What is the camp?

This style could be defined as a sensitivity for the unsightly: taste within bad taste. Dresses inspired by surreal art, makeup typical of the drag queens and extravagant tops, all of this falls under the camp.

In February 2019, a press conference took place in Milan, in which the editor-in-chief of VOGUE explained what the camp as a guide for the event that would take place shortly after.

According to what was commented, this current addresses from what sophisticated, how can Caravaggio be; Until that mundane, like superheroes; and the bizarrelike culture drag.

The writer and film director Susan Sostag published an article in 1964 titled “Notes on Camp” in which he delved into the subject. According to her, the camp It is not a natural form of sensitivity, if there is such a thing, it is rather “the love of the unnatural and the artifice of exaggeration.”

According to her, the purest examples of camp They are accidental. It is a movement that works as a praise for the disastrous.

In a fashion industry in which everything seems to have a meaning and aims to convey a transcendental message, the camp It is quite the opposite, it is for those who do not intend to make allegations with their looks.

The camp put into practice

If he camp It is the love for the disastrous, for the unsightly, for what we tend to look at and ask ourselves “what is that?” (which is surprising), then we could say that the white feather and radzimir dress that Valentino designed for Joan Collins is camp.

As we have mentioned, he camp It is the demand for the bombastic, for the artificiality and for the theatricality. The feather dresses they wore Kylie and Kendall Jenner to the Met Gala in 2019 are examples of all this.

But camp It is not reduced to clothing, it is much more than that. Bold makeup with intensely colored shadows are a safe bet if we want to adopt this style.

Eye-catching eyelashes like the white XXL ones she wore Gigi Hadid at the 2019 Met Gala they represent the essence of makeup camp. Extravagant wigs, headpieces and accessories also embody this style.

Great references

He camp has existed forever. The taste for what is out of the ordinary, for the unsightly, has always been there. Perhaps in other times this aesthetic was the great marginalized, but today the transformative and globalized society in which we live moves at great speed and demands different designs with personality.

However, the aesthetics camp Important celebrities were already following her long before she became popular. Singer Cher, for example, was one of them. She wore unsightly outfits to many of his concerts during the 1980s. Today, she continues to wear looks very striking in their shows.

Lady Gaga is another of them, with her famous outlandish dresses made of food. Donatella Versace it is also very campalthough we say that it is a camp modest, not so flashy, something that has sometimes been reflected in his designs.

In short, as Sostag would say, “he camp who knows what it is camp It doesn’t have that much value.” It is not necessary to have clear intentionality, but to go beyond what is established: to show a taste for the unsightly.

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