Vogue

Vogue (pronounced vohg)

(1) Something in fashion at a particular time or in a particular place.

(2) An expression of popular currency, acceptance, or favor.

(3) A highly stylized modern dance that evolved out of the Harlem ballroom scene in the 1960s, the name influenced by the fashion magazine; one who practiced the dance was a voguer who was voguing.

(4) In Polari, a cigarette or to light a cigarette (often in the expression “vogue me up”).

(5) The world's best known women's fashion magazine, the first issue in 1892 and now published by Condé Nast.

1565–1575: From the Middle English vogue (height of popularity or accepted fashion), from the Middle French vogue (fashion, success (literally, “wave or course of success”)), from the Old French vogue (a rowing), from voguer (to row, sway, set sail), from the Old Saxon wegan (to move) & wogōn (to sway, rock), a variant of wagōn (to float, fluctuate), from the Proto-Germanic wagōną (to sway, fluctuate) and the Proto-Germanic wēgaz (water in motion), wagōną (to sway, fluctuate), wēgaz (water in motion) & weganą (to move, carry, weigh), from the primitive Indo-European weǵh- (to move, go, transport (and an influence on the English way).  The forms were akin to the Old Saxon wegan (to move), the Old High German wegan (to move), the Old English wegan (to move, carry, weigh), the Old Norse vaga (to sway, fluctuate), the Old English wagian (to sway, totter), the Proto-West Germanic wagōn, the German Woge (wave) and the Swedish våg.  A parallel development the Germanic forms was the Spanish boga (rowing) and the Old Italian voga (a rowing), from vogare (to row, sail), of unknown origin and the Italianate forms were probably some influence on the development of the verb.  Vogue, voguie & voguer are nouns (voguette an informal noun), voguing is a noun and adjective, vogued is a verb and vogueing & voguish are adjectives; the noun plural is vogues.  The noun voguie is a special use and is a synonym of fashionista ((1) one who creates or promotes high fashion (designers, editors, models, influencers etc) or (2) one who dresses according to the trends of fashion, or one who closely follows those trends).

All etymologists seem to concur the modern meaning is from the notion of being "borne along on the waves of fashion" and colloquially the generalized sense of "fashion, reputation" is probably from the same Germanic source.  The phrase “in vogue” (having a prominent place in popular fashion) was recorded as long ago as 1643.  The fashion magazine (now owned by Condé Nast) began publication in 1892 and young devotees of its advice (they are legion) are voguettes.  In linguistics, vogue words are those words & phrases which become suddenly (although not always neologisms) popular and fade from use or becoming clichéd or hackneyed forms (wardrobe malfunction; awesome; problematic; at this point in time; acid test; in this space; parameters; paradigm etc).  Because it’s so nuanced, vogue has no universal synonym but words which tend to the same meaning (and can in some circumstances be synonymous) include latest, mod, now, rage, chic, craze, currency, custom, fad, favor, mode, popularity, practice, prevalence, style, stylishness, thing, trend & usage.  The magazine is often cited as a cultural reference point, even those likely not even occasional readers aware of its place in the hierarchy of the glossies: In 1968, the English actor Sir Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) observed that were the Italian painter of the Early Renaissance Sandro Botticelli (circa 1445-1510) alive today: “he'd be working for Vogue”.  

Lindsay Lohan cover, Vogue (Spanish edition), August 2009.

In Regional English, "vogue" could mean "fog or mist" and in Cornwall, the hamlet of Vogue in the parish of St Day gained its name from the Medieval Cornish vogue (a word for a medieval smelting furnace (ie "blowing house", the places generating much smoke)); civilization contributing to the increase in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses is nothing new.  Clearly better acquainted with trademark law than geography, in early 2022 counsel for Condé Nast sent a C&D (cease and desist letter) to the inn-keeper of the village’s The Star Inn at Vogue pub, demanding the place change its name to avoid any public perception of a connection between the two businesses.  The owners of the venerable pub declined the request (cheekily suggesting they might send their own C&D to Vogue demanding the publication find a new name on the basis of usurpation (an old tort heard before the Court of Chivalry).  Condé Nast subsequently apologized, citing insufficient investigation by their staff, a framed copy of their letter hung on the pub's wall.  Honor apparently satisfied on both sides, the two Vogues resumed the peaceful co-existence which had prevailed since 1892. 

1981 Range Rover In Vogue from the first run with the standard stylized steel wheels (left) and a later 1981 In Vogue with the three-spoke aluminum units.  Although from time-to-time offered by many manufacturers and designers seem drawn to them, three-spoke wheels somehow never quite look "right" which seems strange because some of the classic steering-wheels (of the pre-airbag age) used three.

Much of the 1970s was spent in what to many felt like a recession, even if there were only some periods in some places during which the technical definition was fulfilled and the novel phenomenon of stagflation did disguise some of the effects.  Less affected than most (of course) were the rich who had discovered a new status-symbol, the Range Rover which, introduced in 1970 had legitimized (though there were earlier ventures) the idea of the "luxury" four-wheel-drive (4WD) segment although the interior of the original was very basic (the floor-coverings rubber mats rather than carpets on the assumption that, as with the even more utilitarian Land Rovers, there would be a need to "hose out" the mud accumulated from a day's HSF (huntin', shootin' & fishin')), the car’s reputation built more on it's then unique blend of competence on, and off-road.  So good was the Range Rover in both roles that owners, used to being cosseted in leather and walnut, wanted something closer to that to which they were accustomed and dealers received enquiries about an up-market version.

Lindsay Lohan at the opening of the Ninety years of Vogue covers exhibition, Crillon Hotel, Paris, 2009.

That had been Rover’s original intention.  The plan had been to release a basic version powered by four cylinder engines and a luxury edition with a V8 but by 1970 time and development funds had run out so the car was released with the V8 power-train and the more spartan interior although it was quickly apparent few owners took advantage of being able to hose out the mud.  Indeed, so skewed was the buyer profile to urban profiles it's likely the only time many ventured off the pavement was to find a good spot in the car parks of polo fields.  In something which must now seem remarkable, although already perceived as a "prestige" vehicle, for the first decade-odd, the Range Rover was not available with either air-conditioning or an automatic transmission.  However, if the rich were riding out the decade well, British Leyland (which owned Rover) was not and it lacked the capital to devote to the project.  Others took advantage of what proved a profitable niche and those with the money (or spending OPM (other people's money) could choose from a variety of limited-production and bespoke offerings including LWB (long-wheelbase) models, four-door conversions, six wheelers and even open-topped versions from a variety of coach-builders such as Wood & Pickett and low-volume manufacturers like Switzerland’s Monteverdi which anticipated the factory by a number of years with their four-door coachwork.

Rendez-vous à Biarritz, Vogue magazine, March 1981.  The eight page advertising supplement was for Lancôme and Jaeger fashion collections, the Wood & Pickett-trimmed Range Rover a "backdrop" which would prove a serendipitous piece of product placement. 

British Leyland was soon subject to one of the many re-organizations which would seek (without success) to make it a healthy corporation and one consequence was increased autonomy for the division making Range Rovers.  No longer compelled to subsidize less profitable arms of the business, attention was turned to the matter of a luxury model, demand for which clearly existed.  To test market reaction, in late 1980, the factory collaborated with Wood & Pickett to design a specially-equipped two-door model as a proof-of-concept exercise to gauge market reaction.  The prototype (HAC 414W) was lent to Vogue magazine, a crafty choice given the demographic profile of the readership and the by then well-known extent of women’s own purchasing power and influence on that of their husbands.  Vogue took the prototype to Biarritz to be the photographic backdrop for the images taken for the magazine’s co-promotion of the 1981 Lancôme and Jaeger fashion collections, published in an eight-page advertising spread entitled Rendez-vous à Biarritz in the March 1981 edition.  The response was remarkable and while Lancôme and Jaeger’s launch attracted polite attention, Vogue’s mailbox (which then received letters in envelopes with postage stamps) was overwhelmingly filled with enquiries about the blinged-up Range-Rover (although "bling" was a linguistic generation away from use).

Vogue's Range Rover In Vogue (HAC 414W) in Biarritz, 1981, all nuts on board or otherwise attached.  The model name was a play on words, Range Rovers very much "in vogue" and this particular version substantially the one "in Vogue".

Rover had expected demand to be strong and the reaction to the Vogue spread justified their decision to prepare for a production run even before publication and the Range Rover In Vogue went on sale early in 1981, the limited-edition run all closely replicating the photo-shoot car except for the special aluminum wheels which were not yet in volume production.  Amusingly, the triple-spoke wheels (similar to the design Ford had used on the 1979 (Fox) Mustang) had been a problem in Biarritz, the factory supplying the wrong lug nuts which had a tendency to fall off, meaning the staff travelling with the car had to check prior to each shoot to ensure five were present on each wheel which would appear in the picture.  Not until later in the year would the wheels be ready so the In Vogue’s went to market with the standard stylized steel units, meaning the brochures had to be pulped and reprinted with new photographs and some small print: "Alloy wheels, as featured on the vehicle used by Vogue magazine will be available at extra cost through Unipart dealers later in 1981".  British Leyland's record-keeping was at the time as chaotic as much of its administration so it remains unclear how many were built.  The factory said the run would be 1,000, all in right hand drive (RHD) but many left hand drive (LHD) examples exist and it’s thought demand from the continent was such another small batch was built although this has never been confirmed.  The In Vogue’s exclusive features were:

Light blue metallic paint (the model-exclusive Vogue Blue) with wide body stripes in two shades of grey (not black as on the prototype).
High compression (9.35:1) version of the V8 (to provide more torque).
Higher high-gear ratio (0.996:1) in the transfer box (to reduce engine speed and thus noise in highway driving).
Air conditioning
Varnished walnut door cappings.
Armrest between the front seats.
Map pockets on the back of the front seats (the rationale for not including the folding picnic tables so beloved by English coach-builders being the design of the Range Rover's rear tailgate had made it the "de-facto picnic table".
Fully carpeted luggage compartment.
Carpeted spare wheel cover and tool-kit curtain.
Picnic hamper.
Stainless steel tailgate cap.
Black wheel hub caps.

The "fitted picnic hamper".

Condé Nast would later describe the In Vogue’s custom picnic hamper as the car’s "pièce de résistance". which might have amused Rover's engineers who would have put some effort into stuff they'd have thought "substantive".  Now usually written in English as "piece de resistance" (masterpiece; the most memorable accomplishment of one’s career or lifetime; one's magnum opus (great work)), the French phrase pièce de résistance (literally the "piece which has staying power") seems first to have appeared in English in Richard Cumberland (1732–1811) novel Arundel (1789).  One can see the writer's point.  Although the walnut, additional torque and certainly the air conditioning would have been selling points, like nothing else, the picnic hamper would have delighted the target market.

Demand for the In Vogue far exceeded supply and additional production runs quickly were scheduled.  In response to customer demand, the most frequently made request was acceded to, the second series available with Chrysler's robust TorqueFlite automatic transmission, introduced at the same time as the debut of a four-door version, another popular enquiry while the three-spoke wheels became standard equipment and equipment levels continued to rise, rear-head restraints fitted along with a much enhanced sound-system.  In what was perhaps a nod to the wisdom of the magazine's editors, although a cooler replaced the hamper for the second run, for the third, buyers received both cooler and hamper.  The third series, launched in conjunction with the Daks autumn fashion collection at Simpson's of Piccadilly, included a digital radio, the convenience of central locking and the almost unnoticed addition of front mud flaps so clearly there was an understanding that despite the Range Rover's well deserved reputation as a "Chelsea taxi", the things did sometimes see the mud and ladies didn't like the stuff getting on their dresses as they alighted.  In 1984, as "Vogue", it became the regular production top-of-the-range model and for many years served in this role although, for licencing reasons, when sole in the US it was called the "Country").  For both companies, the In Vogue and subsequent Vogues turned out to be the perfect symbiosis.

Art and Engineering

Vogue, January 1925, cover art by Georges Lepape.

From the start, Vogue (the magazine) was of course about frocks, shoes and such but its influence extended over the years to fields as diverse as interior decorating and industrial design.  The work of Georges Lepape (1887-1971) has long been strangely neglected in the history of art deco but he was a fine practitioner whose reputation probably suffered because his compositions habitually were regarded as derivative or imitative which seems unfair given there are many who are more highly regarded despite being hardly original.  His cover art for Vogue’s edition of 1 January 1925 juxtaposed one of French artist Sonia Delaunay’s (1885–1979) "simultaneous" pattern dresses and a Voisin roadster decorated with an art deco motif.

1927 Voisin C14 Lumineuse.

One collector in 2015 was so taken with Pepape’s image that when refurbishing his 1927 Voisin C14 Lumineuse (literally “light”, an allusion to the Voisin’s greenhouse-inspired design which allowed natural light to fill the interior), he commissioned Dutch artist Bernadette Ramaekers to hand-paint a geometric triangular pattern in sympathy with that on the Vogue cover in 1925.  Ms Ramaekers took six months to complete the project and when sold at auction in London in 2022, it realized Stg£202,500.  There are few designers as deserving of such a tribute as French aviation pioneer Gabriel Voisin (1880–1973) who made military aircraft during the First World War (1914-1918) and, under the name Avions Voisin, produced a remarkable range of automobiles between 1919-1939, encapsulating thus the whole inter-war period and much of the art deco era.  Because his designs were visually so captivating, much attention has always been devoted to his lines, curves and shapes but the underlying engineering was also interesting although some of his signature touches, like the (briefly in vogue) sleeve valve engine, proved a mirage.

Voisin's extraordinary visions:  1934 C27 Aérosport (left), 1934-1935 Voisin C25 Aérodynes (centre) & 1931 C20 Mylord Demi Berline (right).

Also a cul-de-sac was his straight-12 engine.  Slow-running straight-12 (there is even a straight-14 which displaces 25,340 litres (1,546,000 cubic inches) and produces 107,290 hp (80,080 kW)) engines are known at sea where they’re used in (very) big ships but on the road (apart from some less than successful military vehicles), only Voisin and Packard ever attempted them, the former making two, the latter, one.  Voisin’s concept was simple enough; it was two straight-6s joined together, end-on-end, the same idea many had used to make things like V12s (2 x V6s) straight-8s (2 x straight-4s) H16s (two flat-8s, one atop another) and even V24s (2 x V12s) but the sheer length of a straight-12 in a car presented unique problems in packaging and the management of the torsional vibrations induced by the elongated crankshaft.  Straight-12s were built for use in aircraft (Bristol's Type 25 Braemar II in 1919 using four of them!) where the attraction was the aerodynamic advantage conferred by the small frontal area but as engine speeds increased in the 1920s, so did the extent of the problem of crankshaft flex and the concept was never revived.

1934 Voisin C15 Saloit Roadster (left) and the one-off Packard straight-12, scrapped when the decision was taken not to proceed to production (right).

The length of the straight-12 meant an extraordinary amount of the vehicle’s length had to be devoted to housing just the engine and that resulted in a high number for what designers call the dash-to-axle ratio.  That was one of the many reasons the straight-12 never came into vogue and indeed was one of the factors which doomed the straight-8, a configuration which at least had some redeeming features.  Voisin must however have liked the appearance of the long hood (bonnet) because the striking C15 Saloit Roadster (which could have accommodated a straight-12) was powered by a straight-4, a sleeve valve Knight of 2500 cm³ (153 cubic inch).  The performance doubtlessly didn’t live up to the looks but so sensuous were those looks that many would forgive the lethargy.  The concept of a short engine in a lengthy compartment was revived by Detroit in the 1960s & 1970s, many of the truly gargantuan full-sized sedans and coupes built with elongated front & rear structures.  At the back, the cavernous trunks (boots) often could swallow four sets of gold clubs which would have had some appeal to the target market but much of the space under the hood was unused.  While large enough to accommodate a V16, the US industry hadn't made those since the last of the Cadillac V16s left the line in 1940 after a ten-year run.  While one of the reasons the V8 had supplanted the straight-8 was its relatively compact length, that virtue wasn't needed by the late 1950s when, in all directions, the sheet-metal grew well beyond what was required by the mechanical components, the additional size just for visual impact to enhance the perception of prestige and luxury in an era when bigger was better.  Dramatic though the look could be (witness the 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix), the packaging efficiency was shockingly wasteful.

The Dart which never was

Using one of his signature outdoor settings, Norman Parkinson (1913-1990) photographed model Suzanne Kinnear (b 1935) adorning a Daimler SP250, wearing a Kashmoor coat and Otto Lucas beret with jewels by Cartier.

The image appeared on the cover (left) of Vogue's UK edition in November 1959, the original's (right) color being "enhanced" in the Vogue pre-production editing tradition (women thinner, cars shinier).  The "wide" whitewall tyres were a thing at the time, even on sports cars and were a popular option on US market Jaguar E-Types (there (unofficially) called XK-E or XKE) in the early 1960s.  The car on the Vogue cover was XHP 438, built on prototype chassis 100002 at Compton Verney in 1959; it's the oldest surviving SP250, the other two prototypes (chassis 100000 & 100001 from 1958) dismantled when testing was completed.  XHP 438 was the factory's press demonstrator and was used in road tests by Motor and Autocar magazines before being re-furbished (motoring journalists subjecting the press fleet to a brief but hard life) and sold.  Uniquely, when XPH 438 was first registered in England, it was as a "Daimler Dart".

More Issues Than Vogue sweatshirt from Impressions.

There was however an issue with the "Dart" name.  The SP250 was first shown to the public at the 1959 New York Motor Show and there the problems began.  Aware the little sports car was quite a departure from the luxurious but rather staid line-up Daimler had for years offered, the company had chosen the pleasingly alliterative “Dart” as its name, hoping it would convey the sense of something agile and fast.  Unfortunately, Chrysler’s lawyers were faster still, objecting that they had already registered Dart as the name for a full-sized Dodge so Daimler needed a new name and quickly; the big Dodge would never be confused with the little Daimler but the lawyers insisted.  Imagination apparently exhausted, Daimler’s management reverted to the engineering project name and thus the car became the SP250 which was innocuous enough even for Chrysler's attorneys and it could have been worse.  Dodge had submitted their Dart proposal to Chrysler for approval and while the car found favor, the name did not and the marketing department was told to conduct research and come up with something the public would like.  From this the marketing types gleaned that “Dodge Zipp” would be popular and to be fair, dart and zip(p) do imply much the same thing but ultimately the original was preferred and Darts remained in Dodge’s lineup until 1976, for most of that time one of the corporation's best-selling and most profitable lines.  Cynically, the name was between 2012-2016 revived for an unsuccessful and unlamented FWD (front-wheel-drive) compact sedan.

Punkess

Punkess (pronounced puhngk-es)

A feminine form of “punk”.

1976: The construct was punk + -ess.  The word was coined by fashion & pop culture writer Blair Sabol (b 1944) and appeared in the “Observations” column in the October 1976 edition of Vogue magazine.  Punkess is a noun; the noun plural is punkesses.

Vogue cover, October, 1976.

In coining “punkess”, Ms Sabol’s grammar was sound because appending the –ess suffix is the orthodox way to feminize a noun.  The -ess suffix was from the Middle English -esse, from the Old French -esse, from the Late Latin -issa, from the Ancient Greek -ισσα (-issa) and was appended to words to create the female form.   It displaced the Old English -en (feminine suffix of nouns).  The other often used suffix was–ette, from the Middle English -ette, a borrowing from the Old French -ette, from the Latin -itta, the feminine form of -ittus.  Properly applied, it was used to form nouns meaning a smaller form of something and thus related to –et, from the Middle English -et, from the Old French –et & its feminine variant -ette, from the Late Latin -ittus (and the other gender forms -itta & -ittum).  It was used to form diminutives, loosely construed.  Because of (1) the link with the Latin –itta (the feminine form of –ittus) and (2) the historic tendency to conflate diminutive forms (ie smaller, lesser, inferior) with “female”, the association of the use of the –ette suffix with feminized forms emerged and on some cases entered standard English (majorette (female drum major); usherette (female usher) etc).  The use became less common as gender-neutral language spread.

Vogue Observations (OB) page, October 1976.  In 1976, a pair of raw-hide, knee-high boots, hand-stitched in (just) post-Franco Spain, listed with a RRP (recommended retail price) of US$68 and for “darkening and waterproofing”, the purchase included a tin of ”Graza de Caballo (pig oil, goose grease, and essence of almond).”  Vogue remains an Oxford comma holdout.

So the grammar was (at least historically) sound but whether Ms Sabol’s choice was sociologically well-founded may to some have seemed dubious.  The word “punk” has enjoyed an extraordinary range of use since the seventeenth century and although its origin (in American English)  is murky, all uses thought forks of “punk” in the sense of “rotten wood dust used as tinder” (used thus since at least the late 1670s), evolving by the mid-nineteenth century to mean “something worthless”, personalized by 1910 to mean “an undesirable person (thus the link with petty criminals).  By 1976 however, what Ms Sabol (indirectly) was referencing was the “punk rock” movement which, musically, had actually been around for almost a decade but although the term “punk rock” had in the US appeared in the US pop-music press as early as 1972, it didn’t enter mainstream use until 1976-1977 when the industry (and there have been discussions about cause & effect) realized they had a marketable commodity to package.

An AI (artificial intelligence) generated female punk, who, were she IRL (in real life), might not have a Vogue subscription.

The punk persona of the 1976 punks was such that the female punk musicians stereotypically would have found the notion of “punkess” absurd; they were simply punks making their music.  Of course Ms Sabol was writing in Vogue, discussing not jarring music but the attitude of the women she called the harbingers of “punkess preakness”, those for whom “toughness and aloofness” was not “their trade, but rather feistiness and endurance”  In other words, punkness (for the Vogue readership) describes a kind of “selective attitudinal transference”.  It’s not correct to say critiques of language disparaging or dismissive of women didn’t exist in 1976, the point being that such objections tended then variously to be ignored or devalued, the critics marginalized but Ms Sabol’s crew of punkesses might have approved of the label; a generation earlier, there were those who would have called them “tough broads” so it may have seemed like progress.  Despite that, “punkess” never caught on although “punkette” was used by a number of publications, usually in the context of “young women who adopt the fashion aesthetic of the punk subculture”.

Punkess crooked Hillary Clinton iPhone 16 case by Harold Ninek.

“Punk” proved one of the more adaptable words in English, all traceable to the original sense of “something worthless”.  The re-purposing included (1) “pre World War I (1914-1918) bread of not the highest quality”, (2) “driftwood”, (3) “toxic or poor quality liquor”, (4) “a homosexual”, (5) within the homosexual community “a (usually weak, young) man kept by a man for sexual purposes”, (6) a “ineffectual or worn-out boxer”, (7) “insincerity” (which may have been an imperfect echoic of the slang “bunk”, (8) “Chinese insect repellent”, (9) “certain tobacco products”, (10) “some strains of cannabis”, (11) a “novice” at a trade (much used in the construction industry). (12) “a criminal” (historically much associated with petty crime and “juvenile delinquency”), (13) “decayed or rotted timber”, (14) “a foolish or absurd argument”, (15) a type of incense, (16) “a fungus (polyporus fomentarius etc) sometime dried for use as tinder”) (ie harking back to the seventeenth century original), (17) “a harlot or prostitute” (which gains linguistic respectability for having appeared in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602): “This punk is one of Cupid’s carriers…” & Measure for Measure (1604): “She may be a punk, for many of them are neither maid, widow nor wife”, (18) “used or discarded fruits & vegetables”, (19) a 1970s pop-culture philosophy described as “hip nihilism”, (19) “a photographer’s assistant”, (20) a clipping of “punk rock” or “punk rocker”, (21) “the fashion styles associated with punk rockers and their audiences” (labeled “aggressively dumb” by some who didn’t approve), (22) in pyrotechnics, “a stick coated with a slow-burning paste, used to ignite fireworks, (23) “poverty and the poor”, (24) (as a verb) “to obtain” (often with a hint of the illicit), (25) (as verb) “to puncture a tyre” and (26) “a young elephant”.  Under the Raj, a punkah (or punka) was “a fan, especially made of leaf or cloth and hung from the ceiling”.  Punkah was from the Hindi पंखा (paṅkhā) (fan), from the Sanskrit पक्षक (pakṣaka), from पक्ष (pakṣa) (wing).  Before the advent of electricity a punkah remotely was operated manually by a servant, known as the “punkah-boy” or “punkahwallah” (depending on age).  Wallah was from Hindi -वाला (-vālā) either in the sense of “pertaining to” or (which etymologists think more likely) “man in charge”.

Celebration of Spring at St. Paedophilia’s—The Annual Running of the Altar Boys (2002) by Pat Oliphant.

Australian-born US political cartoonist Pat Oliphant (b 1935) used the device of a little penguin as his alter ego and that penguin’s name was “Punk”.  Punk often appeared in Oliphant’s cartoons, making some wry comment or asking a question.  One of the most controversial pieces appeared as “Celebration of Spring at St. Paedophilia’s—The Annual Running of the Altar Boys” in which Punk says: “I’ll call the bishop”, receiving the answer: “The bishop has first dibs.”  Widely condemned by the hierarchy of the US church, some newspapers refused to print the cartoon and others didn’t add it to their more widely-distributed on-line editions.  Oliphant’s cartoons are now held in the collection of the National Library of Congress.

Of cyberpunks and cybergoths

Punk has been used as a prefix to create literally dozens of forms and punkitude (the quality or state of being a punk; punkishness; adopting or projecting a punkish persona) captures the flavor of many, the construct being punk + att(itude).  Also existing in many forms, the suffix –punk seems first to have been used in 1986 to create cyberpunk and it spiked in 1992 with the coining of steampunk (although some sources claim this was first seen in 1989).  It’s used to apply the aesthetic or (perceived) attitudes of the 1970s (and beyond) punk subculture (loosely defined) on genres previously unrelated.

A cyberpunk Lindsay Lohan sipping martinis with Johnny Depp and a silver alien by AiJunkie.

The youth subcultures “cyberpunk” and “cybergoth” had common threads in the visual imagery of science fiction (SF) but differ in matters of fashion and political linkages.  Academic studies have suggested elements of cyberpunk can be traced to the dystopian Central & Eastern European fiction of the 1920s which arose in reaction to the industrial and mechanized nature of World War I but in its recognizably modern form it emerged as a literary genre in the 1980s, characterized by darkness, the effect heightened by the use of stark colors in futuristic, dystopian settings, the cultural theme being the mix of low-life with high-tech.  Although often there was much representation of violence and flashy weaponry, the consistent motifs were advanced technology, artificial intelligence and hacking, the message the evil of corporations and corrupt politicians exploiting technology to control society for their own purposes of profit and power.  Aesthetically, cyberpunk emphasized dark, gritty, urban environments where the dominant visual elements tended to be beyond the human scale, neon colors, strobe lighting and skyscrapers all tending to overwhelm people who often existed in an atmosphere of atonal, repetitive sound.

Cybergoth girls: The lasting legacy of the cybergoth's contribution to the goth aesthetic was designer colors, quite a change to the black & purple uniform.  Debate continues about whether they can be blamed for fluffy leg-warmers.

The cybergoth thing, dating apparently from 1988, thing was less political, focusing mostly on the look although a lifestyle (real and imagined) somewhat removed from mainstream society was implied.  It emerged in the late 1990s as a subculture within the goth scene, and was much influenced by the fashions popularized by cyberpunk and the video content associated with industrial music although unlike cyberpunk, there was never the overt connection with cybernetic themes.  Very much in a symbiotic relationship with Japanese youth culture, the cybergoth aesthetic built on the black & purple base of the classic goths with bright neon colors, industrial materials, and a mix of the futuristic and the industrial is the array of accessories which included props such as LED lights, goggles, gas masks, and synthetic hair extensions.  Unlike the cyberpunks who insisted usually on leather, the cybergoths embraced latex and plastics such as PVC (polyvinyl chloride), not to imitate the natural product but as an item while the hairstyles and makeup could be extravagantly elaborate.  Platform boots and clothing often adorned with spikes, studs and chains were common but tattoos, piercings and other body modifications were not an integral component although many who adopted those things also opted to include cybergoth elements. 

Although there was much visual overlap between the two, cyberpunk should be thought of as a dystopian literary and cinematic genre with an emphasis on high-tech while cybergoth was a goth subculture tied to certain variations in look and consumption of pop culture, notably the idea of the “industrial dance” which was an out-growth of the “gravers” (gothic ravers), movement, named as goths became a critical mass in the clubs built on industrial music.  While interest in cyberpunk remains strong, strengthened by the adaptability of generative AI to the creation of work in the area, the historic moment of cyberpunk as a force in pop culture has passed, the fate of many subcultures which have suffered the curse of popularity although history does suggest periodic revivals will happen and elements of the look will anyway endure.

Polka

Polka (pronounced pohl-kuh or poh-kuh)

(1) A lively couple dance of Bohemian origin, with music in duple meter (three steps and a hop, in fast duple time).

(2) A piece of music for such a dance or in its rhythm.

(3) To dance the polka.

(4) As polka-dot (sometimes polka dot or polkadot), a dot or round spot (printed, woven, or embroidered) repeated to form a pattern on a surface, especially textiles; a term for anything (especially clothing) with this design.

1844: From the French polka, from the German Polka, probably from the Czech polka, (the dance, literally "Polish woman" (Polish Polka), feminine form of Polak (a Pole).  The word might instead be a variant of the Czech půlka (half (půl the truncated version of půlka used in special cases (eg telling the time al la the English “half four”))) a reference to the half-steps of Bohemian peasant dances; it may even have been a merger of both.  The dance first came into vogue in 1835 in Prague, reaching London in the spring of 1842; Johann Strauss the younger (1825-1899) wrote many polkas.  Polka was a verb by 1846 as (briefly) was polk and notoriously, the fabric pattern sometimes is mispronounced as "poke-a-dot".  Polka is a noun & verb, polka, polka-dot & polkabilly are nouns and polka-like is an adjective; the noun plural is polkas.

Lindsay Lohan in polka-dot dress, Los Angeles, 2010.

Polka-dot (a pattern consisting of dots (usually) uniform in size and arrangement) is used especially on women’s clothing (men seem permitted accessories such as ties, socks, scarves, handkerchiefs etc) and is attested from 1851 although both polka-spot and polka-dotted are documented in 1849.  

Why the name came to be associated with the then widely popular dance is unknown but most speculate it was likely an associative thing, spotted dresses popular with the Romani (Roma; Traveller; Gypsy) girls who often performed the polka dance.  Fashion journals note that, in the way of such things, the fad faded fast but there was a revival in 1873-1874 and the polka-dot since has never gone away, waxing and waning in popularity but always there somewhere.

In fashion, it’s understood that playing with the two primary variables in polka-dot fabrics (the color mix and the size of the dots) radically can affect the appeal of an outfit.  The classic black & white combination of course never fails but some colors just don’t work together, either because the contrast in insufficient or because the mix produces something ghastly.  Actually, combinations judged ghastly if rendered in a traditional polka dot can successfully be used if the dots are small enough in order to produce something which will appear at most angles close to a solid color yet be more interesting because of the effect of light and movement.  However, once dots are too small, the design ceases to be a polka dot.  It’s not precisely defined what the minimum size of a dot need to be but, as a general principle, its needs to be recognizably “dotty” to the naked eye at a distance of a few feet.

Why Men Like Straight Lines and Women Like Polka Dots: Gender and Visual Psychology (2014) by Professor Gloria Moss.

There’s also the sexual politics of the polka dot, Gloria Moss, Professor of Marketing & Management at Buckinghamshire New University and a visiting professor at the Ecole Superieure de Gestion (ESG) in Paris exploring the matter in her book Why Men Like Straight Lines and Women Like Polka Dots: Gender and Visual Psychology (Psyche Books, 2014, pp 237).  An amusing mix which both reviews the academic literature and flavors the text with anecdotes, Dr Moss constructs a thesis in which the preferences of men and their designs lie in the origins of modern humanity and the need for hunters to optimize their vision on distant horizons while maintaining sufficient peripheral vision to maintain situational awareness, threats on the steppe or savannah coming from any direction.  So men focus of straight line, ignoring color or extraneous detail unless either are essential to the hunt and thus survival, perhaps of the whole tribe.  By contrast, women’s preferences are rooted in the daily routine of the gatherer those millions of years ago, vision focused on that which was close, the nuts and berries to be picked and the infants with their rounded features to be nurtured.  From this came the premium afforded to responsiveness to round shapes, color contrasts and detail.  Being something of an intrusion into the world of the geneticists and anthropologists, reaction to the book wasn't wholly positive but few can have found reading it dull or unchallenging.  Of course, it won't surprise women that in men there is still much of the stone age but, for better or worse, Dr Moss concluded some of them belong there too.

Singer Ariana Grande (b 1993) and her equally famous “snatched high ponytail” in Fendi polka-dots, 2025 MTV Video Music Awards, UBS Arena, Elmont, New York, September 2025.

Over the last few decades, although the popularity on the catwalks would come and go, in the high streets shop-fronts or the on-line catalogues, polka-dots have never disappeared.  Despite that, in April 2025 Vogue magazine announced polka-dots were “making a comeback” for the (northern) spring & summer season by which it seems to have meant the look was returning to designer collections, having apparently been of late consigned to “Holland Park mums on the school run or brunching on the King’s Road”.  Thoughtfully, the magazine included the now obligatory trigger warning, this time urging caution on the trypophobic (those suffering from trypophobia (an obsessive or irrational fear of patterns or clusters of small holes)).  Noting the design’s history of association with the “prim and proper”, Vogue suggested the fabric could be “toughened up with leather” or “mixed with bold colour”, suggesting the striking juxtaposition of “a floaty polka dot dress with your most worn-in leather boots.”  In such matters, Vogue’s editors are the pros and say however it’s done, the trick is “fully to commit”.

Atonina Davydova in polka-dot summer dress.

Moscow-based pharmacy student Antonina Davydova is founder of the BTM (Big Tits Matter) movement, an institution not without critics in Russia but her response to adverse comments was very post-Soviet: “Let’s soak up the spirit of tolerance, comrades!  Let’s breathe in deeply the air of equality! Those who are different from the common standard must be free of oppression.”  An expression of such Trotskyist sentiments might once have had comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) order the subversive (1) be taken outside, put up against a wall and shot, (2) be sent to the Lubyanka building (KGB headquarters on Lubyanka Square, Meshchansky, Moscow) to be tortured to death or (3) be sent to the Gulag (the Soviet Union's vast apparatus of political prisons and forced labor camps) to be worked to death.

Antonina Davydova in pink jump-suit.

The inspiration for what was originally a single “BTM meme” intended to amuse came to her during discussions about the BLM (Black Lives Matter) movement that began in the US and between the two there are similarities in concept although BLM was triggered by something with serious consequences.  Ms Davydova the nature of those discussions: “We came to the conclusion that every person with features that are distinct from the majority (be it skin color, sexuality, or any other physical feature) always ends up having them used as a social value yardstick.  In this way, my ‘pronounced biological assets’ are likewise a trigger for people. My friends joked about me becoming the founder of an alternative movement for the rights of genetically ‘gifted’ women. And that is how that post materialized.”

Antonina Davydova watering her pink Impatiens walleriana (commonly known as impatiens or Busy Lizzie) with pink watering can.

While something that began modestly enough with no thoughts of drawing any sort of equivalence with BLM, as might have been expected in the social media age, even before BTM had gained critical mass in Russia, her photographs went viral beyond Russia’s borders, the first vectors the “usual suspects” Reddit and 9GAG.  The English-speaking market proved most receptive (“they welcomed me with open arms”) and she noted many comments were in the vein of a common sentiment in the era of “protest moment fatigue”: “Finally, a protest I can get behind!”  At that point, the Russian viewership spiked but there BTM was greeted with more restrained enthusiasm, accusations recorded by Ms Davydova including: “self-promotion using my breasts, looking for a sugar daddy, looking like a cow, predictions my breasts would sag as I age and that my protest is about nothing because nobody was violating my rights.”

Where BTM began: The original meme.

She might not have been taking things too seriously but the grievance industry was, as usual, offended.  Ms Davydova attributes unpleasant attitudes towards her to “people simply thinking in stereotypes”, Russians and others from the nations once constituent SSRs (Soviet Socialist Republic) of the Soviet Union having “retained a healthy dose of Soviet mentality, which compels them to feel shame and to shame those who stand out from the crowd.”  She however maintains a light-hearted view of it all, content to think her body “…is the work of the devil” and grateful not to have been alive in a time when she “…might have been taken for a witch and burned at the stake.”

Vincent Siriano's Spring/Summer 2026 Ready-to-Wear Collection at Macy’s Herald Square, New York City, September 2025.

US designer Vincent Siriano (b 1985) doubtlessly well knows fashion's classic maxim (one of many): “Don’t mix spots and stripes” but clearly he’s not afraid to disrupt what had become something of an orthodoxy.  It wasn’t always that way and in the 1950s and 1960s when houses often would introduce their lines in the well-upholstered surrounds of up-market department stores, it wasn’t unknown for spots & stripes peacefully to coexist, sometimes in quite striking color combinations.  Whether coincidental or not, Mr Siriano chose to debut his Spring/Summer 2026 Ready-to-Wear Collection at Macy’s Herald Square, now thought a hub more for tourism than fashion.  According to the designer, the nostalgic nod reflected his fondness for such places (or at least what they used to be) and his “ethos of inclusivity and accessibility in the fashion industry.”  Presumably, the store’s sponsorship money made it an especially good place to put a catwalk.

Vincent Siriano's Spring/Summer 2026 Ready-to-Wear Collection at Macy’s Herald Square, New York City, September 2025.

Whether or not with stripes, the black & white polka-dots were eye-catching but what attracted some were the gigot sleeves.  Variously implemented, gigots were billowingly full at the shoulder, diminishing in volume around the elbow before gradually becoming tight at the wrist; the French gigot translating literally as “leg” (and used usually of livestock), in industry slang they were known as the “leg of mutton sleeve”.  In the nineteenth century, the puffy style came and went several times before a few revivals in the 1960s & 1970s were thought to have forever buried the look.  One of the reasons for the sudden “extinction of 1896” was that stylistically it had nowhere to go but “bigger” and the gigot by then truly could be monstrous, some garments demanding 2½ yards (2¼ metres) of material.  The most extreme could retain their shape only with the use of internal whalebone hoops but the development of lightweight plastics and synthetic fabrics meant the gigot’s post-war resurrection was more manageable for both makers and wearers although their impracticality rendered the most voluminous a catwalk item with all that implies.  Mr Siriano including them in 2026 in a “ready-to-wear” collection shouldn’t be taken too literally but he's serious about the polka-dots and indications are they're back in numbers for another season.  It's a welcome return.