A Weird History of Fashion's Fast Food Obsession

Fashion continues to cross paths with fast food. The latest crossover happened last week when McDonald’s made their wrappers look like some organza bustiers and swaggy tutus to celebrate their Lincoln Road location. It’s inevitable, but the whole union between fashion and fast food feels like casual sex: desperate to please, quickly over, disconnected.

Fast food capitalizes on fashion, and fashion fetishizes the pop culture so much that you usually shrug and say, “we’ve been force-fed this before.” We have. It’s business as usual.

It’s still pathetically comedic that fast food, the #1 obesity culprit, or the culprit supplier, infiltrates fashion with money. McDonald’s is bad for you, even if you follow the nutritionist’s advice from Supersize Me. But Ronald still got to sponsor New York Fashion Week. It doesn’t matter that the country’s sick with an obesity epidemic and everyone’s inhaling highly processed nuggets by the carton. McDonald’s gets to bankroll the main event for thinspo-machine designers and models who aren’t skinny enough to avoid Photoshop’s air brush sneak attack. When it’s that big a deliciously greasy stain on fashion, it’s like getting socked in the face. Even Carl Jr’s can pay Heidi Klum and Kate Upton to have a foodgasm with their burgers on TV. This kind of love affair makes you almost happy that You Did Not Eat That is calling bullshit on braggy shots of models double-fisting fast food in their cars. But if Harold can love Maude, that’s their right.

It’s somewhat more palatable to see designers co-opt drive thru chic and celebrate food with zero nutritional value. You have to admit it. Jeremy Scott’s Moschino collection was rad. For fall 2014, this year Scott transplanted, in a precisely recognizable way, all the trappings of McDonald’s you can expect in most corners of the world – a happy meal, the cartons of fries and even the uniform. Deft and expertly detailed, it’s pop art for a fast-food driven world. By gently tweaking the Golden arches into a glossy cartoonish ketchup and golden French fry palette of clothes, it’s a cheeky stealth comment on the price we pay for our obsessions. Seeing the dollar menu turn into a thousand dollar quilted leather bag highlights how inaccessible some fashion is. The mass appeal of fast food doesn’t apply equally to fashion, but at least we have diffusion lines and collaborations with Target, because everyone can eat those up for less.

Here’s a brief history of fashion and its awkward sex buddy, food. You know Andy Warhol would be loving it.

[imageviewer id= 4784]

Ashley Hoffman