https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtzhvJh9NRY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kscaibSiycU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ENzV125lWc
https://youtu.be/kbEC-AGr9n0?si=RtgwvMCu23vtwu-Q&t=191
Why Joan of Arc is one of history's most enduring icons
The French warrior is immediately recognisable off her iconography alone: silver chainmail, a notoriously blunt bob, and an air of heroism and defiance.
When referencing the martyr, it’s a tricky line to tip-toe between tribute and caricature. In Alexander McQueen’s Spring/Summer 1998 collection, simply titled ‘Joan’, the British designer used the imagery of death and blood to evoke notions of religious violence, famously surrounding the runway with fire in the show’s iconic finale as a nod to Joan’s execution at the stake after being accused of, among other things, witchcraft. More recently, for their fall/winter 2023 collection, Blumarine blended its Y2K house codes with the heroine’s influence in a modern homage of metallic mini dresses and leather lace.
Over 500 years after her death, her choices continue to be trailblazing for their disregard of strict gender expectations, and she remains an icon of androgyny. She was, and is, provocative.
The appeal of the defiant woman to modern women cannot be sold short. She continues to be a reference for cool girls everywhere: Fiona Apple in full armour on a New York subway for a photoshoot in 1997; Chloë Sevigny’s walkman-paired 2007 Halloween costume (a cheeky reference to The Smiths’ song **“Bigmouth Strikes Again,” in which Morrissey sings “Now I know how Joan of Arc felt / As the flames rose to her Roman nose / And her Walkman started to melt). Those images regularly recirculate on social media as moodboard inspiration for younger generations, too
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/15/style/joan-of-arc-fashion/index.html (15/10/24)
Her pop culture inspiration has lasted across the decades. In 1997, a now-iconic photoshoot featuring Fiona Apple captured by Joe McNally shows the indie pop artist riding the subway in a medieval knight suit and sword. “The pictures,” McNally wrote on Instagram, “have been played endlessly on Twitter for reasons unapparent to me.”
This unlikely beginning is partly what fuels Joan’s mystique. French artist Jules Bastien-Lepage, who grew up in similar circumstances, used her start in life as the focus of his 1879 painting of Joan. It shows her with dirty hands and feet having abandoned her spinning wheel and with eyes cast towards the heavens as she contemplates ghostly visions behind her. The late Alexander McQueen too (who spoke about how, in his early career, he felt like a working-class imposter in the world of high fashion), used Joan of Arc as the inspiration for his Fall-Winter collection of 1998, drawing on her death as a martyr and her courage as a heroine.