ROTTERDAM (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- There are few items of clothing as politically, socially and racially charged as the hoodie.
Long a linchpin of streetwear and, more recently, the advertising campaigns and catwalks of high fashion, the hoodie is a contemporary wardrobe staple, a declaration of fealty to a school or team, a comfortable garment for a plane ride and a sight that can trigger fear and panic.
Desired and derided in equal measure, regularly misunderstood, the hoodie is now heavy with associations of social inequality, youth culture and police brutality, even banned from certain streets, schools and institutions worldwide.
And, as of next month, it will be embraced by a museum.
“The Hoodie,” the first exhibition devoted to its powerful and political nuances, opens Dec. 1 at the Het Nieuwe Instituut, the Dutch institute for architecture, design and digital culture in Rotterdam, Netherlands. A mixed media show of photographs, music, magazines covers and film footage, as well as more than 60 hoodies, it aims to frame the hoodie as a garment that Lou Stoppard, the curator of the exhibition, calls “unparalleled in its loaded tensions and contradictions.” (Stoppard is also a journalist and an occasional contributor to The New York Times.)
Stoppard said she had wanted to curate a show about the hoodie for some time but had struggled to find a suitable site in more conventional fashion capitals like London or New York. The Instituut, with its focus on design objects and digital culture, proved a good fit for exploring the evolution of the hoodie as a sociopolitical carrier.
“The hoodie is a beautiful example of a design product that we all use and wear and that has become almost invisible as a result,” said Guus Beumer, the Instituut director and a onetime art director in the fashion world. “And yet, at the same time, it now carries complex layers of meaning and privilege that should be unpacked.”
“The Hoodie” charts the modern history of the garment, from the emergence of the first hooded sweatshirts worn by boxers and blue-collar workers in the 1930s through its evolution as a 1970s streetwear staple and its role in the present day.
The show explores when and why the hoodie became intertwined with certain communities, like the worlds of hip-hop and Silicon Valley, and how designs from some of the biggest names in fashion came to reflect evolving social concerns like elitism and gender neutrality.
Rick Owens’ furry, floor-length hoodie appears to be a sort of armor for the end of days, while Craig Green’s androgynous, utilitarian garb is an innovative exploration of workwear. Hoodies from Vetements, the upstart Paris label that for a time became one of the most disruptive and influential forces in fashion thanks to its runway reimagining of urban streetwear, are inscribed with tongue-in-cheek slogans like “It’s my birthday and all I got was this overpriced hoodie from Vetements.”
The show also dissects the ways in which the hoodie has often become a stereotype to represent the supposed criminality of black and brown communities, as well as a tool of racial profiling, tracing such connections through, for example, the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin, who was shot while wearing one.
“Deliberately concealing one’s identity can be seen as an act of defiance or rage, and often generates uncertainty and fear,” Stoppard said. “But many people, particularly those who are young or feel marginalized from society, wear a hoodie to feel safe and cocooned. Pulling one on allows them to feel like they disappear, or blend in.”
The show ends with an examination of the rise of surveillance culture, and how that phenomenon may affect what we wear. Pervasive monitoring by video cameras on street corners and lampposts, capturing your face and tracking your movements, then cross-referencing that information with a central database, means that garments like the hoodie (or the burqa) may become even more contentious.
“To want privacy, anonymity, is inherently suspicious, and an affront to surveillance culture,” Stoppard said, noting that not far from where the exhibition was about to open its doors, high-profile court hearings were taking place over the Dutch government’s automated system for detecting welfare fraud and profiling of the poor.
She and the Instituut hope to use the exhibition not just to raise awareness of the presumptions many of us bring to hoodies, but also to change attitudes, to create a sense of inclusivity and community around the garment. Anyone who wears a hoodie to see the show will be given access free of charge.
“The hoodie is an iconic and recognizable piece of clothing, but to wear one with unthinking confidence tends to be inextricably tied up with privilege,” Stoppard said. “By giving visitors that platform, should they want it, we can aim to make visible the individuals underneath.”
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