Betsy Johnson's Hard Dressing
Photographs of models adorned in curated clothing and accessories are interspersed between tightly catchphrased posters (“TO MAKE YOUR LIFE MAGNIFICENT. ANYTIME. ANYWHERE”), campaign shots, and ephemera of the Hard Dressing ecosystem.
The work challenges the traditional notion of a catalog as purely pushing product — instead using the platform to integrate cultural critique, satire, content both fictional and real, and various personas including the “Fashion Critic” and “Dark Fashion Try Hard.” The guide is meant to help readers navigate the dark complexities of the fashion system, which ultimately, as Johnson explains, reinforces inequalities and furthers the issues at-hand.
A tangible extension of this vision, each page turns like a chapter in her ongoing narrative about class and identity. It harkens back to the world of K-HOLE, a similarly influential series of thought leadership publications released in the 2010s around notions of youth culture, branding, normcore, and contemporary discourse on style.
In March, Johnson introduced the world of Hard Dressing to audiences through a 24-hour livestream in a recreation of her mother’s salon during Paris Fashion Week, with special contributions from catalog collaborators Hugo Comte and Charlie le Mindu, as well as Yves Tumor and her commerce partner Basic.Space. A QVC-inspired reel by Éamonn Zeel Freel, a special poster, and mysterious tube of “PRODUCTS” accompanied the launch.
The follow-up to this initiation arrived in a June presentation at Paris gallery Sultana, where the concept came to life through a series of installations including a medicine cabinet of faux-bath products — “scaled-down deep fake beauty products referencing hair products and their relationship to Johnson’s coined ‘class camouflage,’” as the exhibition brochure read. A spray of human hair and synthetic wigs, sourced by set designer and frequent collaborator Rebecca Ilse from salons across Paris, was strewn across the space’s floor; "Do Not Touch the 'ART'" was scrawled across a column.
The multi-channel offerings of Hard Dressing speak to Johnson’s commitment to defiant, multilayered critique of the fashion industry’s complexities. In a sartorial landscape full of shifts both lamented and lauded — where the much-dreaded return of the “skinny” and dilution of heritage brands’ creativity in favor of sales coexist alongside a breathless assortment of buzzy emerging lines, and the creatives who support their endeavors (Johnson among them) — Hard Dressing emerges as both a voice of reason and revelation. “Ultimately this work highlights how consumerism and superficiality dominate our culture, offering little substance in return,” Johnson concludes in the catalog’s foreword.
We now await the next iteration of this project with baited breath, should there be one on the horizon.
