A Confused Identity

When I read "The Layered Look," the most striking thing was the abundance of contradictions.

Even the apparent thoughts and tone of Garelick were inconsistent; the piece ranged from impressed recognition (such as with "Chanel revolutionized the way we perceive the female body" on page 35), to disapproval (as in "an extra-diagetic reference that adds an air of authenticity and turns out to be pure fabrication" on page 37) and criticism (for example, when Coco's struggle to find her independence is reduced to "relying routinely on the financial help of the many wealthy lovers she learned to attract" on page 40).

Another key contradiction throughout the piece appears to be the description of Chanel's (and dandyism's) layers. For example, it claims that one "layer" is the mass-producibility of a single, idealized persona. Yet other layers of Chanel described the increased freedom (particularly for women) to become your own person without being forced to hide behind endless constricting fabric and adornments. Similarly, there appears another conflict regarding the use of adornments for social status. On the one hand, reducing decoration supposedly contributed to the simplicity that protested the importance of wealth and birth to social status. With the discussion of costume jewelry, however, the piece claims that Chanel blatantly used eye-catching accessories like large pearl earrings to express contempt for traditional social hierarchies focused on wealth.

When viewed in this manner, trends like dandyism interestingly appear to be defined as a culture of counter-culture with terms of description that are inherently subjective to some degree, due to the contradictions laying within each component.