The Medical Aesthetic Trend Is a Sick Joke

If you’ve ever been to a hospital – or, at least, the kind of hospital that most people can afford to visit when they’re in need – you know that it’s pretty much the furthest thing from luxury that a person can reasonably imagine.

People are loud and, often justifiably, angry or upset. The furniture isn’t exactly ergonomic, and – no matter how good looking you are – the lighting is so far from flattering it seems like a genuine act of violence. If you’ve ever worked in a hospital then, well, I can’t even begin to imagine how much worse all of that must feel, day after day.

Why, then, is the luxury industry so obsessed? That is to say, why, in the middle of a global pandemic that has killed close to three million people – so far as we’re aware, anyway – are high-end fashion brands turning out clothes and shoes that co-opt the medical aesthetic yet serve no medical purpose whatsoever?

Why am I even having to ask – as potentially disastrous third waves of COVID-19 hit across Continental Europe, disproportionately affecting the least well off – how it can possibly be the case that “PPE Chic” is even a thing. And not just a distasteful joke, coming in the form of “forwarded many times” WhatsApp messages, kind of thing. An actual Thing. A noteworthy trend, enjoying actual traction in the mainstream fashion media, pushed my high-end fashion houses.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about – lucky you. But, I’m sorry to say, if I have to know then so do you. So, here it is.

Around a month ago Maison Margiela, one of the most respected high fashion houses in operation today – and, it may be worth noting, a label most famous for its iconic and divisive hoof-toed Tabi shoe – announced the release of a new silhouette: the “Surgical Slip-On Mule”. If, at this point, you’re thinking that Margiela were turning their hands to creating something useful, like Burberry repurposing their trench coat factory in Yorkshire to make gowns and masks for hospital patients, then I admire your optimism. You would, nonetheless, be wrong.

No, instead, what Margiela released were pieces of suede-soled, leather-lined high-fashion footwear – gold-stamped with “Made In Italy,” finished with a singular stitch to the rear, with an elasticated nylon and cloth upper created to replicate the look – though certainly not the feel, nor the utility – of personal protective equipment. For £400.

True enough, it’s hardly unusual for high fashion to court controversy. Burberry’s more-than-a-little-ill-advised noose hoodie from 2019, Gucci’s extremely “read the room, guys” circa-$800 turban the same year, and Kylie Jenner’s “what were they thinking?” wheelchair photoshoot from Interview Magazine in 2015 come to mind as just a few recent, high-profile examples out of thousands.

And, of course, Margiela itself is helmed these days not by the invisible man himself but rather by the controversial designer John Galliano.

Not only is this not an excuse – something to look at, shrug, and say, “Ah, fashion, there they go again!” – it’s also, inevitably, not where things end. It never is. This kind of thoughtlessness opens boxes that should be firmly sealed shut.

Pandora, I’m sure, was a well dressed woman. But no one ever talks about that.

Case in point: only a month after the Margiela reveal, other brands are following suit. Because, well, of course they are: “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” rarely holds true as steadfastly as it does in fashion, and the very fact I’m writing this article at all is proof that decisions like these generate press.

Announced 17th March, releasing 20th, Japanese brands Suicoke and TAKAHIROMIYASHITA TheSoloist. have made their own contribution and TAKAHIROMIYASHITA TheSoloist. have made their own contribution toward the trend for high-end medical aesthetics. Again – and as you’d expect from a Suicoke collaboration – it’s a footwear release, this time a pair of “Military Medical Slippers,” fashioned from high-grade fabric previously used by TheSoloist., and stylistically “informed” by Vietnamese hospital clothing.

Interestingly enough, Vietnam has relatively low COVID-19 numbers and a pretty progressive healthcare system – one moving towards an end goal of universal care, and which, currently, subsidises the healthcare costs of its poorest citizens. There are worse values to represent.

But, of course, while there are no details of the collaboration’s price point as yet, the fact is that these shoes do not represent those values: quite the opposite. Unless, that is, they’re planning on offering subsidies to those unable to afford them.

Indeed, perhaps most shocking of all is that so few – if any – of the labels involved have made any noteworthy commitment, or any commitment at all for that matter, to funding actual medical efforts either in their home countries or in a broader, global sense. There is no mention, for example, by Margiela, or TheSoloist, or Suicoke, of a donation of the profits from their medically-inspired footwear to, either, any kind of relief or toward easing the strain in health services.

Of course, neither Margiela nor Suicoke and TheSoloist are the only guilty parties – the slow creep has already begun. Luxury PPE already exists, courtesy of brands like undefined, and publishers are already writing articles about “mask-to-gown matching” at exclusive celebrity events.

And, as the virus begins to recede – as we gain distance, find a way to view the pandemic through a detached lens of irony – we can assume that there will be more releases like this. Until, that is, it stops being interesting.

And the tragedy is that it will.

Until then, though, brands are mixing bad timing and bad taste, tickling the gag reflex in a way that’s impossible to ignore. Yes, it’s just another example of an industry – and a clientele – out of touch with the world at large. But the wounds are too fresh, the issuing affecting too many people at this very moment, to simply brush this off. And we shouldn't.