so sick of everyone talking about Jean-Jacques Rousseau and “the natural” and how wonderful “the natural” was. So he took absolutely the opposite tack — that nature was an abomination. Everything, then, is natural that is not manipulated, that is not changed by man. To him, a woman without makeup was disgusting. When she was natural, you could see all her — her ooziness. MUGLER: Because the makeup was not as good as now! NOCHLIN: Well, he liked kohl around the eyes. Kohl, rouge — of course it wasn’t as good, and he was speaking mainly about prostitutes and courtesans. MUGLER: But at that time he was right, because all the bourgeois women, they were so boring. That’s why the courtesans, they were so fabulous. NOCHLIN: They looked fabulous. MUGLER: They were free and beautiful. NOCHLIN: Right. And I think Baudelaire was speaking to a certain point. I mean, he also loved the dandy — he didn’t like natural men any more than natural women. So he was really talking as an urban man who wanted things to be infinitely civilized and yet, in a way, infinitely wild at the same time. He loved savages. He felt that savages who put on war paint and feathers and beads were as marvelous as women with makeup. When he talked about having to manipulate nature and change nature and alter nature and disguise nature, he didn’t just mean civilization, he also meant what to him was the opposite of civilization. He meant primitive men and women who made themselves into wonderful fetish objects. And so — I mean, as far as fashion is concerned — I agree with him. I don’t think there can be, quote unquote natural fashion. MUGLER: Exactly. We have to be frank. You know, nudity is great. The body is beautiful. But the minute that you put on clothes, this is an act of civilization. So I don’t believe in natural fashion, either. Let’s go for it! The corset. The push-up bra. Everything! If we do it, let’s do the whole number. Linda, it sounds to me as if your theory is not so much that the woman is natural but that the person is natural and the woman artificial. MUGLER: Not only the woman but the whole mythology of femininity. NOCHLIN: Exactly. But I would also tie it in to certain postmodernist ideas about the self — that there is no self, even. That the self is a condition of disguise and that we can move back and forth in terms of sexualities, in terms of social being, in terms of all kinds of senses of who we are. And I think fashion helps us wonderfully in this. That’s why, in a sense, I would say that fashion is the postmodern art, because it helps to destabilize the self in such a wonderful way.

MUGLER: For me, it’s different. I don’t really agree about fashion. I don’t like it when it gets carried away with itself, when anything is possible. We’re seeing that a lot now, you know — designers amusing themselves, fashion for its own sake. Thierry, you’ve used drag queens and transsexuals as models for your shows. Does that mean that the image that your clothes project — the pushed-up breasts, the cinched waist — is in fact there for anyone to step into? That the requirements for looking like a woman aren’t inherent to women? MUGLER: What I was saying in my choice of models is that this game of femininity, if you choose to play it — well, why not a transsexual? Because they are the maximum. NOCHLIN: Beyond the maximum. MUGLER: No one wants to be more feminine than a transsexual.

So the game is open to everyone, not just women? MUGLER: Yes! Of course. And so is the other side of it — being masculine. That’s why I like very masculine women, as well. Thierry, when you see these women you’ve dressed on the runway being so forthright about their sexuality, who do you think is in control? Are they, or is it the men who respond to them? MUGLER: They are — the women are in control. NOCHLIN: But they’re also humorous about their sexuality. This is not a case of women humbling themselves before some mass-produced stereotype. These are women who appropriate their own sexuality, in a manner that’s not exaggerated but — MUGLER: Grandiose. NOCHLIN: Yes. Grandiose. MUGLER: And generous. NOCHLIN: Grandiosity and generosity, at the same time. That I find politically extremely interesting, because it shakes up our ideas of femininity altogether. It’s so extreme — MUGLER: Thank you! NOCHLIN: It’s so extreme that these women aren’t sex objects, they’re sex subjects. Also, we know that this is a kind of artifice — it’s a performance. MUGLER: It’s not artifice; it’s a help — a trick. Because what we’re showing exists already; we didn’t invent it. We’re just presenting it in another way, in a better package. NOCHLIN: Right. But it’s not a cute little secretary looking like this every day in the office so she’ll get a raise. I mean, what you’re doing is on a completely different scale. This is like some archetype.

MUGLER: And you put yourself in it sometimes, when you feel like it.

NOCHLIN: I think it all comes down to different roles. When you go to the office, you don’t necessarily want to be seen as a sex object. Or if you’re a doctor, you don’t want your patients thinking of you in that way.

MUGLER: I would love to have a sex bomb as a doctor.

NOCHLIN: Well, maybe not as your surgeon.

MUGLER: As my surgeon, yes! I would go into the operation feeling more secure. Do you think there’s any disparity between the way men want to see women and the way women want to be seen? MUGLER: Oh, enormous! I think men have a more abstract way of looking at women — more abstract and more sexual. And women — women want to be seen more as human beings. But you know, there’s just as big a difference in the way men are seen. When women look at men, they always pick a man with a little bit of femininity showing. And men will like more a macho hero type. Look at the actors that men like: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis. And the women like Jeremy Irons. . . . NOCHLIN: Mm-hm! MUGLER: You know? Women don’t like big musclemen. Not so much. NOCHLIN: You’re right, you’re absolutely right. MUGLER: They like nice skin, blue eyes — something a little wild. They like the lost type. Lost and wild, but thin. NOCHLIN: Depressed. MUGLER: And very often with long hair. NOCHLIN: I like them depressed. MUGLER: Depressed. So you see? There’s no agreement on men, either. For centuries, Woman has been the subject of all kinds of painting and sculpture. And in our century, Woman has been the subject of fashion, as well. Men’s fashions have remained fairly constant and low-key, by comparison, with none of the sumptuousness and fantasy that you find in men’s clothing in the 18th century. What do you think accounts for this preoccupation with women? Is it something so simple as the fact that most artists and most fashion designers have been men, or is there some other explanation? MUGLER: I don’t know why, but it’s true that woman for centuries became a beautiful, stupid object. And now it’s changing again. NOCHLIN: Well, you know, there’s a theory, by a student of Freud’s in the 1930’s named Flugel. He had this theory, that at the end of the 18th century there was what he called “the Great Masculine Renunciation.” In the 18th century, men’s clothes were even more splendid than women’s — I mean, absolutely gorgeous, in satin and silk. But with the coming of capitalism and the rise of the bourgeoisie, men adopted a kind of uniform: the black suit. And they renounced fashion, elegance and beauty. MUGLER: But the women did, too. And fashion passed to the courtesan. NOCHLIN: Yes. Right. O.K. So, in exchange for a certain kind of public power, an economic power, and in order to be able to run the capitalist factory, so to speak, man renounced beauty in order to become the subject –in order to control beauty. MUGLER: So, it was all about money. NOCHLIN: Yes. And I think gay culture has certainly brought back the idea that men can be spectacular and beautiful. And so did the dandy culture, in the 19th century. But that was more about nuances of cut, the right kind of cloth — very subtle kinds of things. Whereas the task of being gorgeous was thrust onto women, who were less powerful — women of leisure, that is, who had time to adorn themselves. MUGLER: It’s also feminism that has changed the whole thing. I think now it’s the turn of the man to be the sexual object. It’s coming. NOCHLIN: To me, they always have been, the darlings. But I agree. You’re absolutely right. I mean, look at that commercial, when all these secretaries rush to the window and watch this gorgeous workman take off his shirt and drink a Diet Coke. MUGLER: I love that. That’s good. NOCHLIN: Now, you can’t imagine that happening 20 years ago, even 10 years ago. You know, in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was men’s bodies that were the role models. When you passed the test at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts for the Prix de Rome, for example, you did something called an academie, which was a study of the male nude, not the female nude — they didn’t even let women in to model. Often they would use male bodies — male models — and just add breasts. And then you think of Winkelmann in the 19th century, who said that the really beautiful body was the male body. So, I mean, the so-called ideal body type has varied so much historically, and in many cases the women were masculine. Thierry, as someone who’s designing not only clothes but images of women, how much responsibility — if any — do you feel toward women and the way they would like to be seen? MUGLER: Well, when I work, it’s on a very concrete level. I do the fittings, and I think what women will like, and what they won’t. And very often I change something from the way I’ve drawn it because it turns out to be too high or too stiff, too this or too that. But besides that, I don’t think about responsibility — I’m not taking it so seriously. NOCHLIN: I’m always amazed when I hear women talking about being “forced” to wear something. I mean, they don’t have to take it if they don’t want it. I never feel forced to wear anything. I adore clothes, but I am the least fashionable person in the world. I don’t have that kind of body; I’m 63. But of course, I’m speaking from a point of great privilege. I’m a sort of successful person in my field, and because I’m in the arts, I can look any way I want. I can go to a formal dinner party in a muumuu and it doesn’t matter. But I can’t imagine not being interested in clothing. I guess if you’re an intellectual woman, you’re not supposed to talk about how much pleasure you get out of clothing. But I have to admit, as an art critic and historian, there are times when I get much more pleasure out of looking at clothes and touching clothes than I do out of looking at some of the ridiculous art that I’m forced to confront. I mean, I find fashion an art form, and what I love about it is that it’s an art form that can be part of your body. MUGLER: It’s the only art that walks down the street. NOCHLIN: And the body is the central focus. Not only does an outfit shape your body but it also makes you move a certain way — it choreographs you. MUGLER: For me, the real elegance is when you sense somebody happy in their body, and in their clothes. Even when the clothes are constraining — like a corset or a bustier. The notion that there can be pleasure in wearing something constraining goes against so much of what fashion these days purports to be about — comfort and freedom of movement. MUGLER: But it depends on the context. I mean, if you’re going for a walk in the forest, you don’t want to wear a corset. But this idea that fashion should be comfortable, it’s very conformiste. Fashion is nothing; fashion doesn’t exist. Who cares about trends and all that stuff? The only thing that matters is these little tricks that are at our disposal, to help us have more fun or a better life.

I won’t ask you to define good taste, but I wonder what you think is its antithesis? Vulgarity? MUGLER: Oh, no! Vulgarity’s fun! I would say that the opposite of good taste is bourgeois chic, a kind of obligation to conform. NOCHLIN: Everyone wearing the same thing. MUGLER: If someone now goes to the Oscars wearing a tiara and a fabulous dress, people say, “Oh, she’s so tacky,” because you have to wear a chemise de nuit and no jewel now to be in. You have to look discreet and poor and beige and gray. NOCHLIN: Right. Understated. Safe taste is, to me, bad taste. MUGLER: That’s it. The opposite of good taste is safe.