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Designer Dresses + Cleaning Supplies = Ideal Womanhood?

Jill

There is so much going on in Saks new window campaign that I don’t even know where to start. Manequinns dressed in Zac Posen, surrounded by bottles of SoftScrub and Windex. Animal theorizes (jokingly) that this means the dresses should be gifts for your housekeeper. I think, though, this is a genius visual display of modern idealized womanhood: Beauty and consumerism, but she still scrubs toilets! This could have been a feminist art project.

The problem, of course, is that the Saks window isn’t criticizing anything, it’s using these displays to sell the dresses. Which means that the designers at Saks are operating under the belief that women will respond positively to these images. What’s going on when marketing experts believe that they can sell us stuff by linking it to housecleaning? What’s going on when visual displays of femininity — it should be pointed out that the clothes advertised here are feminine, flowy, etc — are juxtaposed with chores?

There’s a lot to this one, and I sadly don’t have the time to properly get into it (Crim final tomorrow — last one!). Thoughts?

15 thoughts on Designer Dresses + Cleaning Supplies = Ideal Womanhood?

  1. Boy that’s one ugly display. They couldn’t even go with cute cleaning supplies of the sorts I goggle at when I’m at the grocery store before I move on and buy the cheap stuff.

  2. They’re marketing to the stereotypical intrusive mother-in-law? Who wants her daughter-in-law both well-dressed and tidy?

    Either that or they really are supposed to be gifts for rich people to give their housekeepers.

  3. Derelicte? And how do you pronounce that? Like Feministe?

    Seriously, though, are we sure this window display set is complete? It looks really bad. I’m a design maven compared to whomever is responsible for this.

  4. it doesn’t really look finished from those pics

    maybe it’s the cleaning staff’s attempt at gaining some recognition. the subversion of windex as a high fashion product.

  5. Well, you’re writing about it, so the campaign worked to some degree…

    I don’t think it means anything. I think someone thought it would be a clever, “ironic” (if I had a dollar for every person who doesn’t know the meaning of that word…) display but it fell flat and bombed. It’s pretty poorly executed, too. Looks damned cheap, actually. I think the Project Runway contestants from last season all did infinitely more attractive windows than the pros who did these.

  8. I don’t think it means anything

    I disagree. Everything means something; that’s what (contemporary/post-modern) culture is. Everything is related to everything else. The differences between these relationships is only a matter of degree, and the degree of association between cleaning supplies and advertisements for women’s clothing is pretty high. It’d be much lower if they’d decorated using, say, streamers and confetti and helium balloons, or art deco furniture.

    I mean, people don’t just randomly come up with mops and bottles of Windex when they’re trying to brainstorm a window display like this. There’s a thought process involved, and it requires connections to be made. We need to ask why the window designers choose cleaning supplies, and I really really doubt that the answer is, “Because they look cool.” Lots of things look cool; why these particular ones?

    The only way I could describe the juxtaposition of women’s clothing and cleaning supplies as accidental would be if they’d been trying to emulate Target’s advertising campaign, in which case I’d call it lazy and thoughtless–they couldn’t see how combining the two concepts might be considered offensive?–but not necessarily a commentary on ideal womanhood.

  9. It only means something if you want it to. If you don’t care and don’t buy into it, it means nothing.

    I think they hope you think it’s all very clever and meaningful, but I don’t think anyone really put any serious thought into exactly what it means. Which is why, when pressed about meaning, they really can’t come up with anything to say.

    If I were one of the designers of one of the dresses displayed, I’d be pretty upset that they’d made my gowns look like crap, but I don’t think there’s anything to it for the average jane to get worked up over.

  10. It only means something if you want it to. If you don’t care and don’t buy into it, it means nothing.

    That’s a nice thought, but how many people aren’t affected in any way by their cultural environment? It’s not like everyone can just turn off their responses to social pressure.

    Regardless, just because everybody doesn’t react to an image the same way doesn’t mean the image is innocuous.

    I don’t think there’s anything to it for the average jane to get worked up over.

    That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth questioning and criticizing. The window display designers should think about what they’re creating, even and especially if they fall into the “don’t care and don’t buy into it” category. Advertising is about appealing to other people, not alienating them.

  11. Come now, a temporarty window display, and an ugly, unattractive one at that, hardly constitutes societal pressure. I bet thousands and thousands of people have walked by it and never even noticed it.

    We can criticize it. I think everyone here has and the general consensus is that it’s a crappy display and no one can figure it out. But to look for some kind of grand scheme behind it is really giving the Saks window-dressers a lot more credit than they deserve.

    You can overthink these things to the point where you’re seeing bogeymen around every corner, and I think this situation falls into that category.

  12. Come now, a temporarty window display, and an ugly, unattractive one at that, hardly constitutes societal pressure.

    I think you’ve misunderstood me. I’m saying that there’s a lot of social pressure in the US for women to be homemakers. The window display is a sign of this social pressure, not the source of it. The connection between women and cleaning is clearly being enforced here, and it isn’t accidental. Do you think that isn’t the case?

    And discussing something on a blog is hardly “overthinking.” I object to the idea that certain subjects are unimportant or hysterical just because people are talking about them. I happen to be fascinated the concept of social pressure, especially as it manifests itself in the mundane details of everyday life, and I see no reason not to take it seriously.

  13. I’m saying that there’s a lot of social pressure in the US for women to be homemakers. The window display is a sign of this social pressure, not the source of it. The connection between women and cleaning is clearly being enforced here, and it isn’t accidental.

    Particularly because Saks does not sell cleaning products. It’s one thing for Target to feature cleaning products and housewares alongside its clothing in their advertising, since they sell that stuff (and their ads are not only done with a wink and a nod, they do tend to include men in the equation). But for Saks to do it — and to use cheap, ordinary, workaday mops and cleaning products at that — shows that they’re quite deliberately linking this fantasy of designer clothing with the everyday reality of cleaning.

  14. Well, I respectfuly disagree with PHLAPH. I used to feel that exact way, though. Then I began to get harrassed by rightwing operatives who were extremely interested in the nature of my work. The view in the rightwing think tanks is that every little bit of this matters. Did you know (this is fact, not conspiracy theory) that the movie versions of both 1984 and Animal Farm were made by the CIA? They wanted to change the endings so they bought the rights and released the films with their new endings. When the rightwing blowhards scream on TV that actors and artists should shut up and nobody should listen to their opinions, they’re actually saying that they are frightened of opinionated artists. Trust me, the right wing respects guys like Bruce Springsteen far more than the left does. We think they’re “just musicians” but the right understands how every idea and image placed in the public’s mind has an impact. This is why they’ve deliberately focused on controlling the media so strongly. It’s something we on the left need to open our eyes to if we would like to regain some control in this society.

  15. Looks to be like a variation on a typical “in-between” (in between big sponsors) window display they do all the time with the light sticks and the black. The worst kind of hegemony is the lazy, passive kind.

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