July 13, 2023What does Princess Diana’s icy glare have to do with bars of Calvin Klein Obsession soap and a horde of cheesy men’s clothing catalogs riddled with beefcake models found in a Washington D.C.’s politician’s home after his death? To your average straight person, perhaps not much. But in the eyes of artist Silvia Prada, taken all together they’re potent markers of queer identity and desire.
“The bomber jackets, the spandex athletic shorts, all gay boys today dress like Princess Diana!” she quips in the show notes . The observation led Prada, whose fashion world bonafides have previously led to collaborations with Gucci and Miu Miu, to not only dwell on the ways generations of queer people have found identity in unexpected parts of pop culture, but those often-undiscussed points where both gay and lesbian desire and aesthetics intersect.
Prada, who says she’s always been attracted to androgyny over the traditional masc or femme, traces her fascination with Diana back to her younger days of trying to understand her own identity in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. Diana herself may not have been queer, but her intensely public battle to assert herself and find her identity against the wishes of the world’s ultimate straight white family—The Windsors—resonated with Prada and other young queer people at the time.
At the same time as Diana’s stylistic rebellion, Prada also found herself attracted to the increasingly sensual marketing of Calvin Klein. Their early ads for the fragrance Obsessions, which gives the show its name, featured nude male and female models posed together, who from afar were almost indistinguishable from one another. The men’s muscles were depicted in the same way as a women’s curves.
While the parade of yearly Pride campaigns may represent important political advancement and acceptance, in comparison the imagery Prada assembled in “Obsessions” reads strikingly more queer, even as it was all originally presented to a mainstream audience as well.