Selling Virtue on the Left : Conspicuous Consumption and Cross-Over Retailing in the Art World

Art by Chassidy Stephenson

A few days into moving to New York, I found myself walking around lower Manhattan in search of something I could tack, or tape, on the naked walls in my apartment. I was shopping for posters. I ended up going to a place called 'Bungee Space’ near Chinatown that I – yes – found online. This was the kind of store that, although attempting to defy categorization, ironically fit very neatly into that particular type of space so coveted by those working in, or adjacent to, fashion, music, the visual arts, social media, and all of the above. That is to say that it sold art books, made 8$ iced lattes, and also sold clothing. 

The three or four clothing racks that populate the back end of Bungee Space bore pieces from various niche designers. The clothing all had a quirky quality to it. One t-shirt had a large plastic duck on it, scarves were decorated with silk screened photographs, a tote bag was made out of a button down shirt, another out of printed images and tags. Another characteristic that gave a certain cohesive quality to the shopping experience, was that many of the pieces were upcycled. The brand NoNo Payer was behind all of the upcycled pieces I saw. The clothing being upcycled by this brand was clearly bought at a thrift store, and the finished pieces had a do-it-yourself quality. For example, there was one skirt that was essentially made out of two button down shirts buttoned together. This piece retailed for 232$. A cropped NFL jersey that had lace additions on it was priced at 183$. The tote bag I mentioned was at 78$. 

I understand that these pieces are one of a kind. They are not mass produced like those sold by evil fast fashion corporations that we all should be boycotting like H&M, Zara, and Shein. However, an upcycled piece made from thrifted clothing should not have cost 232$ to produce. Therefore, the price tag of these pieces subverts the inherently anti-capitalist practice of upcycling clothing. 

The reason I bring this up is not to focus all of my criticisms on this brand in particular, nor on Bungee Space itself. To this place’s credit, all of their items were unique and quite interesting, and there were many things in there I would have loved to own. 

The phenomenon of Bungee Space by no means exists in a vacuum. I encountered places like this all the time when I lived in Paris for my undergrad. A good sister example to Bungee Space would be The Broken Arm, situated in the Marais, a neighborhood now notorious for stores like these. The Broken Arm, which hosts designer clothing, shoes, a book store, and a coffee shop, takes Bungee Space’s premise in a more elitist direction. Indeed, all of the clothing it sells are from heritage brands like Margiela, Raf Simmons, Anne Demeulemeester, and Prada, upholding the idea that being “edgy” should cost about 400€ an item. 

What interests me with stores like these is the image they sell, and the price at which they sell it. I think we all have in mind the type of fashion influencer, or art adjacent person, whose style stands out for funky mismatched patterns, a quirky shoe like the tabi, or a strappy ballet flat (I’m specifically thinking of the ‘lella hybrid ballerina flats’ by Kiko Kostadinov), skirts over pants, and fun colors. The way Addison Rae dresses is a good example, or the Portuguese micro

influencer @bubblegum2u. On the French side, the influencers @maina and @mariegaguech exemplify this aesthetic quite well. 

We can assume that these kinds of women own the kinds of books also sold by these stores. For example, on Bungee Space’s shelves sat a compilation of issues from the magazine ‘Thing’ (“The Voice of America’s Black Queer Underground in the Early 1990’s), and “An Incomplete Radical Feminist Education from the Internet” printed by Harpy House Press. Essentially, we can assume that people who dress like this are left wing, and that the stores that they shop at are too. 

For people left out of the status quo, such as queer people and people of color, dressing alternatively has long been a form of creating joy and re-affirming the same identity that was being persecuted by dominant powers. Radical left wing thinking (The Black Panthers, second and third wave feminists, ACT UP) was also born from these oppressed groups. It is precisely because leftist politics strive to implement an alternative to the racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and greed driven mess of a system we unfortunately find ourselves in today, that presenting one’s self in alternative styles and fashion can be a reflection of such ideals. Hence why an alternative form of dressing, as aforementioned, can lead you to make assumptions about the wearer’s political affiliations. 

But back to the ones providing the materials that become this image, after all it is useless and uninteresting to make generalized guesses about who quirky-dressed people are voting for. It’s worth noting, however, that the stores selling the quirk, price it at hundreds of dollars. Stores like ‘bungee space’ ultimately market themselves as incubators for progressive thought. They align themselves with the boundary pushing being done by the artists and designers whose items they sell. But how aligned can a price mark-up like this one be with a leftist ideology, which at its core, should be anti-capitalist? 

I like to think of retail practices like this as virtue selling. Stores like these, which are usually closely related to the arts themselves (Bungee Space was launched by three MFA grads from San Francisco Art Institute ; The Broken Arm is literally named after a readymade by Marcel Duchamp), essentially curate an image of alternative dressing and [leftist] thinking, and sell it to you at a not so affordable price. What kind of statement is being made by businesses that price out most people from their spaces made to platform alternative ways of consumption? In this way, alternative thinking and dressing essentially gets flattened into a personal aesthetic, a parade of an idea. 

This begs the question of the relationship between - here specifically leftist - politicization and appearance. Is it possible to be politicized without looking the part? Which is more important?

Ksenija Carleton