F‑utility: What the Humble Belt Teaches us About Anti-fashion

Words Eloise Hallo

Few orna­ments with­in our sphere of mod­ern fash­ion remain so self-evi­dent­ly util­i­tar­i­an as the con­cept of the hum­ble belt. For a long time, the belt was, in fact, not fash­ion at all, and — in a world where avant garde has had its way with most — the lone­ly belt sat, coiled, I’d soon­er like to think, as a last bal­last of puri­ty and dwin­dling lamp­light of ‘seri­ous­ness’. Yet, fash­ion and its cul­ture has, in recent years, made so intent its feud with func­tion­al­i­ty and beau­ty that, it may come as no great shock, the belt’s coiled peace was to be perturbed.

The first belts are thought to have gained trac­tion between 3300 and 1200 BC. Quite un-shock­ing­ly, they were worn as a means to secure cloth­ing to its wear­er, a virtue rope, thread, and twine had, by all accounts, been doing a good enough job of thus­ly. So, why the change? It was, as with any good trend, a sign of its time, for, far paled in com­par­i­son is the hum­ble gir­dle to what its era was tru­ly known for, Bronze. The Bronze Age would prove piv­otal to many impor­tant advance­ments: the wheel, irri­ga­tion, and even writ­ing as we know it. Most demand­ing of all, how­ev­er, was the exchange of twigged arrows for ingot spear­heads, the likes of which we were now capa­ble of mak­ing and — quite sud­den­ly — less fond of car­ry­ing; per­haps we are not so changed: humans had invent­ed fan­cy new weapon­ry and would need an out­fit to match!

Of course, by law of our brutish charm, with weapon­ry came war­fare, and the belt need­ed a makeover. Hurtling on to the Roman Empire, legion­naires and cav­al­ry­men wore belt­ed leathers and met­al as a form of armour, free­ing their hands for com­bat and, all the while, pro­tect­ing the more ‘del­i­cate regions’, shall we say, that their chain­mail did not. Trudg­ing on still to the Crimean War, as is com­mon­ly known, sol­diers wore corsetry to accen­tu­ate the impo­si­tion of their physique, a tac­tic that would be inher­it­ed by the Ger­mans in our first world war. Here, for the first time, belts, or stays, became fem­i­nised, as Aus­tralian and British troops pro­pa­gan­dised their Euro­pean adver­saries’ pro­cliv­i­ty for the under­gar­ment as a token of van­i­ty, prig, and, in many cas­es, effete — an affir­ma­tion that such troops would pose no real peril.

See here for how the fem­i­nine rela­tion­ship with corsetry would find legs, or rather, tor­sos of its own.

Despite their slan­der, war­wear across both sides of the con­flict involved belts of var­i­ous decrees and typolo­gies, encour­ag­ing vic­to­ri­ous loot­ers to col­lect such exot­ic pieces from their pris­on­ers of war. Soon, the mil­i­tary belt’s removal by cap­tor — so now tied to self image and suf­fi­cien­cy — became an emblem of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and strip­ping of man­hood and sol­dier­dom; a ver­i­ta­ble cut­ting off of the thief’s hands.

In the 20th cen­tu­ry, waists would drop on the com­mon pant, and, by the time troops returned from war, the belts with which they had become mil­i­tar­i­ly acquaint­ed would be com­mon­place com­mer­cial­ly. In the 1930s, belt-looped trousers would grace female wardrobes, dawn­ing the age of con­tem­po­rary cein­ture as we know it.

And for decades, inno­va­tion in the field lay dor­mant. Yet, it is, para­dox­i­cal­ly, this very dor­man­cy that would dic­tate the belt’s re-debut. Hav­ing been, per­haps, the sym­bol of same­ness with­in gar­men­try since its con­cep­tion, our trend to agi­tate would see to it kind­ly. Bring­ing us to the the­o­ry in ques­tion, ‘anti-fash­ion’ can be loose­ly under­stood as what­ev­er pop­u­lar fash­ion isn’t. This is to say, con­ven­tion­al fash­ions and anti-fash­ion exist in sym­bio­sis — as the lat­ter is a reac­tion to the nor­mal­cy inher­ent to its for­mer — to under­stand anti-fash­ion is to under­stand the tenets of typ­i­cal­i­ty that want to rebel. And, such anar­chism, my read­er need not be told, is nei­ther new nor spe­cif­ic to fash­ion or the art-umbrel­la under which it sits; it is the same agi­ta­tion that spurs on envi­ron­men­tal, polit­i­cal, and social change, and it is no sur­prise or acci­dent that the twain have re-mar­ried in recent years. In truth, anti-fash­ion has exist­ed for some time. The House of Chanel pro­posed it with mas­culinised col­lec­tions — new to their era — and grunge and punk move­ments would fol­low in sim­i­lar sentiments.

Through­out it all, anti-fash­ion has meant a rever­sal of pre­scrip­tion — to be anti-con­sumerism, uni­for­mi­ty, and objec­ti­fi­ca­tion — the three main foes to the desire to think and dress freely.

It fol­lows then that anti-fashion’s renais­sance is linked to some bub­bling social monot­o­ny, and as many his­to­ri­ans and fash­ion schol­ars con­cur, it has to do with our post-pan­dem­ic land­scape: why wear a belt when you’ve sel­dom a need for trousers, seems the going read on that. It is, of course, not so sim­ple. The pan­dem­ic was and con­tin­ues to be a jilt on our glob­al psy­che, both polit­i­cal­ly and indi­vid­u­al­ly, and its way of see­ing big con­glom­er­ates pros­per whilst, so pub­licly, quash­ing small busi­ness­es bred an anti-con­sumerist men­tal­i­ty and class-con­scious­ness, the likes of which had not been seen in the 2010s: the wan­ing years of the mono­gram and gaud­ed label.

So, mod­ern fash­ion became reac­quaint­ed with its live-in rival — anti-fash­ion — and one of the ways it did so was satire. This new satiri­sa­tion of any­thing-that-had-been-seen-before, of beau­ty and of pre­dictabil­i­ty, saw rise to pieces like MSCHF’s ‘Big Red Boot’ and Fecal Matter’s ‘Cor­po­rate Can­ni­bal Tie’, both of which sit as unapolo­getic com­ments on banal­i­ty and odes to spec­ta­cle and arguably to art.

Famous­ly, spec­ta­cle and util­i­ty share no eas­i­ly dis­cernible Venn, high­light­ing the flipped coin of anti-fashion’s virtue, use­less­ness. Just as Neiman Mar­cus’ Chloe King wears a belt­ed top (right), releas­es from Miu Miu and Diesel fore­told suit, boast­ing the belt as now entire­ly dec­o­ra­tive. Though it may seem a far cry, the posit of the belt from a his­tor­i­cal stand­point of whol­ly prac­ti­cal to whol­ly not so is, to me, the best indi­ca­tor of fashion’s past, present, and future.

The belt’s mod­ern re-con­cep­tions — and anti-fash­ion more wide­ly — tell us we’ve done away with the need for pur­pose. Some crit­ics will sure­ly tell you our nou­veau pen­chant for pomp is ruin­ing fash­ion, but I’d soon­er be of an era that wears belts as skirts than as sword-scab­bards, so I say let the naysay­ers naysay.