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.
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.
