The Design Museum in London, has recently put together an exhibition called: Women Fashion Power. The exhibition intend to highlight the way fashion, culture and history are strictly related one to another. The semiotic of fashion therefore, the relation between signifier and signified, the symbol behind clothes, the message which is directly related to the social background and the contest in which the message is communicated.
Yet i have been so disappointed when coming across a garment by Vivienne Westwood, a long pastel pink and mauve silk gown and over robe, pinned to it, at the height of the heart, a picture of Chelsea Manning and in bold red capitals the word TRUTH….beside it few words on how Vivienne `also used her fashion brand as a platform to promote political and environmental campaigns and works tirelessly for social and environmental causes`….but not even one word about Chelsea Manning…..
Why have they not even mentioned Chelsea Manning name???
Bradley Edward Manning, now Chelsea Elizabeth Manning, was a United States Army soldier, arrested in 2010 and convicted in 2013 for leaking large set of classified documents concerned with the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and U.S diplomatic cables. He has allegedly leaked the cables to Julian Assange, but Manning has always refused to implicate the editor-in-chief of the WikiLeaks website. One of the most controversial video published by WikiLeaks shows a group of unarmed men being gunned down in a Baghdad street by an American Apache helicopter. When a van, carrying children in the back, stops to help one of the injured men, the American helicopter opens fire again. The title given to the video: `Collateral murder`. Manning was in 2009 an intelligence analyst and had access to classified databases. Adrian Lamo, a former hacker from California, denounced Manning to the army counterintelligence, claiming he had a private chat with Manning after learning their common interest in Wiki Leaks. Their conversation went over several days in which Manning finally suggested he had leaked 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables; and 500,000 Army reports to Julian Assange. Chelsea Manning, began hormone replacement therapy after being sentenced and is now a trans woman.
It is obvious that Vivienne Westoowod intended to draw attention to Chelsie Manning cause and plight.
She wore the garment the 6th of May 2013 at Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala in New York during the opening of the exhibition PUNK: Chaos to Couture.
‘The most important thing is my jewellery which is a picture of Bradley Manning. I’m here to promote Bradley and he needs public support for what’s going on with secret trials and trying to lock him away and he’s the bravest of the brave and that’s what I really want to say more than anything. Because punk, when I did punk all those years ago my motive was the same: Justice. And to try to have a better world. It really was about that. I’ve got different methods nowadays’ said Vivienne Westood. The two very long band which runs from each end of the collar, separately from the over robe, recall the judicial court dress. The word gown comes from the medieval Latin `gunna` . Gown worn by judges, derive indeed from those worn every day by their medieval predecessor, which became formalized into uniform in the course of the 16th and 17th century. It is a clever remark that the designer makes by stylistically imitating the judicial gown and have a picture of Manning pinned to it with the word Truth in red bold capitals. In true punk attitude Vivienne Westwood used the dress, the garment as a protest and statement.
Watch the video below for more detailed information on Chelsea Manning
RuleOfScarCity 