Skimming fashion, or how to read skin-deep

Abstract

The semiotic methodology of reading fashion, however well established, has tended to maintain a gap between corporeal reality and aesthetic appearance, ensconced in the idea that fashion is a set of signifiers to be added to or removed from the body like an exo-skeleton of fabrics, accessories and cosmetics. By building on the history of semiotic spectacle through a feminist media studies sensitive to materiality, this article aims to read fashion as not being on but of the body, here understood as a set of kaleidoscopic surfaces, or skins. With a focus on skin as a mediating tissue between body and fashion that bears signification, the article advocates a methodology of reading skin-deep, which is called ‘skimming’ in order to draw attention to a dynamic of looking that moves across the surface, in a departure from traditional theories of the gaze. By paying attention to shapewear, second-skin looks, ‘naked dressing’ and tattoos, reading skin-deep takes skin literally as an element of fashion in order to illuminate the social codifications of gender, race and visibility that accompany the aesthetics of skin-as-fashion. At the heart of this analysis is Kim Kardashian, whose celebrity has become synonymous with fashionable yet controversial modes of self-exposure, especially in her annual appearances at the Met Gala.