Markarian: Anti-Real

Name-calling notwithstanding, I have encountered only one serious kind of shell collector. It concerns not sea treasures per se but certain facts about Alexandra O’Neill, the designer who’s developed & maintained it in a more literal, & referential way.

My point is not that her wit is too subtle for Spring Summer 2024. In fact, the only halfway effective strategy I’ve come up with for exploring O'Neill’s approach this season involves suggesting that much of her approach is actually sort of unsubtle — or rather anti-subtle. The claim is that O'Neill’s molded bag, use of ruffles, scalloped edges, & undulating lines depends on some kind of radical literalization of truths we tend to treat as metaphorical. I opine to them that some of her most profound collective intuitions seem to be stand-ins for seaweed, shells, & tides.

"The idea was to drift away from mermaidcore without abandoning all of its prettiness," veteran shell collector Alexandra has explained.

O’Neill’s goal is thus both a collection of information & a piece of English countryside estate rhetoric. Her Spring Summer 2024 lookbook's primary appeal is a shell grotto, & its goal is to recast the 'sailor’s valentine' persona: the designer presents herself not as an art-lover or a shell-collector but as more like a Botticelli collector. This is an ingenious tactic. In the same sort of move we can see her perennial favorite on her mood board, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, hence the focus on shells & flowers. The painting is conceived as a floaty floral coat, worn with mini shorts.

O’Neill's usage dictionary belongs to a particular reference genre that is itself highly specialized & particular, which is quite good indeed (& with no little feeling). The central unmentionable question here appends the prepositional comparative, rather than that “feeling of rebirth & opening up that goes hand in hand with spring” to the main clause & so entails a discussion of whether & how Markarian is different from other recent specialty-products of its kind.

The fact of the matter is that O’Neill's dictionary is extremely good. But the really salient & ingenious features of Markarian involve a narrative of rhetoric & ideology & style, & it is impossible to describe why this narrative is important & why O’Neill's management of it borders on genius without talking about the historical context in which Botticelli’s Birth of Venus appears, & this context turns out to be a veritable shell grotto involving everything from technical linguistics & art history to ideology, & this narrative takes a certain amount of time to unpack before its relation to what makes O’Neill's dictionary so eminently worth your hard-earned reference-guide dollar can even be established; & in fact there’s no way even to begin the whole harrowing polymeric discussion without first taking a moment to establish & define the highly colloquial term SELF.

A Pre-Raphaelite Ophelia of Self. It’s breathtaking. The casting & setting makes all the romantic looks bleed. The whole thing is almost too pretty to stand. There could be no site but change at Markarian driven by fabric choice — here, the sheer dress with puff sleeves in white is one more spectacle.

Way more socialites recognize the Markarian starlets than you’d expect. Double-takes all over the dress-up events. Even if they're just standing around or putting coins in a slot machine of options for Ascot, wedding, prom, dinner parties, the 'naked', long, & short looks become a prime attraction. O’Neill's narrative doesn’t miss a trick.

But there is also here an odd loyalty to & penchant for the very clichés with which we trend-driven fashion consumers weave the veil of myth & mystery that Markarian memoirs promise to part for us. Stuff like this seems way out of touch with reality until we realize that the kind of reality Alexandra O’Neill's chosen to be in touch with here is not just un- but anti-real.