It's funny how fashion and fantasy can get along so well, and when someone puts together fantasy with some high fashion aspects, one can actually see how superheroes, as fantasy figures like princesses, can be part of this "fashionable fantasy". Isn't fashion about standing out the human body (male or female) attributes? Well, this as what superheroes garments are about too, they show you who this person is, what are his/her strenghts and how his garments are a metaphor of the world they live or come from. At the end, fashion acts as a visual representation of what a superheroe is.
One of the things I really liked, well, I'm not sure if it was more intriguing than appealing to me, the part of the metaphorical representation of garments; masks, capes, suits. It was quite interesting for me the materials designer used to create their own versions of these garments, and how some of them, didn't look too far from actual daily ones, I'm not sure when or where, but I can recall some of these pieces on a woman walking on the street. Well, I guess that's why fashion can be considered so close to a fantasy world, since we can choose everyday who we want to be and the role we want to play depending on our clothes, and like superheroes, what part of us we want people to notice more, and how we want to be perceived.
Michael Chabon's article "Secret Skin":
"...One knew, of course, that it was not the red cape any more than it was the boots, the tights, the trunks, or the trademark “S” that gave Superman the ability to fly."
"The superhero's iconic costume of cape, mask, and bodysuit finds many fashionable permutations. But fashion's embrace of the superhero extends beyond iconography, to issues of identity, sexuality, and nationalism. Fashion shares with the superhero an inherent metaphorical malleability which fuels its fascination with the idea and the ideal of the superhero."
photo by Sam Horine. The Village Voice
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