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March 21, 2022
Véronique Hyland's Playlist for Her Essay Collection "Dress Code"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Véronique Hyland's essay collection Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion From the New Look to Millennial Pink is a fiercely smart examination of fashion's place in our lives.
Library Journal wrote of the book:
"Anyone who opts in to wearing clothes (and even those who opt out) should pay attention to this book."
In her own words, here is Véronique Hyland's Book Notes music playlist for her essay collection Dress Code:
When I set out to write my debut essay collection, Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion From the New Look to Millennial Pink, I knew I wanted to tackle questions that had stuck with me throughout my career as a fashion editor, from the mayfly lifespan of the “It girl” to the undying “French style” myth to the cloying vagueness of the phrase “the female gaze” when it comes to all things aesthetic. I don’t listen to music while I write, but I am a singer and musician on the side, and the medium has always helped me clarify ideas and crystallize emotions. Going chapter by chapter and looking at the themes of these essays, I settled on 15 representative tracks.
Chapter 1
“Think Pink” from Funny Face, performed by Kay Thompson
One of my favorite musical numbers of all time is set – where else? – at a fashion magazine, where Kay Thompson, best known as the author of the Eloise books, plays a plucky editrix who decides to make pink the new shade du jour. It’s a camp-filled look at the way publications used to operate, dictating trends from the top down, and I found myself thinking of it often as I wrote the first chapter of Dress Code, about coining the term “millennial pink” and what happened next. (You can read an excerpt of that here.)
Chapter 2
“Cut My Hair,” The Who
Quadrophenia remains one of my all-time favorite movies, for both musical and style reasons. Plus, its plot about the rivalry between two teen subcultures, Mods and rockers, touches on a theme I wanted to include in this chapter on teenage style: the way subcultures are a way of simultaneously rebelling and belonging. In this song from the accompanying album, the protagonist laments, “I got to move with the fashion/Or be outcast,” and describes the ultimate in Mod style: “Zoot suit, white jacket with side vents/Five inches long.”
Chapter 3
“Poupée De Cire, Poupée De Son,” France Gall
I could have chosen a song by any number of the women I write about in my chapter on the French girl archetype: Anna Karina, Jane Birkin, Brigitte Bardot, or Charlotte Gainsbourg, all of whom have dabbled in music. While they all have songs embodying these stereotypes, the person I think does it best is a woman who didn’t make it into the narrative, France Gall. A prominent figure in the yé-yé genre, which was driven by young female performers like Sylvie Vartan, Gall refers to herself here as a wax doll who uses her music to seduce, embodying the “innocent yet knowing” French-girl archetype still embedded in our brains to this day.
Chapter 4
“Blue Jeans,” Lana del Rey
It might be cliché, but Born to Die was a formative album, and when I wrote about the origins of classic Americana motifs like denim, Lana’s opening couplet, “Blue jeans/white shirt,” was echoing in my head, reminding me how little some things have changed when it comes to iconic looks.
Chapter 5
“7 Rings,” Ariana Grande
Ari’s ode to retail therapy, or perhaps retail as therapy – which, in genius fashion, interpolates Rodgers & Hammerstein into its hook – is a great example of the way we turn to luxury and logos to make ourselves feel better, higher-status or more successful, a phenomenon I examine in this chapter.
Chapter 6
“La Vie en Rose,” Edith Piaf
Admittedly, there are nearly as many color-themed songs as there are Pantone shades. But this Edith Piaf classic, comparing the hue to a lens that helps us see the world differently, drives home the power of color when it comes to invoking emotion. As I write in this chapter, it’s something that fashion brands, from Hermès to Valentino to Tiffany, have done with their own signature hues.
Chapter 7
“Yesterday’s Papers,” The Rolling Stones
“Girl of The Year” was the title used to describe Edie Sedgwick, one of the figures I write about in my essay on “It” girls and their fleeting fame. While Sedgwick inspired any number of songs, from Bob Dylan’s “Leopard-Skin Pill Box Hat” to The Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale,” it’s The Rolling Stones tune “Yesterday’s Papers” that I think sounds most like her story. While it’s not based on Sedgwick (supposedly, it’s modeled on Chrissie Shrimpton, the sister of “It” model Jean) the song definitely sounds like it could be about Edie and her cohort of doomed ingenues. It even touches on the way their precipitous rise and fall is linked to the media cycle in its refrain:
Who wants yesterday’s papers
Who wants yesterday’s girl
Who wants yesterday’s papers
Nobody in the world
Chapter 8
“Number One Fan,” Muna
Influencers can really mess with your head, as Muna frontwoman Katie Gavin demonstrates in the opening lines of this track:
So I heard the bad news
Nobody likes me and I'm gonna die alone
In my bedroom
Looking at strangers on my telephone
I mean, we’ve all been there. The song evolves into an anthem of self-love, urging us to be our own biggest cheerleaders, but that intro strikes me as a summation of how who we choose “follow” can negatively affect us. In this chapter, I look at the rise of influencers and how we went from having friends to following strangers and modeling our lives on them, often to our detriment.
Chapter 9
“We Both Reached for the Gun,” Chicago cast album
I’m trying to avoid too much musical theater on this playlist, but this song is too perfect not to include. When writing about the many assumptions we make about what women wear to court, and the way they are encouraged to appear feminine and helpless in front of juries, I thought about this classic “ventriloquist act” between Roxie Hart and her lawyer. He paints a picture of a delicate convent girl as opposed to a worldly, scheming murderess. Plus ça change!
Chapter 10
“Suggestion,” Fugazi
“The male gaze” is a tricky topic to pin down, as I learned when…. writing about it in this section! While it’s often overintellectualized or dissected past the point of comprehension, Ian MacKaye gets at the root of the problem in this song about how women are always subject to the violence of an outside gaze. Though it got some riot-grrrl guff for being a song about a women’s issue written by a man, I think it holds up pretty well, both musically and lyrically, and Kathleen Hanna has talked about how important it was for her to hear a male ally drawing attention to something like this.
Chapter 11
“It’s Obvious,” The Au Pairs
You’re equal but different
You’re equal but different
It’s obvious (it's obvious)
It’s obvious (it's obvious)
Throughout this chapter, I look at the ways women’s clothing has been restricted over the years, from bloomers being demonized in the 1850s to leggings getting flak today, and the way those incidents have paralleled gains and losses when it comes to women’s equality. The Au Pairs’ post-punk chorus reminds us that equity is not a neatly linear path.
Chapter 12
"Good Ol' Boys Club,” Kacey Musgraves
Politics is still an old boys’ club, with Congresswomen facing restrictions on what they can wear on the House floor and female candidates getting dinged for their fashion faux pas. While Kacey is singing about a very different “boys’ club,” namely country music, her words could also apply to the insularity and sexism of politics, the subject of this chapter.
Chapter 13
“Little Boxes,” Malvina Reynolds
The singer-songwriter’s chirpy take on postwar conformity rings true even today, with its subjects living in identical “little boxes” and leading identical, unfulfilling existences. When I wrote about the changing expectations for professional dress – from identical men in gray flannel suits in the 1950s C-suite to identical coders in gray hoodies in an open-plan office today – this callout of oppressive sameness came to mind.
Chapter 14
“Gucci Gucci,” Kreayshawn
By her own admission, Kreayshawn’s brand name-strewn earworm “Gucci Gucci” is an indictment of the “basic bitch,” a much-maligned archetype that I take a hard look at in this chapter. “She likes those normal brands and wears them all the time because that’s some basic shit,” the rapper said at the time, unintentionally getting at the way the stereotype polices female consumption and taste.
Chapter 15
“Jealousy Jealousy,” Olivia Rodrigo
One of the few non-cheesy songs I’ve heard about the way social media affects teens. “Comparison is killin' me slowly/I think I think too much/'Bout kids who don't know me,” our Sour princess sings, talking about scrolling through her feed and seeing “girls too good to be true/With paper-white teeth and perfect bodies.” It’s the perfect soundtrack for delving into changes in body trends and the way filters and Facetune have warped the way we both dress and see ourselves.
Véronique Hyland is ELLE's fashion features director. Her work has previously appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, W, New York magazine, Harper's Bazaar, and Condé Nast Traveler.
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