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Taste?

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What makes something tasteful? When do you cross the line into poor taste? I’m not just talking about wearing stripes with spots, or something as mundane as that. I’m talking about fashion choices that shock, horrify & insult. There are numerous debates over the Internet as to whether wearing fur is tasteless or not. Moral issues aside, most wearers of fur do not intend to cause offence every time they don a coat, muff or stole. They may well understand that some people might object, but fur is usually worn for its warmth & beauty - not for its political shock-value.

What then, of items deliberately worn for this reaction?

In September 1976 the singer Siouxsie Sioux was physically assaulted while on a trip to France. At the time she was wearing a black armband decorated with a swastika. Sioux freely admitted that she wore the armband not because she was a Nazi sympathiser, but because she partly failed to understand the role of the symbol as a taboo, & party because she wished to shock people. She later explained;

The Nazis were not only anti-Semitic but anti-anyone different, anti-anyone like me.

The reason I choose Sioux as an example over people like Titler & Doe Deere is that Titler follows in the footsteps of comedians like Charlie Chaplain in ridiculing Nazism & Hitler. Deere on the other hand, was just playing dress up. Sioux donned the armband because she knew people would be horrified.

So what of this?

The text is an unsourced quote form Charles Manson, the man responsible for a spate of violent murders during 1969 in an effort to spark a race-war. Queen Michelle of Kingdom of Style says

For the longest time I have been thinking about designing a t-shirt with the famous quote by Charles Manson

But is seems that Bob hjelte got there first with the above photo featured on her Lookbook. The photo with the bloodied knife & the animal mask, is designed to shock & provoke. This is accomplished by riding on the emotional baggage associated with a particular person & a particular event - one that is almost universally condemned. Is this tasteful? Is it fashionable? Even if it is fashionable, is it acceptable to wear the T-shirt? This quote from Trent Reznor seems appropriate;

While I was working on Downward Spiral, I was living in the house where Sharon Tate was killed. Then one day I met her sister. It was a random thing, just a brief encounter. And she said: “Are you exploiting my sister’s death by living in her house?” For the first time, the whole thing kind of slapped me in the face. I said, “No, it’s just sort of my own interest in American folklore. I’m in this place where a weird part of history occurred.” I guess it never really struck me before, but it did then. She lost her sister from a senseless, ignorant situation that I don’t want to support. When she was talking to me, I realized for the first time, “What if it was my sister?” I thought, “Fuck Charlie Manson.” I went home and cried that night. It made me see there’s another side to things, you know?

Or as Jane from What’s Wrong With the Zoo said;

Till…I asked myself what I would think if in forty years some fashion-chicks would come up with quoting Joseph Fritzl on their T-Shirts. Could I ever take them serious[ly]?

I just thought it was worth discussing.

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