Wednesday, May 7, 2025
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Paris Fashion Week: Louis Vuitton, Rick Owens and Paco Rabanne in focus

Sarah Townsend
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Paris Fashion Week: Louis Vuitton, Rick Owens and Paco Rabanne in focus

Having started the new decade with a pandemic, Australian wildfires, and a locust swarm in Somalia, the first three months of 2020 have been likened to Judgement Day. After a fashion week plagued by the concerns of its audience, Louis Vuitton’s closing show might have been expected to provide us with a sense of closure, a single look to define the present day, or to point us towards the future. Nicolas Ghesquière, however, did no such thing. 

His show, hosted by the Louvre, saw a backdrop of tiered seating reminiscent of a traditional theatre behind a glass screen, occupied by singers wearing Elizabethan style clothing. As the show began, they sang a Baroque symphony comprised of Nicolas de Grigny’s original seventeenth century composition and composer Bryce Dessner’s modern verses. This playfulness with time and composition was not confined to the backdrop but defined the show itself, with models walking the runway in outfits characterized by their anachronisms.  They wore romantic brocade jackets paired with sportswear and modern style colour blocked pants. Eighteenth century petticoats were layered over biker jackets, pinstripe blazers, and cowboy boots, creating a contrasting collage of history and style. 

With the ghostly backdrop of costumed singers and the quirky combination of time periods, Ghesquière created a spectacle that transcends time. He told British Vogue’s fashion critic, Anders Christian Madsen, that he “wanted different eras to be confronted with another one, our own. All of these ‘pasts’, embodied by a gallery of personality in period dress, converge in our present.” The brand described the show as a “tune-up in which personality takes precedence”, there is no “total look” but an “anachrony of genres” where “everyone can pen their own history”. 

For Louis Vuitton, this is no new ground. Looking back to the Menswear AW20 show in February, Virgil Abloh presented a similar mediation between past and present. Mimicking the nostalgia of childhood, he designed a show space with childlike versions of a tailor’s toolkit, a giant ruler and sewing kit. With different variations on the silhouette of a suit, his collection felt like a child dressing as a grown-up. Although the rise of COVID-19 has seen the Met Gala postponed, it is worth mentioning that the 2020 theme was to be ‘About Time and Fashion’, sponsored by Louis Vuitton. Perhaps Ghesquière’s show is a brand-wide statement of the power of personal style to transcend history. The modern woman, according to Ghesquière, can escape the troubles of the present day by using fashion to declare her identity and “pen” her “own history”. 

Without eighteenth century glamour and Elizabethan costume, Rick Owens romanticizes the past in his own way. His show was accompanied by a soundtrack comprised of David Bowie and Gary Numan, influencing the collection itself. “Seeing someone like [Numan] as a doomy adolescent in Porterville, his glamour gave me my direction, the way David Bowie did”, Owens declared before the show. It’s easy to see Owens’ inspiration in the reflective sunglasses and triangular blocked colours, reminiscent of Bowie’s iconic Ziggy Stardust make-up. The outfits were complete with knitted horned shoulder pads and sky-high platform boots with plastic heels, some of the models reaching a powerful height and appearing to come from a futuristic alien planet. 

Seeing Gwendoline Christie wear similar shoulder pads in the Rick Owens audience, you might be reminded of her Game of Thrones character Brienne of Tarth – a six-foot-three-inch female knight. While Owens used the power of the 70s to (literally) uplift his female models, Paco Rabanne reached back to the middle ages for female empowerment. Dossena used Conciergerie, a medieval Parisian palace as the backdrop, its gothic vaults echoing with the operatic music that accompanied the show. The models sported translucent slip dresses covered with chainmail accessories and large medallion necklaces, resembling both the armour of a medieval knight and the silhouette of a waif-like fairy. High, stiff turtlenecks and the recurring 1970s style platform heels completed most of the looks, metallic headdresses partially covering the models’ faces. Dossena tapped into the most elegant and artistic aspects of each era, using tassels and embroidered shawls to give the impression of medieval tapestry. He described the monastic setting and chainmail outfits as a way of expressing “femininity” as “an attitude that’s also violent”. “When you’re talking about religion, it’s always men in charge, so I wanted to give the charge to women”, he explained. With the tall platforms and elegant silhouette, Dossena transforms priest into priestess, medieval soldier into female warrior. 

At this point, you can’t help but think of the 2018 Met Gala: ‘Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination’. Now, it seems more relevant than ever. With Louis Vuitton’s ghostly singers, the otherworldly atmosphere of Rick Owens’ show and Paco Rabanne’s high priestesses, Paris Fashion Week seemed to be charged by the spiritual, acting as a place of refuge for its audience. Only one group could surprise us with this exact mentality – Kanye West’s Sunday Service. Just two hours before the Balenciaga show, over a hundred choir singers gathered in the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in matching beige outfits and Yeezy trainers. While 2020 has given us Book of Revelation style plague and pestilence, the choir director gave a brief speech to the audience while they performed a soulful celebration of the gospel – no mention of the coronavirus in sight. Are we being told that fashion is a way to escape present day trouble? Personal style, a way of regaining control? The collections are both ethereal and alien, whisking us away from present day earth and providing us with an uplifting sense of style. 

Pick up a Book! Rekindling a Love Affair

Eve Bennett
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Pick up a Book! Rekindling a Love Affair

I’ll throw my hands up and admit it – since leaving school almost two years ago, I’ve read less than five books for pleasure. And yet, perplexingly, reading takes up a sizable chunk of my time every single day at university. Every week I churn through two or three set texts, skim through seven or eight books of literary criticism, digest multitudes of academic articles for my various seminars, as well as reading hundreds of news articles and opinion pieces to keep myself in the loop. It should come as no surprise, then, that the last thing I feel like doing in my few hours of free time is picking up the latest bestseller in Waterstones. 

For me, each term at university is a blur of abstracts, conclusions and reading lists, with thousands of words swimming past my eyes on a daily basis. Granted, I love my degree, and I enjoy (most of) the reading I do for it, but I cannot help but feel that my desire to read purely for enjoyment and personal fulfilment no longer burns as strongly as it used to. Little by little, chapter by chapter, my brain has started to associate reading with academia, with deadlines, with assignments and exams. Each word I read is a step closer toward finishing an essay, each book I tick off my reading list a step closer to a glowing report at the end of term. In my mind, the amount I read directly correlates with my academic performance and not with my personal development, meaning that reading has slowly become a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

I often wonder what 13-year-old me would think if she could see me now. She spent hours and hours with her head in a book, devouring entire series in a matter of days and becoming so engrossed in each new fictional world she entered that she would often forget to eat – or even sleep for that matter. Now, even during vacations, I try to pick up a book and find myself unable to read a page without getting distracted. I attribute this in part to the fact that social media has destroyed my attention span, but I think the root of the problem lies in how little I see reading as something that can simply be for fun.

My free time is spent playing the piano, watching YouTube, going out for coffee with friends – anything that doesn’t involve looking at words on a page. After two months at university, that part of my brain is so worn out that the thought of reading any book makes me feel as tired as I feel at the end of 8th week, not to mention the fact that I have to spend most of my vac reading novels in foreign languages to prepare for the upcoming term. With so many other ways to fill my time that require only a fraction of this brainpower and concentration, even getting through a chapter of a novel feels like a monumental achievement. 

Suddenly, however, the outbreak of a global pandemic means that many of my usual outlets for entertainment have become unavailable: with cinemas, cafes and pubs being forced to close their doors and thousands of students like myself being confronted with the prospect of an indefinitely extended vacation, now feels like a perfect time to reassess my approach to reading. I find myself staring at a potentially unending expanse of free time for the first time in years – suddenly the pressures of vac reading are off the table (at least for now) and all of my plans are cancelled. I hope that this will give me the mental space to rediscover the pleasure of getting lost in a book. I’ve redownloaded Goodreads, made a questionably large order of books on Amazon, stocked up on snacks and tea, and I’m suddenly feeling as excited as 13-year-old me was on the day that the final Hunger Games book was released.

The pressures of university life and an ever-increasing offer of online entertainment (I’m looking at you, The Sims) are enough to make even the keenest bookworm fall out of love with reading. I hope that in the coming days and months, these unprecedented circumstances may lead to a dwindling flame being reignited. After all, as the world we are living in becomes increasingly similar to the worlds we read about in dystopian novels, there may be some escape to be found in reliving the Roaring Twenties, immortalised in the pages of Fitzgerald, or in immersing yourself in the romantic intrigues of the landed gentry in Austen’s works. Yes, it’s going to require locking my phone away and applying some serious discipline at first, but I cannot wait to begin tearing through novels with the same enthusiasm I tear through Netflix series. 

I’m beginning with a novel I’ve been meaning to read since I was sixteen, Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and I hope that amidst the walls of Helen Huntingdon’s Elizabethan mansion I will rekindle the love affair with reading that I left behind when I came to Oxford.  

New Oxfordshire service supports children’s mental health

Imogen Duke
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New Oxfordshire service supports children’s mental health

Oxfordshire Discovery College is a new mental health service supporting children and young people. It was created in response to research findings that rates of mental ill-health are increasing in children and young people, and existing services are struggling to cope with the high demand.

The college is piloting seven projects to test their model of helping young people with mental health. It will trial on age groups between 4 and 25. The first pilot is currently underway at Tower Hill Primary School in Witney.

The organisation states: “The college itself works alongside clinical or therapeutic approaches, and puts its energy into helping children and young people to learn about their mental health and wellbeing, make sense of their experiences, and find new strategies to cope. It provides a safe space where people can come together to explore what they’re feeling.”

Laura Harte, the founder of Discovery College, said: “There’s a sense that learning about or recovering from mental health problems will only ever be a painful or difficult process, but we at the college firmly believe that it can be different.

“Coming together with peers who understand your experience, and being supported by facilitators who have been there themselves, can be inspiring, uplifting, and create a real sense of hope. Our aim is to make sure that children across the county aren’t afraid to talk about their mental health and know exactly what they can do when things are feeling tough.”

Discovery College has collaborated with Oxford University students through the university’s micro-internship scheme. Interns compiled a research report on young people’s mental health and existing mental health services in April, and in the past few weeks students have led the service’s social media outreach.

The team is mostly volunteer-led, with two staff working on the Witney pilot. They are looking for volunteers to form a Working Group, made up of people with experience of young people with mental health problems and of professionals in youth and mental health sectors.

Oxford Discovery College can be found on their website oxfordshirediscoverycollege.wordpress.com and @oxdiscovery on Instagram and Twitter.

Comfort Films: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Sasha Mills
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Comfort Films: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Despite box-office failure, Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has managed to reach status as a cult classic both amongst fans of Wright’s work and a wider audience. An adaptation of the Bryan Lee O’Malley graphic novel series of the same name, the film follows 22 year old Scott Pilgrim (the forever awkward Michael Cera) as he takes on the seven evil exes of the woman of his dreams, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead).

Although the movie may appear at surface level to be yet another shallow addition to the video game film genre, it holds its own in an otherwise painfully done category. For one, it has a very specific kind of nostalgia; released in 2010, it is very much a product of its time. Graphic ringer t-shirts, indie rock, and a rising moment of hipster-ism, Wright’s film is a microcosm of contemporary pop culture. The film plays into the cultural fascination with everything remotely nerdy at the start of the 2010s, a trope best exemplified by the now widely despised sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World uses almost every stereotype of its time, with the socially awkward nerd, the gay best friend, and the manic pixie flower girl all central to its plot. Despite this, the film never fails to feel self-aware, subverting a stereotype every time it establishes one. This nuance is key to the joy of Scott Pilgrim, nothing is ever what it appears at face-value, and the film isn’t afraid to poke fun at the world that it creates.

The aesthetics of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, while adding to the cultural nostalgia, are a source of joy in themselves. Every detail of each frame feels thought through, and it’s impossible to catch every choice in one go, which means that the film is practically built for re-watching, with every screening revealing new details. It wholeheartedly embraces colour and special effects in a way that is joyful and sincere, revelling in visual play. Many recent films hold their own in terms of cinematography, with Wes Anderson and Christopher Nolan always providing hits, but Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is one of few films that uses visuals with equal value in both melancholy and action-packed moments.

The film has been criticised for prioritising pace and look over plot, but this misses that its visuals are integral to its charm. While Scott and Ramona’s romance may seem at times shallow and clichéd, I would argue that the film isn’t about a love story, but instead, the process of growing up and transitioning. Scenes between Scott and Knives blend into one another, displaying Scott’s inability to fully commit his attention to their relationship. Anyone that has experienced any form of depression knows the feeling of life passing you by, and the film’s visuals reflect this process in Scott’s life.

The melancholy frames of Toronto deepen the underlying unease in the film. To me, Scott’s quest is less about getting the girl, and more about trying to find meaning in a life that is, at the start of the film, portrayed as mundane and pretty much stagnant. Ramona’s quest is simply something to do, a distraction from the reality of still living opposite to one’s parents after graduating and being a mediocre bassist in a local band. It’s hard not to relate to the moments of meaninglessness that we see before Ramona’s entry, and the film’s ambiguous ending makes it unclear as to whether Scott’s distraction actually works.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is one of few films that feels like an honest attempt to portray the process of being stuck, unsure of where to go next. Many coming-of-age films try to tackle this feeling, but often end up on the route of overshadowing any real moments of honesty with happy endings of some form. Wright’s film, on the other hand, doesn’t quite give us that satisfaction, instead choosing to show moments of magic for what they really are: sparse, and often somewhat unreliable.

Review: Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Clementine Scott
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Review: Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Despite the recent post-#MeToo surge in the popularity of female-led films and films directed by women, Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire still manages to feel like a breath of feminist fresh air. Set in eighteenth century Brittany, the director’s second feature (following 2014’s Girlhood, a coming–of–age tale of the black community in suburban Paris) tells the story of portrait painter Marianne (Noémie Merlant) who is commissioned to paint the wedding portrait of reluctant bride Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) without her sitter’s knowledge, and the ensuing romance between artist and muse, which must inevitably end in premature separation. 

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the film initially is its total lack of male characters, which sadly remains a remarkable feature in a cinematic landscape where most films still struggle to pass the Bechdel test; when a man does appear, a non-speaking footman an hour or so in, it manages to grab the viewer’s attention and reveal how Sciamma has illuminated the perspectives of her heroines through the literal absence of the male gaze. And these perspectives feel refreshingly multi-faceted. For example, in the scene involving Marianne’s artistically conventional first attempt at Héloïse’s portrait (a flat work which strikingly fails to reflect the suppressed passion and courage conveyed in Haenel’s face), both Héloïse’s displeasure at not feeling truly seen by the woman she loves and Marianne’s destructive anger at her artistic failure are given full emotional rein on screen. Similarly, the symbol of Marianne’s initial desire for Héloïse, the latter woman’s silhouette with her dress on fire which gives the film its title, is visually powerful and destructive, and entirely independent of symbols of traditional female sexuality. Sciamma’s refusal to feature male perspectives not only grants the leads an emotionally complex love story, but also allows her to explore the supporting female characters as scenes with sparse yet revealing dialogue depict Héloïse’s mother’s (Valeria Golino) regretful, yet somewhat understanding, attitude towards her daughter’s reluctance to marry. There is also a memorable subplot about Sophie the maidservant’s (Luàna Bajrami) abortion, which resists the subject matter’s tendency to veer into tragedy or melodrama, and contains Héloïse’s visceral and symbolic command both to Marianne and to the viewer that we not look away from the process as it takes place.

Also central to the film is the idea of Marianne and Héloïse not only as lovers but as artist and muse. This theme also inevitably has feminist implications – Héloïse’s erasure of her portrait’s face in the work of Marianne’s predecessor is a violent reaction to a male artist’s interpretation of her, and there is a glimpse of the reality of a woman sharing her perspective in the art world during a gallery scene at the end of the film, when Marianne’s work is credited to her father. There are, however, some more general observations on the relationship between artist and subject; one of the film’s most touching and romantic moments comes during a portrait sitting after Marianne’s secret has been revealed, and she recounts the process of surreptitiously memorising Héloïse’s features whilst posing as her companion. Héloïse proceeds in turn to recall the mannerisms she has observed in Marianne, emphasising that the observed has become the observer, and that the artist-muse relationship is reciprocal. There is also a pleasing reinterpretation of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice running throughout the film, which views Eurydice as the musician Orpheus’ muse whom he chose to remember posthumously rather than save from the Underworld and marry, or as Marianne puts it: “he made not the lover’s choice, but the poet’s”. The culmination of this myth’s use in the narrative, with Marianne mirroring Orpheus and looking back at a ghostly vision of Héloïse in a wedding dress, is thought-provoking and visually haunting. With the film’s ideas about the relationship between artist and muse, it’s also interesting to note the real-life relationship between Sciamma and Haenel, which had ended romantically before the film was made but continues professionally. By playing with the layering of romantic and artist-muse relationships, relationships onscreen and off, and the relationship between actor and viewer, Sciamma invites us to consider what it means to have, and to be, an artist’s muse.

However, though the film may have profound things to say about art and the roles of women, Portrait of a Lady on Fire excels in the poignancy and universality of the love story at its centre. Motifs from the gothic genre – a solitary woman arrives at a geographically isolated house with a history of death (Héloïse’s sister died in an apparent suicide) and mysterious residents, and experiences an all-consuming forbidden love affair – remind the viewer of Rebecca or the work of the Brontë sisters and grant the film and its central romance a sense of grim foreboding. This idea that the love affair might not end well is echoed in the film’s cinematography, as the warm and spacious interior of the house where the lovers meet is contrasted with the wildness of the coastal scenes, and in its almost total lack of a score – music is only used at striking and foreboding moments, such as the rural dance scene at which peasant women chant ‘non possum fugere’, the Latin for ‘I cannot escape’. However, despite the love affair’s sense of dread and impermanence, Sciamma resists the temptation to have it end in tragedy. Instead, the women’s brief relationship is seen to be a happy memory rather than a source of misery later in their lives, as summarised in the film’s most quotable line, Marianne’s “don’t regret, remember”. In the closing scenes, Marianne and Héloïse experience two chance encounters several years later, which confirm, through clever uses of details from earlier in the film that ought not to be revealed in this review, that the women have emulated Orpheus and have prioritised the memory of one another over mourning the loss of the relationship. Portrait of a Lady on Fire has complex and deeply personal ideas to express about women and the production of art, and uses as a vessel for these ideas a love story that is defined by its warmth and by the freedom it grants as much as by its impermanence, and these universal qualities of the story are what may grant the film the labels of timeless and classic. 

Oxford Hub and City Council set up coronavirus volunteering scheme

Matthew Schaffel
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Oxford Hub and City Council set up coronavirus volunteering scheme

A campaign established by Oxford City Council and the Oxford Hub, “Oxford Together” has seen over 4000 volunteers sign up to help with the city’s response to the coronavirus. The Oxford Hub has now focused all of its efforts on helping those affected by the virus, with its normal volunteering activities suspended as a result of the outbreak.

The volunteer campaign currently consists of 3 key areas. These include providing support to neighbours as “street champions”, doing phone-in check-ups on those isolating, and completing shopping and other practical tasks on behalf of others. Additionally, some volunteers are helping to distribute food via community centres.

Emma Anderson, COO of the Oxford Hub, said to Cherwell: “Buying milk or food, taking the dog out, putting the bins out – these are all simple, easy things to do that people who are self-isolating, or at high risk, are not able to do. We are asking people to step forward and let us know if they are willing to join the movement and support vulnerable people with small acts of kindness as the public health situation develops.”

Sara Fernandez, CEO of the Oxford Hub, added: “It’s time to get together to ensure we can provide support to the most vulnerable in our communities, and make sure that we are looking out for one another during this difficult time. It’s essential that we work together right now to protect those who are most at risk from coronavirus.”

On Thursday the City Council outlined its response to the outbreak. Local Response Hubs will now act as the single point of contact for those who need to request food bank support, medicines, or mental health advice.  According to the council, work had already begun on this prior to the government’s announcement on Tuesday 24th March, and the city’s response is now ready. Five Local Response Hubs have been set up across Oxford, covering the northern, southern, eastern, western and central regions of the city.

Councillor Marie Tidball, Cabinet Member for Supporting Local Communities, commented: “It’s vital that we support the most vulnerable at this difficult time. The Contact Centre and the Hubs have been set up in a matter of days to make sure that those people are supported, and to coordinate the fantastic community response in a coherent way.

“This has been a huge effort on the part of all involved, and I’m grateful to all our staff and partners, including the County Council, pharmacies, food banks and other agencies, voluntary and charitable organisations, and businesses, who have so willingly and rapidly completely changed their ways of working to make this possible.”

Those who want to volunteer can sign up to be a Street Champion or Phone Champion via the Oxford Together website. If a member of the public knows of someone in need of support, or is in need of general support themselves, they can refer to the practical support or phone-link support posted on the Oxford Together website, www.oxfordtogether.org

Those wishing to contact their Street Champion directly, for help with shopping, a daily phone call for the isolated, and to connect with online groups, can visit www.oxfordtogether.org/postcode-lookup/ 

For those in more urgent need, or those particularly vulnerable owing to age, health, or mental health issues, the City Council’s Contact Centre team is available on 01865 249 811 or an online form is available at www.oxford.gov.uk/CommunityAssistance

If you or someone you know has been identified as high risk and has no support network, contact the dedicated team on 01865 89 78 20 or email [email protected]

Image Credit to Oxford City Council / Wikimedia Commons. License: CC-BY-SA-4.0.

Season Zine – Championing Women in the football-fashion conversation.

Abigail Hodges
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Season Zine – Championing Women in the football-fashion conversation.

Season Zine is the publication leading the conversation around a series of modern day economic, political and social discussions regarding the relationship between fashion and football. The publication focuses on exposing the unseen members of the football world; not only women but also the LGBTQIA community, the BAME community, the new generations and old. It’s about understanding the lived experience of each and every person that is involved in the football narrative, for Season shows how football (which is ingrained in our national psyche and culture) can act as a tool for connection between various groups of people in society and touch on topics ranging from issues of national emergency such as the climate crisis (see Issue 7) to issues of local importance. Season Zine seeks to elevate and champion underrepresented groups that are a complete part of the overall picture.

Felicia Pennant, Editor and Chief of Season, has an incredibly rich and diverse understanding of the fashion industry. In creating this magazine Pennant seamlessly blends a deep love for fashion with a personal engagement in football, and its underrepresented female fan base. In doing so Season Zine represents the ‘fashion-football connection’. 

In the Sports Bar in Clapham I meet with Felicia to get to understand how Season Zine came about, and to elucidate its true message. I seek to uncover how Pennent’s experience as an avid Chelsea Fan, alongside her deep understanding of the fashion industry, spurred her to set up Season in an attempt to highlight the importance a relationship which is present between women, football and the fashion world.

How did Season Zine all begin?

The idea behind season is to counter the modern male, pale and frankly, stale football culture. And so, I sought to create a Woman’s football zine that champions women first. This is for fans, women that play, but also, importantly, women that do not. For the majority of women that are in football do not play and we do not want to limit or isolate those women. 

Is the magazine just for women?

No. The reason the magazine has a neutral name is that I didn’t not want to isolate men. There are lots of great, supportive men involved behind the scenes who support womens football – but there just isn’t the representation for women. (See ‘He for She’ Issue Five). Currently, it is not a fair battle of the sexes in football, it is just men. We want to empower women to come and do things and give them to room to play. 

Why football, why now?

Football can be used as a lens to talk about different issues in society. Period poverty for instance. There is a great campaign in Scotland for provide sanitary products for all clubs, highlighting a major issue in society in general. This is an example of a wider conversation that can be made accessible through the lens of football. And more than that, we highlight issues of sustainability, climate change, extinction rebellion, Israel, Veganism, beauty, Qatar and Nigerian football kit! Are people in Nigeria benefitting that their countries shirt is a comical item? Football lets people think about things slightly differently. Season looks at how all these things can be linked to football. Yes football is a sport, but its so much more than that. It is linked to nationalism, and links people to where they come from. You may not call yourself a football fan but if you are proud of England, you’re into football. I’m interested to see if Brexit has an effect. But yes, as you can see, through football we are given a lens, and a gateway because we have a unifying principle in that we are all experiencing the same thing. It is just a different way of thinking about it. 

Can you tell us the story of how you yourself got into football?

I was Twelve and watching Euros 2004. Greece were a massive underdog in the finals, with Portugal being the far and beyond favorites to win. I loved the Soap Opera of it all. It is a constant drama. Chelsea is my nearest team and I wanted that drama all the time. I am one of three daughters to my Dad, and I went to him and said, “Dad I want to follow football”. It became our thing. And then… we just kept winning. In football there are so many highs, so many heart breaks. I’m really emotionally attached. And it’s crazy to me that what I am moaning about in football can mean nothing to someone else. That annoyance when we don’t do well. That joy when the ban gets lifted. I mean I love going to the club shop and just looking at our trophies. 

Who is your biggest idol in terms of Chelsea?

Its hard to say just one, but I met Frank recently and I love him. I didn’t want to sound super uncool, how do you tell someone how much you love them without coming off weird? But come on its Lampard – What a legend! I was gutted when he went to City, and so sad when he scored against us. My Dad was like “he should of missed it on purpose”. But I guess they can’t do that, right? Chelsea became an identity. I am thatfriend, I need to watch it! I mean, I even had blue in my hair when they won the champions league. I just had a feeling. 

And Women’s football? How did you come to it through your engagement with the Chelsea Men’s team?

That I came onto later. I support Chelsea, and my team win. They do well. With the men’s team, I was like “I am not going to get a Jersey till they win”. And there were so many years of almost, of being out played, of ‘John Terry Slips’, and then we won! 

Anyway, I wrote my thesis on ‘Suits, shoots, and metro sexuality’ to explore ideas of masculinity in football and how footballers are portrayed in fashion shoots. In assessing that I spent some time at GQ and gained access to Conde Nast archives. I was looking at people such as Héctor Bellerín and a couple of footballers who have great style. Players have been more experimental, check out Dominique calmer – The Everton players are on it!  So, fashion had this great place in football, fashion capitalises on the fame of football. But there were no women in it – beyond being a WAG. I mean there was one great shoot of Tim Moore and Bobby Moore. But beyond that, there just was not a trail for women. If you googled women in football, you just come up with “sexiest World Cup album”. This is such a minority view of women in football. Oh, and there really was not anyone of colour. I felt really unrepresented. And as a woman who is into football, why am I being underrepresented?

Is this why you started Season, to represent women like you, real women who are into football and its surrounding culture?

So, in 2016 I started Season, I don’t want ‘Sexiest fans’ to be the only image when you google women’s football. Through Season I have met so many women that were into football. These women are creative, and doing great things. We have a different way of doing things at Season. I had seen ‘Girl Fanzine’ by Jackie, who was photographing women going to games. But this is still only a certain type of women. Not everyone can afford to go to games and access is difficult. It is so expensive, and so I knew that so much more could be done.

Why is Season Zine different from similar publications?

I love the creative editorial approach. This was something that you can see in Green Soccer Journal. James (Roper) had a Burberry background. It was the same cross-section. Season is a zine because its fan made “by fans for fans”, but my background is magazines. I know we live in the internet age, but with print, something stays forever.  With season, you can touch it. It is a physical thing. And I have worked at so many magazines, so I knew what I wanted to achieve. I am qualified journalist who loves fashion. And I have worked at every element of fashion; behind the seasons, at fashion week, fashion selling, marketing, PR… you name it. I am always trying to be diverse, and I think that is so important in having a broad view. And all that experience pools into Season. This is a fashion-football connection. 

So how are we defining this, as someone who studies fashion? Is football-fashion in terms of trend setting, or do we mean design?

Niome (Accardi) who works for different sportswear brands would say that “football fashion doesn’t just mean kits”. Before it was definitely lead by men, but football is a way for people to connect. There are footballers modelling sportswear of course, for example for JW Anderson or Woox couture, but Fashion references football a lot too – look at the catwalks, the Jerseys, the typography, the community aspect. At least one show a month will reference football in some way. Trends are being influenced by players. However, before it was definitely lead by men. But look at Megan Rapinoe or Leah Cathrine Williamson, female football needs to utilise this! It is about showing what there already is to be seen, so that we can talk about the fact that there is so much more than can be done.

Are England leading the story?

No. What are the English players doing? They have won so many world titles, I mean if England had not won the world cup we would be having different conversations right now. But I think its plateaued, and I think that we need to reenergise. I want to showcase people that stand for something. Players in England are not clear about what they stand for, but take a look at say, Megan Lapino. She tells you, “I am gay”, “Fuck trump”, “I have purple hair”, “I love it”. It needs to be clear. If more players could do this we would have a different market and different space here. Take a look at American culture. The sports culture looks at what the winners have to say. It is not that they have a more open culture but there is more investment in America. In womens football in Britain we need to push for renewed investment and individuality.

What is your major current conversation?

Sustainability. Climate change is real so how can we make womens football sustainable? What about plastic, veganism and Extinction Rebellion and ? There are so many football jerseys every season and so much fashion waste. There are many different avenues to explore and delve into. We ourselves are a bi-annual issue and we want to look at soothing that is timely and going to last. We want to look at how football can be used as a tool to help with inequalities. (See issue 7)

What about the future? What do the next five years look like for Season?

I have one aim: keep it going. It is not easy to self publish, and beyond the physical stuff we want to keep telling stories, fashion-football-stories. We want to continue to celebrate and empower women in football by asking the key important, and uncomfortable, questions. Although women are more visible it can still be narrow, what about the women in their 40s / 50s / 60s? What about me? I am Thirty in 2021! Everything is geared for the future but lets include all groups in that future. So yes, we want to keep telling the stories, to hold people to account, and to have an individual and an international outlet. We have a network beyond our team now, and so Season is a platform to showcase this conversation. It is an authentic record of the moment in time that we are in.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: Responding to Iran’s ‘hostage diplomacy’

Louis Kill-Brown
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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: Responding to Iran’s ‘hostage diplomacy’

Between 2016 and 2017 the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office provided consular assistance to over 23,000 British citizens caught-up in trouble abroad; in any given year some 6,000 of those will find themselves imprisoned. Thousands of these Britons will have travelled overseas to countries with unfamiliar, often conservative laws and marked cultural differences only to find themselves in police custody and often held in dire conditions. In the vast majority of cases, this is a result of either genuine ignorance or a deliberate disrespect for local law, or of universally criminal behaviour that would just as likely have landed them in a cell at home. None of this applies to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Nazanin’s arrest had as much to do with EU sanction negotiations, Cold War-era politics and the perennial arrogance of Western foreign policy as the now Oxford-educated Sandra Gregory’s infamous imprisonment in Thailand had to do with drug trafficking. In other words, the 41-year old British-Iranian is a political prisoner, plain and simple. This is a truth that even the British government—whether through strategy or lack of impetus—refused to outwardly recognise until 2019, when she was finally granted diplomatic protection. This status—distinct from diplomatic immunity—represents a legal recognition that her imprisonment had little to do with the individual and everything to do with her nationality. It effectively acknowledges her a chess piece in a geopolitical game.

Her story is well-known: a dual Iranian-British citizen, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in Tehran in 2016 whilst boarding a flight home to London, following a visit to her parents with her infant daughter. After a show-trial before a secretive and highly politicised Iranian court she was falsely accused of espionage and condemned to five years in the city’s infamous Evin prison. As ever, there is more to the story: the 41-year old’s detainment is embroiled both in current geopolitical events and in the history of UK-Iran relations.

In recent years, this relationship could have been described somewhat optimistically as fraught. The primary sore point (of many) is predictable: money. In 1971 the United Kingdom entered into a major arms deal with pre-revolutionary Iran, receiving £450 million in payments for military equipment produced by British firms. The vast majority of that equipment never arrived. Politically, the reason is fairly simple: Iran’s regime changed in the hugely consequential revolution of 1979 and Thatcher’s Conservative government treated the Gulf state’s new hard-left leadership with suspicion and—perhaps more pertinently—so too did the Carter administration in the US. In a move that smarted as much of derisive colonial arrogance as it did of dodgy phone-shop dealings, the Iron Lady’s government pulled the plug on the order, sold the remaining equipment to Iran’s regional nemesis, Iraq, and—crucially for Nazanin’s story—kept the money.

Fast forward several armed conflicts in the Gulf, a 2002 arbitration ruling in Iran’s favour and numerous disastrous Iranian Revolutionary Guard-Royal Navy clashes and—as of March 2020—the debt remains unpaid. The UK government paid the balance into a court-supervised, frozen account following the 2002 ruling, but refused to transfer it on to the Iranian government, citing now long-standing financial sanctions imposed on the Republic of Iran by the EU. Just months before Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s arrest in 2016, the Gulf nation established a seemingly effective precedent of ‘hostage diplomacy’ in order to attenuate a similar financial dispute with the US, successfully extracting a $400 million debt from the Obama administration, flown to Tehran in cash the day before the release of 5 similarly arbitrarily held American citizens.

With that in mind, the wood beyond the trees of Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s detainment, and that of four other British-Iranians like her, begins to come into sight. The problem in Iran’s recourse to what is effectively ‘hostage diplomacy,’ however, is that EU sanctions had frozen Iranian assets in Europe and banned the transfer of funds, meaning that, until recently, both Downing Street’s hands and its purse strings were tied. Events have accelerated in recent weeks and along with Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s temporary release on house-arrest, we have seen this week’s hearing of Iran’s debt case in the UK court of appeal, the uncontrolled spread of COVID-19 within Iran, the politically explosive assassination of Qasem Soleimani and, of course, the UK’s exit from the European Union.

At the most basic human level, we can all sympathise with the 41-year old’s horrific experiences: prolonged separation from her family, severe trauma, physical mistreatment and her exposure to the coronavirus, all whilst living under dire conditions in the Iranian prison system. Yet this story is likely to end the way it began, with Nazanin as a person being far less important to the Iranian regime than Nazanin as a valuable piece in a geopolitical jigsaw puzzle. Ultimately, politics imprisoned her, and it will be politics that allows her to return home.

Indeed, if she does return home, the UK government will need to consider what lessons can be learned here. Rightly or wrongly, principle almost always plays second fiddle to pragmatism in geopolitics and it is likely that, following Nazanin’s return home, relations between Tehran and London would improve. This seems unavoidable given the general desire in Whitehall to avoid a return to 2011-15, a period defined by closed embassies and diplomatic radio silence between the two countries. With that said, the Iranian government has demonstrated a nefarious disrespect for the distinction between the personal and the political. Tehran has illustrated time and again that it is willing to prey on individuals in order to hit at foreign governments. International Relations theorists often speak in terms of Idealism and Realism: it is a reality that political dealings with Iran have the capacity to put individual British citizens—especially those with dual citizenship—in serious jeopardy. Wrong though that may be, government must accept this, be realistic and place the safety of individuals at the heart of its policy making.

But again, in real terms, what does that actually mean? In the first instance, policy on Iran must be preventative, it must mitigate the risk to individuals: the UK’s debt must be settled, in some form, as a matter of priority. Any ongoing dispute of this kind clearly poses a real and demonstrable threat to British citizens travelling in Iran. The Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace, has suggested that this might be achieved by providing the equivalent sum in humanitarian aid. If agreed, this solution would contribute to the wellbeing of both Iranians and Britons alike, but Brexit seriously undermines of the UK’s use of EU sanctions to justify excluding cash payments, so whether or not Tehran would look kindly on any quid pro quo aid arrangement seems uncertain.

Failing prevention, however, looking across the channel to Emmanuel Macron’s government may provide solutions: through a combination of leveraging her influence in mediating US-Iran talks and an agreed prisoner swap, France—which has no outstanding debt to Iran—was able to secure the release of Sciences Po’s Professor Fariba Adelkhah within just nine months. Tehran offered London a similar arrangement for Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s last year, but to no avail. Prisoner exchanges such as this, although some may voice moral objections, are the only proven way of successfully mitigating Iranian aggression towards individuals. In principle, prisoner exchanges with Iran would mean operating on Tehran’s diplomatic and moral plain, by employing individuals as devices in bilateral political games. But once a political prisoner has been taken, such principles surely should bow to the pressing reality of the situation.

In real terms, if we are to avoid further cases like Nazanin’s, government must put idealistic principles aside—prisoner exchanges speak to Tehran in a language it understands. Like many of those 6,000 Britons who find themselves imprisoned overseas each year, the UK government must, when dealing with countries like Iran, be more willing put its own values aside and conform in the interests of safety.

Friday Favourite: War and Peace

Elba Victoria Slámečkova
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Friday Favourite: War and Peace

In this Coronavirus season, existing dystopian novels have suddenly become “prophetic”. The world may be grinding to a standstill, but Generation COVID can’t while away that time with the same “aimless dissipation” and extravagances that our post-war predecessors did. It’s a lot harder to love in the time of Corona, and a look at the pasta shelves of the nation’s supermarkets reveals that the phrase “Hunger Games” is hitting closer to home than anyone would like. How are we to pass the time, and tear our eyes away from the constant morale-breaking news that does nothing but feed us the same information several times a day?

The answer is reading. To some, the thought of reading will be hard to stomach after eight weeks of study. For others, reading for pleasure may be a welcome relief. Even then, the thought of reading for pleasure can feel too indulgent, when surely we should be revising for next term. But these are extraordinary times, and we have no idea what the next few months will bring. So, as we embark on what is already a generous vacation, and look forward indefinitely to the prospects of self-isolation and social distancing, I think if we’re going to commit to anything, it might as well be a good novel. Times like these call for more than a desultory pastime, so cast away the pool-side paperback, and pick up the life-changing experience that is Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. 

To read Tolstoy’s classic is to be thrust into moments of life and to be absorbed in a reality so vivid that it feels almost like your own. In fact, when I look back on the summer after my final secondary school exams, I think of it as “the summer I read War and Peace.” We were inseparable – I read on the sofa, in bed, at my desk, carried it to various parks, Monaco, the Italian Alps, and barely had strength to hold it on the beach when I was struck by serious illness. I found myself invested in and identifying with so many of the characters, despite the novel taking place two centuries ago. 

The spiritual and intellectual journey of Pierre Bezukhov from confused debauchee to prisoner and finally wise family-man is particularly touching, as is Natasha Rostova’s enduring vitality or Princess Marya’s obsequious meekness, which made me cheer her on towards the happy ending she deserved. The most poignant moment for me is when Prince Andrei learns what ‘divine love’ is, and finally realises that even under the most extreme conditions he can love all humans indiscriminately, even Anatole Kuragin. 

In reading the novel I not only experienced the beauty of the transient everyday, with its infinite moments of fleeting emotion, but also I saw something greater – individual life as part of the universal web of history and humanity. And that is the kind of living into which readers of great literature have the privilege to be immersed – life heightened beyond ordinary comprehension.

And when it was over, I felt numb, like I’d lost a friend.

If it is your first time reading it, you really ought to go from cover to cover and let the whole effect wash over you, though of course some will be more taken by the eventful domestic lives of the Rostovs, and others intrigued by what really happened at the battle of Borodino. Indeed, War and Peace has immense historical value as well as literary, for Tolstoy himself was a meticulous historian, to which much of the novel and his research for it attests.

Don’t be intimidated by the size and weight of the novel – read it in little chunks; there is no need for it to be burdensome if you regularly devote reasonable amounts of time. Nor should it interfere with your studies, and it can take you through all six weeks or more if you wish. I loved the Peaver and Volokhonsky English translation, which conveys the simple, homely eloquence of Tolstoy’s style, but any decent one in your native language will suffice, although the original Russian is of course preferable if you are lucky enough to speak the language. 

In short – read it. Or read it again. It is a gift that keeps on giving, and one that we could definitely use at a time when we are so paralysed that it feels so hard to just live. And if I learnt anything reading this novel, it is that you really can live through literature. We will get through this pandemic. And until then, know that every cloud has a silver lining – just ask War and Peace.

Feeling inspired? War and Peace can be read for free on Project Gutenberg and is available on Audible. The writer Yiyun Li has also started a virtual book club – Tolstoy Together – aiming to finish War and Peace during the period of isolation, as a community of like-minded people. You can check it out here.

Review: The True History of the Kelly Gang

Charles Pidgeon
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Review: The True History of the Kelly Gang

Ned Kelly (born in 1854, died on the gallows in 1880) is the ultimate Australian anti-hero. As ubiquitous Down Under as Robin Hood is in the UK or Billy the Kid is in the States, Kelly has a vivid life story, a legendary status, and a long history of cultural representations. Justin Kurzel’s new film, The True History of the Kelly Gang, does not sit passively within the long legacy of Kelly mythology. Instead, it suggests that we’ve reached a point in the myth’s life-cycle that calls for questioning and agitation. In other words, it was the queerest, most hypermasculine depiction of Aussie folk lore I’ve ever seen.

The way that the Kelly gang use the traditional Australian ideals of “mateship” (“You’re my brother”) to both support each other and push each other to violent and angry actions is disturbing precisely because it epitomises a particular strain of virile homosociality. Tipping towards homoeroticism, aggression, and unconditional love, the film’s portrayal of masculinity is vivid and knotty. Most striking is George Mackay’s Kelly. Emphasising the boyishness of Kelly (he was only 25 years old when he was hung on the gallows), this version of Ned is wild and frenetic. 

With the way the story traces Ned’s rise, the film feels more like a bildungsroman than a folktale, complete with the difficult pangs and pains that arise from growing up in poverty and isolation in the bush. However, for all of its youthful punk iconography, my worry is that the film gnaws at something without quite knowing what it wants to do with it. I fear that maybe, rather than being intentionally directionless, the film lost a bit of direction.

There is a full battery of words that I find myself reaching for: coarse, raw, dirty, wild, rough, violent—the list goes on. These risk falling into the slightly hackneyed register of terms used for art house films; slightly too adjacent to the overused “gritty”. So instead, I will speak about the version of Kelly I held walking into the cinema, and the version of Kelly that arose before me on screen. 

In year 5 of primary school, we did a term on the Australian Gold rush of the late 19th century. We played a classroom game where you were assigned characters on the goldfields and tried to seek a fortune. In the second last week of the game, the principal of our school dressed up as a bushranger and “robbed” all our gold. We were delighted – it was one of the stand out moments of the year.

In the year of university I did in Australia, I was in an original Ned Kelly musical. It was filled with folk ballads and pub songs and the sort of baroque pathos of Les Mis. It glorified the Ned Kelly that my primary school principal also represented: traditionally masculine, true blue, and, well, a bit of a hero.

Kurzel’s film knows the crowded legacy within which it is operating. Depictions of the Kelly mythos are omnipresent in Australia, and have a long history on screen. In fact, the history of film itself is born with Kelly: the UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register lists the 1906 film The Story of the Kelly Gang, as the world’s first full-length narrative feature film. 

Like the fictionalised book by Peter Carey that the film is based on, Kurzels film chooses to sidestep the most popular and well-known elements of the Kelly myth. The famous bank robbery is one very brief component of a larger psychodrama. It eschews the idea of a good bloke Australian lumberjack with a metal helmet and a penchant for robbing banks. These ideas of Kelly all feel “safe”, simply through their repetition and folkloric quality: they are artefacts of a time that is not ours.

In contrast, The True History of the Kelly Gang, with its striking set pieces, becomes a fantasia, defying the genre of “historical film” in order to speak to our current moment. The scene of the metropolitan Australian gentry – all bedecked in elaborate dress and candlelight, watching a semi-nude Kelly bare-knuckle boxing – is electric. Mackay’s performance is nothing short of astounding, with all its boyish, scrappy, sinewy angst. And it’s here, when the film pits the tough rural life of early white Australia against the debauchery of the transplanted British governing class, that the film is at its most compelling.

This British governing class is searingly portrayed by Nicholas Hoult as Constable Fitzpatrick. He has a mild-mannered yet dangerous sort of masculinity. He draws power from being soft-spoken and civil while threatening to kill people. He sits on a lush sofa, completely naked apart from garters, smoking a cigar and conversing casually with Kelly in a 19th century rural Australian brothel. It’s this edge of sordidness, pressed into a form of mannerism and gentility, that is so interesting. He portrays an alternate form of masculinity that draws power from a dangerous edge of surety underneath the politeness and sociability.

In this, The True History of the Kelly Gang gives a more nuanced depiction of “frontier” Australia than is normally seen: it was not just mateship, lawlessness and struggling to survive, there was also a form of decadence that can only arise within the context of huge wealth disparity. Within this framing, the “punk” drive of the film gains credence. At the film’s climax, it shows four scrawny, boyish mates wearing sheer lace dresses, covered in soot and blood, and clutching guns as they fight The System. In moments like this, the film knows that it is iconic. It shows a sort of youthful, harsh masculinity, that has a tang of something almost rabid to it. 

As a result, the film feels fresh and subversive, though it does, at times, become too obvious that this subversion was the whole point. I liked what Kurzel’s film did, I like having seen it, and I like thinking about it — but I find it hard to ascertain whether or not I actually enjoyed watching it. It was tense, relentless, and hyperviolent, which is not my ideal when it comes to enjoyable film experiences. And yet, I will say that since having seen the film, I have found myself desperate to unpack its dense imagery, constantly attempting to pin down what this rich psychodrama means for contemporary Australia and how we think about our past. 

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