Confused about the Gaultier fashion - apparently you can slur an entire ethnicity while drunk yet still appropriate their strict dress code into your clothing line? Then again, I guess exploitation of a people you have no respect for is quite easy.

It's not just Orthodox-inspired -- it's women's clothes inspired by Orthodox men's clothes, which I'm sure will ruffle extra feathers in a community heavily invested in gender dichotomy, especially in terms of dress. I wonder some designer was inspired by seeing Yentl while high or something.

Those outfits make it look like the Coneheads converted to Judaism. I can understand why some people would be pissed.

You know, just the other day, at my family's Pesach Seder, my uncle was recalling his time moving through Russia and Poland. He remembered Pogroms. How dare someone culturally appropriate in such a voyeuristic manor like that, with such history? It's so insensitive. I mean, maybe if they had done something with actual Jewish women. Maybe.

Clothes are clothes are clothes. I think some of these are quite nice looking. There's a difference between exploitation and inspiration.

Yeah... I think the deliberate gender-bending of a religious tradition that explicitly forbids overlap of men's and women's clothing is pretty tasteless. While I'm not agreeing with the huge gender divide in Orthodox Judaism, I still find it very inappropriate to basically lampoon it in this fashion show.

As for the Gautier, that was pretty much Jew-face. And given the way that we now know that the designer is hugely anti-Semitic, I'm sure that was a deliberate choice.

I think part of the question is highly visible appropriation versus something like this that makes its origins clear. What I'm getting at is that while these clothes are highly recognizable as Orthodox Jewish in origin - which makes the act of appropriation seem more blatant and therefore problematic - African American styles have been appropriated repeatedly for centuries, but it is considered so "normal" that the origins are completely obscured and the Black creators erased. While people will notice that these clothes originate in specific cultural/religious traditions, Black American style is constantly euphemized ("street style", "urban style") by non-African American designers/musicians etc. so as to make the appropriation of Black culture completely invisible. I venture to say that many people who may be outraged at this fashion show don't bat an eyelid at the ways the creative work of Black Americans are constantly used without credit, and indeed would probably think it was militant of those Blacks who point it out. While "African prints" are used blatantly in an exoticized style, I think its far more egregious when these acts of cultural "borrowing" are so widespread as to not even make people question their origins or see it as coming from anywhere but from white artists, which is what happens constantly to the work of Black American creators. In other words, while this thread will exist, the notion that there is even such a thing as "black music" etc. which African Americans can claim is usually derided and dismissed.

I can see different reactions to this appropriation but, personally, I don't think the designers were as much inspired by the orthodox jewish community as they wanted to exploit their wear for controvery's sake.

I think all religions are respected far too much as it is, and Orthodox Judaism sounds like a sexist one anyway. Why are presumably unorthodox and non-Jewish people worried about offending someone's secret club?

The conflict expressed in the majority of comments on how to deal with this particular appropriation of the other's culture (which in this case contains an very specific element of mocking and derision) was sadly predictable, but nonetheless amusing to see.

Uck, I don't like this at all. It's like when someone orders a poppy-seed bagel with cream cheese and bacon. It just doesn't sit right with me.

I don't and will never understand this urge to give meaning to things.
To things you have no power over.
If your family had decided to move before you were born, you would never have been born into "your" culture. If they had decided to move while you were growing up, you would never have grown up in "your" culture.
If you decide to move, you will have to accept that you might move to another culture.
Culture is only an invention. An invention that's seperating us. An invention that tries to tell us how to behave in "our" culture.
Whenever there is an entry in this blog about women in a certain culture or behaviour of men the comment writers bemoan that oh-so-unfair society and how dare it wants to force us in following it (=the society), or that people should just respect each other regardeless of what they do, or that gendering toys is totally stupid because were are human and should be brought up as such and not as "women" and "men".
However, when there is an entry about a so called minority (depending on where you live) or another culture, suddenly people who are using aspects of that minority (clothes, dances etc.) are called ignorant. They are deemed culturally or historically ignorant - because instead of following their own society, they use something of another culture. And obviously that is bad. Suddenly comment writers find it inappropriate or insulting if some people are not following their "own" culture.
Suddenly using aspects of another culture is not considered open minded but offensive: because people use it not in the right context (what is the right context?), because people who are not from that minority use it (but if people from that minority use it, it's suddenly ok), because people who have ancestors who might or might not have been "bad" towards that minority use it, because "they" cross an undefined and invisible line, because it is seen as unrespectful (whetherornot the usage really was intended as showing disrespect, is unimportant for most critics), because, because, because.

But well, that view is solely based on my opinion that "culture" is a ridiculess invention that get's too much attention.
Humans shouldn't define themselve through the culture (or country) they live in, but through their actions.

I think I've discerned a possible motive for the fashion designer's work.
The designer "St. Bessarion" has his own blog at

http://saintbessarion.blogspot.com/

If one looks a photos of the designer at the blog site, he does look Jewish.
I don't know if his background or ancestry includes Jewish parents or grandparents, but I'm sure than many people have asked him, especially in Russia, whether or not he was Jewish. It would not surprise me if this ethnic association (whether real on not) was a motivating factor for the theme of this collection of woman's fashions.

As an aside, I was born and raised Jewish, so I may be projecting my own preoccupations on this fellow's creative agenda.

All I could think was "Chaser's War on Everything totally called this, back in 2007."

Worth pointing out that fashion has a terrible track record:

For example:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/28/the_zoolander_effect