As usual Tiia....you’ve made me think! I am definitely one of the naysayers of the PP launch. I feel bad because I admire PP. Imagine if she had launched a paradigm shift collection of sustainable, well made clothes that were not luxury? Imagine the impact that could have? Does the world need more luxury clothes sold like Taylor Swift tickets, nope. But I do believe she’s a smart, creative designer and I think she will likely do better next time. But your broader point is one that worries me more deeply than overpriced Meh clothes. Having come of age in the 80s and 90s, it seems to me that we have taken major steps backward in women’s rights in all areas. And yes when I went to college only losers call women girls. One only has to dive a little deep into the whole teenage girl Instagram depression phenomenon to see how vulnerable young girls and young women are today to manipulations. I see a lot of anger, but little strength. It’s sobering to see young progressive women so staunchly defending Hamas on college campuses but weren’t all that noisy screaming for Masha Amini. Yes, I know that young people and quite frankly people of all ages, have been swallowed up by social media manipulation, but do these young women even know how women are treated in the Middle East?
I don't quite know what to think of the Phoebe Philo launch, to be honest. I agree that she's very talented and smart, but those prices teamed with the scarcity approach make me so uncomfortable. I thought Amy Odell's recent newsletter on the topic was eye-opening. There's luxury, and then there's just silly-expensive.
I've been scared for a while that we might be on the cusp of going back to the dark ages with women's rights. Misogynist right-wing propaganda on social media is nothing short of terrifying, and the liberal female voices countering it have, like you said, a lot of anger, but little strength. There's so much work to be done, at home and elsewhere. I wonder if we'll ever get there. I did feel a flicker of hope looking at the Center for Reproductive Rights' global map on abortion rights recently. The regression in the US and Poland is so depressing, but the global trend is overwhelmingly positive, and has been for the last 30 years.
Women in Palestine are being murdered in the thousands by Israeli Occupation Forces. 500,000 pregnant Gazan women currently have no access to healthy food, clean water, or adequate medical care and are suffering stress-related miscarriages due to Israel's blockade. This is also how women are currently being treated in the Middle East. I think it's great and important that young progressive women on college campuses are protesting a genocide that's oppressing so many women and girls.
I think you may need to question why you’re juxtaposing the death of Masha Amini with the discourse around Hamas... it sounds like you’re saying because women’s rights are different in the Middle East (and by that extension, Palestine) than where you may be based, then the harm of those women by an oppressive force shouldn’t be called out by these young progressive women on college campuses? No matter who the oppressors are, shouldn’t we want women to be free?
I so enjoyed reading this post, Tiia! Recently I wrote about the Cool Girl strictly from an aesthetic perspective with heavy quotes from the NYT piece on Khaite. I think the reason why the Cool Girl is an attractive aesthetic for a brand to go after is because (as someone who always felt less-than-cool) it’s attractive to assume my clothes could make me cool.
Realistically a “cool girl” is a “secure woman” who is confident without the male/female gaze and finds contentment in being her authentic self without the burden of expectations. As Irene pointed out- does anyone feel like a “cool girl” or, even, a “secure woman”?
With the comparison on social media and the consumeristic mindset (I just need one more thing) I think we are all just chasing after “coolness” as a balm for the insecurities we have in a society that consistently wants to make women into “girls.”
I think you're absolutely right: 'cool' is definitely a marketing trick. It makes us buy stuff. I'm again reminded of the perfect housewife trope: how all this home stuff and cosmetics were marketed to women back in the 1950s and 60s, so that women could attempt to be more perfect, or at least to feel somehow adequate. It's a never-ending chase that feeds on women's deepest insecurities: that we're inadequate, somehow not 'enough'.
Seeing “cool girl” in my inbox this morning woke me right up, as the term always has and continues to do, it seems. It triggers so many of my feelings of inadequacy, reminds of the times I’ve been rejected by my peers, for not feeling good enough.
Like any status marker, it’s not just elusive but impossible to achieve. Your piece made me wonder: is there any woman in the world - whether those NY Khaite wearing “cool girls” between the ages of 24-35 (per NYT article), the ones who “get” PP and supposedly reject the male gaze in favour of the female gaze, or whatever the markers are at the moment - who actually feels inside they are “cool”? Who actually feels like they have it together?
The only ones I know who are like this are people I actually don’t know well enough. Everyone else seems to be bundle of insecurities, anxieties, neuroses.
You've raised an excellent question, Irene. I don't think anyone really feels that they are 'cool', or has it all together, and that's why it's so weird that we all chase it so desperately, as if it was a thing that we could somehow achieve. It's so ironic, too, that the least cool thing there is, is for someone to claim that they are actually cool. Just by definition, cool is impossible!
Aha but Irene to me you are the coolest woman (from afar)? So perhaps youre right, “cool” is a stance from regarding others at a distance...
I appreciate your essay Tiia but for me the word hits different a bit. More positively I guess.
Cool to me is easy- not exclusionary but inclusive because it’s open to the individual to interpret and play on.
To me cool is easy , not trying too hard, but enjoying what you choose to enjoy for your self.
Enjoying the regard of others but as fun not pressure. I want to feel cool, I often feel cool actually, even just in my own head in whatever I’ve cobbled together.
The Gone Girl cool girl is cool from a male gaze, my sense of coolness is not that. Nor 19,000 dresses lol.
Bit of an incoherent essay with the baby asleep on me - thanks for the thoughtful prompt as usual
I guess this isn’t the cool PP is selling- it just is.
I really like your definition of 'cool' -- you're taking ownership of the word and making it your own. I applaud you!
I guess I'm talking about the word being applied from the outside in, as an expectation, or a pressure to fit into a mold. It feeds on women feeling that they should try hard to appear as to not try at all, which is a contradiction in itself. And when it's linked to selling products to people... it just seems predatory, I guess.
There is a lot to unpack here so I know I will have thoughts later. However, as I was reading this the latest Miu Miu show came to mind. And actually the whole pantless trend, and to an extent the Uber sheer trend, in general. I struggle between a woman’s (girl🙃) ability to choose whatever they want to wear, or not wear in these cases, and how much of this becomes, almost literally, the children’s story “ The Emperor Has No Clothes”. That in “our” desires to be relevant ( cool?) “we” literally expose ourselves and then say how dare he look at my chest instead of my face. And I do know there is a translation that happens from runway/red carpet to real life but the direction seems to be two ( at least!) steps back.
I've been thinking about the Miu Miu show, too. The devil-may-care greasy hairstyling has had me perplexed in particular, not to mention the high-heel shoes sticking out of the bags. What would that look like on a grown woman walking down the street, or in the office? I know that they are just show styling tricks, but I don't know, maybe I'm getting too old to understand how any of that stuff is relevant. It just seems silly to me.
I, too, catch myself trying to deal with skimpy clothes being marketed as empowering for women. It's complicated for sure. I will defend a woman's (or anyone's) right to wear barely-there clothing if it's something they want to do, but I still find myself... judging, at times. Is it just the built-in misogyny in us? I don't know.
I've been completely flat on my back all week from the flu, and just caught up on all the kerfuffle about PP, and I agree with you that PP feels like just another "Cool Girl" tactic by the luxury fashion machine. It's not even the prices or the contrived scarcity model that bothers me; it's the utter lack of desire (or effort?) to inspire emotion or thought in buyers and viewers of her work. You could not get more "Cool Girl" than that -- "My selling point is that I am too cool to make the effort to sell my clothes." It's funny that even Khaite seems more invested in storytelling than PP.
I'll be the first to admit that I would love some of the effortlessness and confidence associated with a "Cool Girl" -- it's too bad that there is just no such thing, lol. I wonder why we're so invested in spending tonnes of money and effort to look like we're not trying; is it perhaps a reaction to the feeling that things are spiralling out of control around the world? Instead of protesting, we're "playing it cool" and retreating into "self care" to make ourselves feel better?
Lin, you hit the nail on the head re: the PP launch. There's really no story to speak of, it's a bunch of products under a name that people are drawn to. I'm sure some of the clothes are very nice and luxurious, but I feel... nothing. Maybe that's why the scarcity marketing and the prices trouble me so much. If there was a story, I'd maybe be unwilling to overlook the exclusivity somewhat.
You might be onto something with why we're trying so hard to achieve the type of 'cool' that's clearly not achievable. Some kind of an attempt to 'fake it til you make it', even when we know that we'll just focus on the faking and that will be it. I do sometimes wonder if we're all fundamentally unhappy living within a capitalist system, because it doesn't provide us with any real meaning. We're unable to break free from it, so we just try to hang on the best we can.
Once again, Tiaa, beautifully written. I just returned from London and I was blown away by the incredible volume of merchandise in the stores. Oxford Street was depressing - over consumerism at it's worst. We must all be convinced by the marketing machine that we are not good enough; that we don't have enough.
PP's launch was disappointing at best. I don't want to sit on zippers! Her obscene prices give license for other brands to charge ridiculous prices which ultimately pushes us into fast fashion.
Tiia — Between your fantastic take on cool girls, and every comment below (brilliant feedback all) I don't have anything new to add ... but love this discussion and how it makes me think as I choose what to wear (pants, preferably - even though I adore Miu Miu's runway show — and zero PP). Similar to Jen P, I strive for the cool girl to come from within now and always, but as we all have acknowledged, our sartorial choices help along the way. The fashion essay collection I am (still...) pitching really hits home with this notion that clothes shape our identity; what we wear helps define who we are and who we strive to be. As it relates to cool girls, the chicken vs. egg question looms: did we select the clothes because we are cool? Or to feel cool?
That's an excellent question. The deeper I'm digging into the idea that clothes shape our identity and that they are societal markers above everything else, I'm thinking that the clothes we ("humanity") used to wear signaled to others who were were within a given society, and now we've turned it on its head, scrabling to portray an individualistic image over the societal one. I keep going back to this thought that we seem to obsess over the superficial look of our clothes and of ourselves, rather than the meaning, the feeling, or ourselves. It all seems so... tacked on. I'm still trying to figure that one out!
As usual Tiia....you’ve made me think! I am definitely one of the naysayers of the PP launch. I feel bad because I admire PP. Imagine if she had launched a paradigm shift collection of sustainable, well made clothes that were not luxury? Imagine the impact that could have? Does the world need more luxury clothes sold like Taylor Swift tickets, nope. But I do believe she’s a smart, creative designer and I think she will likely do better next time. But your broader point is one that worries me more deeply than overpriced Meh clothes. Having come of age in the 80s and 90s, it seems to me that we have taken major steps backward in women’s rights in all areas. And yes when I went to college only losers call women girls. One only has to dive a little deep into the whole teenage girl Instagram depression phenomenon to see how vulnerable young girls and young women are today to manipulations. I see a lot of anger, but little strength. It’s sobering to see young progressive women so staunchly defending Hamas on college campuses but weren’t all that noisy screaming for Masha Amini. Yes, I know that young people and quite frankly people of all ages, have been swallowed up by social media manipulation, but do these young women even know how women are treated in the Middle East?
I don't quite know what to think of the Phoebe Philo launch, to be honest. I agree that she's very talented and smart, but those prices teamed with the scarcity approach make me so uncomfortable. I thought Amy Odell's recent newsletter on the topic was eye-opening. There's luxury, and then there's just silly-expensive.
I've been scared for a while that we might be on the cusp of going back to the dark ages with women's rights. Misogynist right-wing propaganda on social media is nothing short of terrifying, and the liberal female voices countering it have, like you said, a lot of anger, but little strength. There's so much work to be done, at home and elsewhere. I wonder if we'll ever get there. I did feel a flicker of hope looking at the Center for Reproductive Rights' global map on abortion rights recently. The regression in the US and Poland is so depressing, but the global trend is overwhelmingly positive, and has been for the last 30 years.
Women in Palestine are being murdered in the thousands by Israeli Occupation Forces. 500,000 pregnant Gazan women currently have no access to healthy food, clean water, or adequate medical care and are suffering stress-related miscarriages due to Israel's blockade. This is also how women are currently being treated in the Middle East. I think it's great and important that young progressive women on college campuses are protesting a genocide that's oppressing so many women and girls.
I think you may need to question why you’re juxtaposing the death of Masha Amini with the discourse around Hamas... it sounds like you’re saying because women’s rights are different in the Middle East (and by that extension, Palestine) than where you may be based, then the harm of those women by an oppressive force shouldn’t be called out by these young progressive women on college campuses? No matter who the oppressors are, shouldn’t we want women to be free?
I so enjoyed reading this post, Tiia! Recently I wrote about the Cool Girl strictly from an aesthetic perspective with heavy quotes from the NYT piece on Khaite. I think the reason why the Cool Girl is an attractive aesthetic for a brand to go after is because (as someone who always felt less-than-cool) it’s attractive to assume my clothes could make me cool.
Realistically a “cool girl” is a “secure woman” who is confident without the male/female gaze and finds contentment in being her authentic self without the burden of expectations. As Irene pointed out- does anyone feel like a “cool girl” or, even, a “secure woman”?
With the comparison on social media and the consumeristic mindset (I just need one more thing) I think we are all just chasing after “coolness” as a balm for the insecurities we have in a society that consistently wants to make women into “girls.”
I think you're absolutely right: 'cool' is definitely a marketing trick. It makes us buy stuff. I'm again reminded of the perfect housewife trope: how all this home stuff and cosmetics were marketed to women back in the 1950s and 60s, so that women could attempt to be more perfect, or at least to feel somehow adequate. It's a never-ending chase that feeds on women's deepest insecurities: that we're inadequate, somehow not 'enough'.
Seeing “cool girl” in my inbox this morning woke me right up, as the term always has and continues to do, it seems. It triggers so many of my feelings of inadequacy, reminds of the times I’ve been rejected by my peers, for not feeling good enough.
Like any status marker, it’s not just elusive but impossible to achieve. Your piece made me wonder: is there any woman in the world - whether those NY Khaite wearing “cool girls” between the ages of 24-35 (per NYT article), the ones who “get” PP and supposedly reject the male gaze in favour of the female gaze, or whatever the markers are at the moment - who actually feels inside they are “cool”? Who actually feels like they have it together?
The only ones I know who are like this are people I actually don’t know well enough. Everyone else seems to be bundle of insecurities, anxieties, neuroses.
You've raised an excellent question, Irene. I don't think anyone really feels that they are 'cool', or has it all together, and that's why it's so weird that we all chase it so desperately, as if it was a thing that we could somehow achieve. It's so ironic, too, that the least cool thing there is, is for someone to claim that they are actually cool. Just by definition, cool is impossible!
Aha but Irene to me you are the coolest woman (from afar)? So perhaps youre right, “cool” is a stance from regarding others at a distance...
I appreciate your essay Tiia but for me the word hits different a bit. More positively I guess.
Cool to me is easy- not exclusionary but inclusive because it’s open to the individual to interpret and play on.
To me cool is easy , not trying too hard, but enjoying what you choose to enjoy for your self.
Enjoying the regard of others but as fun not pressure. I want to feel cool, I often feel cool actually, even just in my own head in whatever I’ve cobbled together.
The Gone Girl cool girl is cool from a male gaze, my sense of coolness is not that. Nor 19,000 dresses lol.
Bit of an incoherent essay with the baby asleep on me - thanks for the thoughtful prompt as usual
I guess this isn’t the cool PP is selling- it just is.
I really like your definition of 'cool' -- you're taking ownership of the word and making it your own. I applaud you!
I guess I'm talking about the word being applied from the outside in, as an expectation, or a pressure to fit into a mold. It feeds on women feeling that they should try hard to appear as to not try at all, which is a contradiction in itself. And when it's linked to selling products to people... it just seems predatory, I guess.
There is a lot to unpack here so I know I will have thoughts later. However, as I was reading this the latest Miu Miu show came to mind. And actually the whole pantless trend, and to an extent the Uber sheer trend, in general. I struggle between a woman’s (girl🙃) ability to choose whatever they want to wear, or not wear in these cases, and how much of this becomes, almost literally, the children’s story “ The Emperor Has No Clothes”. That in “our” desires to be relevant ( cool?) “we” literally expose ourselves and then say how dare he look at my chest instead of my face. And I do know there is a translation that happens from runway/red carpet to real life but the direction seems to be two ( at least!) steps back.
I've been thinking about the Miu Miu show, too. The devil-may-care greasy hairstyling has had me perplexed in particular, not to mention the high-heel shoes sticking out of the bags. What would that look like on a grown woman walking down the street, or in the office? I know that they are just show styling tricks, but I don't know, maybe I'm getting too old to understand how any of that stuff is relevant. It just seems silly to me.
I, too, catch myself trying to deal with skimpy clothes being marketed as empowering for women. It's complicated for sure. I will defend a woman's (or anyone's) right to wear barely-there clothing if it's something they want to do, but I still find myself... judging, at times. Is it just the built-in misogyny in us? I don't know.
I've been completely flat on my back all week from the flu, and just caught up on all the kerfuffle about PP, and I agree with you that PP feels like just another "Cool Girl" tactic by the luxury fashion machine. It's not even the prices or the contrived scarcity model that bothers me; it's the utter lack of desire (or effort?) to inspire emotion or thought in buyers and viewers of her work. You could not get more "Cool Girl" than that -- "My selling point is that I am too cool to make the effort to sell my clothes." It's funny that even Khaite seems more invested in storytelling than PP.
I'll be the first to admit that I would love some of the effortlessness and confidence associated with a "Cool Girl" -- it's too bad that there is just no such thing, lol. I wonder why we're so invested in spending tonnes of money and effort to look like we're not trying; is it perhaps a reaction to the feeling that things are spiralling out of control around the world? Instead of protesting, we're "playing it cool" and retreating into "self care" to make ourselves feel better?
Lin, you hit the nail on the head re: the PP launch. There's really no story to speak of, it's a bunch of products under a name that people are drawn to. I'm sure some of the clothes are very nice and luxurious, but I feel... nothing. Maybe that's why the scarcity marketing and the prices trouble me so much. If there was a story, I'd maybe be unwilling to overlook the exclusivity somewhat.
You might be onto something with why we're trying so hard to achieve the type of 'cool' that's clearly not achievable. Some kind of an attempt to 'fake it til you make it', even when we know that we'll just focus on the faking and that will be it. I do sometimes wonder if we're all fundamentally unhappy living within a capitalist system, because it doesn't provide us with any real meaning. We're unable to break free from it, so we just try to hang on the best we can.
Once again, Tiaa, beautifully written. I just returned from London and I was blown away by the incredible volume of merchandise in the stores. Oxford Street was depressing - over consumerism at it's worst. We must all be convinced by the marketing machine that we are not good enough; that we don't have enough.
PP's launch was disappointing at best. I don't want to sit on zippers! Her obscene prices give license for other brands to charge ridiculous prices which ultimately pushes us into fast fashion.
You had me chuckle at "I don't want to sit on zippers!" Can you imagine the indentations on the derrière after a day at the office?
I haven't been to Oxford Street in almost 20 years, but god, it was so depressing in the early 00s, too. Just chaotic, frantic consumerism.
Tiia — Between your fantastic take on cool girls, and every comment below (brilliant feedback all) I don't have anything new to add ... but love this discussion and how it makes me think as I choose what to wear (pants, preferably - even though I adore Miu Miu's runway show — and zero PP). Similar to Jen P, I strive for the cool girl to come from within now and always, but as we all have acknowledged, our sartorial choices help along the way. The fashion essay collection I am (still...) pitching really hits home with this notion that clothes shape our identity; what we wear helps define who we are and who we strive to be. As it relates to cool girls, the chicken vs. egg question looms: did we select the clothes because we are cool? Or to feel cool?
That's an excellent question. The deeper I'm digging into the idea that clothes shape our identity and that they are societal markers above everything else, I'm thinking that the clothes we ("humanity") used to wear signaled to others who were were within a given society, and now we've turned it on its head, scrabling to portray an individualistic image over the societal one. I keep going back to this thought that we seem to obsess over the superficial look of our clothes and of ourselves, rather than the meaning, the feeling, or ourselves. It all seems so... tacked on. I'm still trying to figure that one out!