Mark Fisher would say that glam is intrinsically aristocratic.
But it's supposed to be a Tom Ripley type interloper - someone from the lower echelons of society who sneaks his way in. Borrows the clothes and apes the manners of the nobs. Artfully, cunningly, through unstinting attention to detail, becomes "one of them".
As if to the manor born - but actually an upstart of lowly birth. A parvenu.
Glam as aesthetic class war. Usurpation in the realm of symbols and representation.
Although the wealth and fame thereby won can enable a literal form of infiltration.
Bryan Ferry as pit-worker's son who first imitates - and then penetrates - impregnates... the actual upper classes. Marries into blue blood... breeds some Eton-bound hunting 'n' fishing brats... hangs out with Dukes and discusses vintage wines.
Or - fictionally - the narrative arc of that silly film Saltburn.
What would Mark say, then, about an actual blue-blood doing glam?
Hark at this for a pedigree!
Daphne Guinness - socialite / fashion model / fashion writer / curator / film maker / actress turned pop singer.
Scion of the Guinness dynasty and the Mitford line.
Her grandmother was Diana Mitford, who divorced Guinness and married Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists.
Daphne grew up moving between country houses owned by her family in England and Ireland and a villa in Spain. Salvador Dali was a family friend. Later lived in New York (where her sister worked as a PA to Andy Warhol).
Muse to fashion designers Alexander McQueen and Karl Lagerfield. Friend to Isabella Blow
Has her own Comme des Garcons scent, named Daphne
Encouraged by David Bowie to purse music. As a result...
Produced by Tony Visconti
Claimed to known nothing about her step-grandfather's politics when Mosley's death announced.
And yet here is a song named after hierarchy-obsessed Emperor-admirer Mishima!
"Named after the renowned Japanese poet Yukio Mishima, who Daphne was introduced to by a Japanese nanny she had when she was between the ages of three and five. Her name was Etsuko, she recalls, and when I was three and Mishima died, my father found me on the back staircase trying to commit seppuku. I said to him, 'I think I'm Mishima.’ The track also features traditional Japanese instrument, the shamisen. I bought it when I was in Japan with my friend Nori. He took me to this man who was about 85 and still making shamisens and they couldn't believe that I wanted it."
Introduced by her nanny!
Discography includes Optimist in Black (2016), Daphne & the Golden Chord (2018) and Revelations (2020), the contents described variously as "drama-pop with a gothic tinge", "glam-rock-ish," and "aristocratic glam fuelled by wit, character and a clear and abiding love of rock'n'roll".
"I'm a rather private person - and armor to me is many sorts of masks... Japanese Noh theatre... make-up... you become a different persona"
It's a bit Glam 101.
"I like haute couture because it's the last vestige of something that's been an integral part of Western Civilization from very early on"
Last-vestige-ism = a bit of a political giveaway.
Relates perhaps to my idea of fame as a secular version of royalty / royalism.
At the top I wondered what would Mark Fisher think of a member of the actual ruling class becoming "glam".
To me, it would seem to be... not much of a journey, more a case arriving back where you started, or confirming what you already are.
So the opposite of the pop idea of self-reinvention.
Concentration of wealth addendum:
"In 1987, she married Spyros Niarchos, the second son of Stavros Niarchos... Her $39 million settlement, obtained at the time of her 1999 divorce, was added to her Guinness inheritance."
More recently partnered with philosopher and public intellectual Bernard Henri-Lévy, whose own inherited fortune had grown by 2004 to be in the vicinity of 150 million Euros - probably more now unless he's a complete bumbler.
What does it say in the Bible?
'For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.
