Observers watch the models on the catwalk and reflect on the inhuman aesthetic of the designers.

As has been known for centuries, the obsessive cult of aesthetics and absolute form, which erases reality, ends up declaring war on beauty and spontaneous grace, rendering us ridiculous, as well as unwittingly deformed. The clothing and hairstyles first of the Baroque period and then of the Rococo are the most proverbial and memorable manifestations of this. The twentieth century, on the other hand, sought to reverse this tendency towards excess, focusing instead on simplicity, geometric rationalisation, nudity and aesthetic rigour achieved through anti-aesthetic means.

A satirical anecdote invented by Brecht is particularly telling in this regard. A gardener was asked to trim a plant into a spherical shape. The gardener worked meticulously on it for a whole day, pruning the branches first on one side and then on the other. In the end, the spherical shape was achieved, and it was very small. But instead of being praised for that perfection, the gardener was told off: ‘Well, that’s the sphere. But where’s the plant?’

Destructiveness arising from formal, that is, aesthetic, excess has dominated the arts for over a century, featuring hundreds of artists: from Mondrian to Giacometti, from Klee to Warhol, from Fontana to Dubuffet and Rothko.

Art aside, the world of fashion has followed both the path of rigour and the path of embellishment. Recently, I happened to watch a fashion show on television for a few minutes, and the thing that surprised me most – quite apart from the clothes – was the models’ bodies and their unvarying way of walking, or rather striding, nobly and solemnly, like mechanical statues.

In recent years, if not decades, the conversation has revolved almost entirely around women and their bodies, female identity and the rights that go with it. Yet it seems that in the worlds of fashion designers, the fashion industry and catwalk shows, nothing has changed. Fashion designers manipulate models in the same way that film directors tyrannically impose identities and styles on actresses. Screen stars, however, manage over time to carve out some freedom. The models, on the other hand—all strictly stick-thin and stiff as sticks—still appear imprisoned within their imposed form, characterised above all by the way they take their steps. Who doesn’t recognise them? One foot unfailingly in front of the other, as if their steps were following an invisible yet relentless straight line. Observers have had enough of that particular way of walking imposed on models. What human being moves like that? Should women appear like this to other women? Bodies all the same? Movements all the same? Of course, if the models’ bodies were all more or less different, as they are in nature, then even their gait might display its own natural, physical ease. No, physical nature and natural movement are forbidden on the catwalk. But it’s not clear why. Must they appear as obedient as soldiers? Do they create a form so that human reality disappears? Fashion designers want this, and they’re not ashamed of it.