“Escape within the Spiral”: Chromat’s Diverse Bodies as Utopian Performative

Abstract

This case study examines promotional and performance content from the New York-based swimwear and sportswear brand Chromat, known for its diverse model casting and social activism, in terms of Jill Dolan’s concept of the utopian performative and José Esteban Muñoz’s notion of queer utopia. Referencing fashion shows’ consistent negotiations of representational and affective politics, I outline how the line’s 2018 swimwear campaign, WAVVY, manifests a vision at once backward and forward in an assertion of embodied acceptance, and provides a template for how fashion might use performance to resist traps of so-called “performative wokeness” within consumer culture in this politicized moment.