F is for... blah

Bugger. The mainstream discovery of the term rushes smoothly toward an irretrieveable banalisation. It’s this season’s Thing To Do. What did Quentin Crisp say? Fashion is for people who don’t know themselves. My word, sir, isn’t that just exactly right. Some while ago, I did wax lyrical on the prospect of a Ferragamo ballet boot, by which I meant that footwear for a Restricted Audience could still be animated by the best of Italian craftsmanship and the unbridled (oh, alright, stay tied up if that’s your kink) pleasure of a superbly crafted instep; that deep desire need be no enemy of superb quality. Which makes sense: if I want my love to feel as special as I know her to be, then only the best - as they say - is good enough.

Regarding their current campaign though, the author has two principal objections. Perhaps one is unoriginal: the complaint against the presumption that consumption is a form of radicalism. No it bloody isn’t. If you’re waiting for some stranger to tell you what you’re supposed to be wanting then you are most emphatically not at the cutting edge, neither of your nor of anyone else’s life. What annoys is the idea that there maybe people out there who seriously reckon themselves radical because they buy someone else’s object of desire. Why don’t you fucking wake up and admit to yourselves what you are: second-hand, spineless and compliant; so keen to wait to be told what you ought to want to desire. When sustaining a fetish is precisely the opposite: a journey - best shared with the desired Other One - into a special realm of delights, that no-one else can understand. Something uniquely yours, something that you just can’t put into production. Why don’t you wake up and free yourselves?

My other big problem is the imagery of the campaign itself: photography of the naked female body. Wow! Such a radical choice, none of us have seen a naked woman before, no? The photographic punchline is inevitably having the model wear High Heels. Well, fancy that. Recall: the company is question is one of Italy’s most famous labels. But is that all they now have to invent? Has the innovation and passion of the founder just bleached out to this self-apologetic vanilla? What a disappointment. The photograph makes no attempt to suggest a real human life, the body is just static, lifeless. Granted, there’s no way you could ever photograph the woman as she removes her strap-on, gazing at her lover with calm pleasure, retouching her scent with a dab from the bottle - and then expect the press to carry the ads. But surely you could suggest it and place this sadly inert body into the context of a real human life. And then give those nice people out there something truly radical to think about: that the rich things in life are right there inside you, just waiting to be discovered, if only you had the wits to look.

And now I’ve got that out of my system, my thoughts turn to a perfume that has that delicious smooth chocolatey aroma of fresh clean latex. I wonder where I could find something like that.