Revisiting the Johanna Ortiz X H&M Spring 2020 Collab In A Flower Power World

So much fashion and style info has been lost in the COVID-19 lockdown and now racial injustice protests of the last 90 days. The world is clearly spinning into a new direction with the vast majority of creatives knowing that we’re traveling a new road without a map.

It’s easy to say “let’s just follow our values and we will be fine.” That very statement assumes that our values are shared ones, that our visions of a just and fair world are highly compatible, if not identical. The battle for a better world makes us deeply suspicious of each other at times — especially if we are white people.

While I believe generally that pc culture is out of control, it seems best that those of us who have enjoyed major privilege for centuries need to take a pause and listen.

Our being misunderstood as individuals is at the bottom of the list of social concerns in this moment. The self-focused actions can easily prompt anger and derision when we appear to be totally tone-deaf to the real-world events around us.

Carine Roitfeld learned a tough love lesson about the power of words this week, in her well-meaning Instagram post, hugging model Anok Yai. “Anok is not a black woman, she is my friend,” Carine wrote. Yikes!

The Johanna Ortiz X H&M Spring 2020 collab is one of the Spring 2020 beauties lost in the COVID-19 pandemic. Following on the success of her Fall 2019 collection for H&M, Ortiz returned for spring. Describing the designer, H&M wrote:

If you don’t know that Johanna Ortiz hails from the birthplace of salsa, her energetic designs will give you some immediate pointers. Dramatic, luscious, extravagant — Johanna Ortiz’s dresses are the kind of pieces you’ll want to throw on and start dancing in. They tap their own beat, and demand the wearer does the same.

It’s not only fashion lovers who feel the rhythm of Ortiz’s collections. There’s an irresistible sense of joy and power at the heart of the Colombian designer’s work that has the world’s most powerful women smitten. Michelle Obama opted for Johanna Ortiz during her book tour, at parties, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Alexa Chung and Jessica Biel count Ortiz’s designs as must-haves. Olivia Palermo wears Ortiz to set her style agenda, and when it came to serving a major look at Jennifer Lawrence’s wedding, it was Johanna Ortiz that Sienna Miller favored. 

H&M Magazine then interviewed Ortiz about her frankly-feminine, design vision that resonates deeply with so many women leaders.

Vogue Paris wrote that the best part of the ad campaign supporting the Colombian designer’s collection was including model Tina Kunakey in photographer Matt Jones’ ad campaign.

Kunakey wed actor Vincent Cassel in August 2018. The family is now three with the arrival of a baby girl Amazonie. Other models in the campaign include Cate Underwood and Juana Burga. Katie Burnett styled by shoot.

Gardens and the Pursuit of Privilege

Pursuing a separate thought thread on photographer Tyler Mitchell’s major presentation in Zeit Magazin, I stumbled into this article about gardening and flower power. Citing the proliferation of garden-related fashion collections for Spring 2020 — most often cited as recognition of our need to take sustainability seriously — writer Tillmann Prüfer bursts the bubble a bit, reminding us that since Roman times, gardens have been a sign of privilege and time for relaxation.

In the tradition of Claude Monet, Prüfer agrees that among a growing bourgeois class, gardens became romantic symbols of the lost unity of nature and man — a form of miniature paradise in a time of industrialization and so-called progress.

Derided as a hobby for philistines seeking happiness in gardens and not modernism, these mocked attachments to nature, blooms, gardens, sustainable agriculture and more have renewed meaning in today’s global crisis. In this moment, our very concept of ‘progress’ is being shattered.

Understanding the tremendous appeal of Johanna Ortiz designs is easy within this filter. It IS a filter of privilege, however.

The hundreds of thousands of Americans protesting in the streets in support of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter are not thinking of secluded gardens. Their visions of justice and paradise are more functional — although environmental justice is very much woven into their street-savvy narrative.

And to give Johanna Ortiz credit — there has been some dancing in the streets across America’s protests — along with tears, frustration and anger for George Floyd. People of color long ago learned to use dance as forms of celebration, joy and escape in the worst of life circumstances.

The Art of Saying Nothing or Something

I spend time on Instagram feeds these days, digesting just how designers, models, photographers — all of us creatives — are processing current events and anti-racism demonstrations worldwide. Arriving on Johanna Ortiz’s Instagram feed, I expected some acknowledgement of world events, given the circles in which she travels.

There is a common view among activists, that if you say nothing, you are part of the problem. Personally, I lean in that direction but know some truly solid citizens who just try to keep their heads down and move forward for humanity. I do not judge them for one moment.

I can truly say that NOTHING could have prepared me for the lead visual on Johanna Ortiz’s Instagram feed. And you are reading the reaction of someone who believes pc culture is out of control. Still . . . what was she thinking???? Perhaps a great deal.

Johanna Ortiz’s Felix Vallotton ‘The White and the Black’, 1913

The Guardian writes that Felix Vallotton’s ‘The White and the Black’, 1913 is connected to Manet’s ‘Olympia’ – in which “the black maid at the back now appears front of stage (Vallotton’s blocking is superb) smoking a sardonic cigarette – with the haunting beauty of his empty landscapes.”

Personally, I have no idea what is going through her mind and tend to agree with her Instagram followers who ask “It is really helpful right now?” It’s the lack of any context — just her ‘mood’ — that confuses. Ortiz has not responded and I’m not at all certain that she cares one way or the other.

Since Instagram feeds aren’t designed for deep thought, if Johanna Ortiz’s intent is to probe a deeper connection — one in which a woman of color is now evaluating the body of a white woman — a clue would be welcome.

Mostly, people are confused by the painting post, with the designer regularly using models of color and seeming to regularly celebrate mixed-racial global fusion. So we are left to draw our own conclusions — or just move on. Far greater concerns are on our global agenda.

Rewriting the True History of Black People

Given the controversy around Edouard Manet’s original painting ‘Olympia’, scandalous in centering on a prostitute’, I have reading to do before saying one more word in this very complicated moment. The painting was temporarily renamed ’Laure’ after the model who posed as the black maid in the original painting.

‘Laure’ joined other paintings in the Musée d’Orsay 2019 exhibition ‘Black Models: From Gericault to Matisse’ which also had new titles American scholar Denise Murrell said the exhibition revealed how black people played a major role in the birth of modern art in Paris but were written out of the story.

Whether Johanna Ortiz’s Instagram post is tone-deaf or filled with intent is not clear. Being a glass is half full person, I will assume the latter for now. I thank her, though, for introducing us to this rich topic of creative, cultural investigation. To be continued . . . ~ Anne

Edouard Manet ‘Olympia’ 1863.