Styling Exile

By Fashion Editor, Nicole Clinton*.

“When I’m at war with myself, I just ride”.

The hauntingly poetic ending to Lana Del Rey’s epic, 10 minute music video for Ride intends to justify the singer’s (or perhaps the character’s) obsession with the dedication of her life to the freedom of the open road. She continues, elucidating that it is about “being in touch with your darkest fantasies” and “creating a life for yourself to experience them”. However, when one studies the stunningly stylised feel of the video and the role of clothing in the production of awe-inspiring cinematic visuals, these lines could simultaneously be applied to validate the avid use of fashion in the music video. Both Del Rey and the character she portrays in the music video have crafted a vision of an image for themselves and utilise fashion to visually exude it.

The fashion exhibited in the music video is saturated with style without being overtly glamorous. It is a product of that alluring and curious artistic paradox- the perfectly imperfect. It is ravishingly flawed, just like the girl about whom Del Rey sings. The fashion reveals its dysfunctional essence through its lack of clear direction or focus.

For example, the character’s informal look is California casual; depending on oversize, off-the-shoulder t-shirts, denim cut-off shorts and mini-sundresses. But her dresses when she sings onstage resemble an outdated, 1980s pageant queen. This eerily unnatural transition reflects the ‘damaged soul’ quality that Del Rey is fascinated with representing in her work.

Despair and mental unrest are idealised and romanticised perhaps because despite their negatives, at least they produce strong feelings and overcome the dulling numbness that mundane life exudes. She channels the notion that there is something quite attractive about being “f***ing crazy” because of the freedom and the pardon from society that accompanies it. The glamorisation of instability and “indecisiveness as wavering as the ocean” heavily relies on fashion to exhibit the appeal of these characteristics.

The cool attitude that the girl’s style radiates loans excessive charm to her nomadic way of life. The most significant examples of this arrive in the opening scene when Del Rey’s bleached denim jacket, ornamented with studs and fringes, emanates a tarnished bohemian spirit; and again in a later scene when her eighties, shoulder-padded, fringed, black leather jacket and denim frayed shorts attach a sense of reckless anticipation to her wait for her biker drivers at a gas station.

The video also employs fashion to aesthetically insert the very ‘American’ theories that are delicately woven through the song. There is something perplexingly glamorous about one of these classically ‘American’ ideas: the open road. Perhaps it stems from the almost legendary notion that the open road offers a physical and psychological escape from the soul-destroying routine of everyday life. Or maybe it spirals out of that other mythological concept of the American Dream, that the open road possesses endless possibilities and if you travel far enough, you’ll find what you’re looking for.

The choices of materials or textures in the character’s wardrobe contain close associations to the most well-known periods of American history. The prominence of denim and fringes in Del Rey’s costumes in the video are reminiscent of the popular image of the Wild West. She enters more controversial territory by donning a traditional Native American headdress, bringing up the US government’s horrendous mistreatment of the countries original nomads. Her tendency to align her style preferences with two warring adversaries from her nation’s history visually exemplifies the conflict that lies at both the root of her own identity and of a country that preaches freedom but often asserts an abuse of control.

A more explicit display of American symbolism adorns Del Rey’s body when she wears the nation’s flag as a cape-like garment. The girl’s colour palette generally revolves around the red, white and blue of the star spangled banner reminding the viewer of where her beliefs originated. The distinctive fashion triumphs in making the desolate, monotonous locations of a mid- west town appear captivating and beautifully eerie.

The character’s failure to settle physically, mentally or romantically grants her outsider status, an image that is cemented in the video through her clothes and perhaps more importantly through the attitude with which she carries them. Fashion is the force that asserts her marginalisation from society as her style does not seem to fit into any one particular box, reflecting her reluctance to limit herself to only one life or lover.

She wears the feminine dresses with a child-like yet disenchanted innocence but she bears the leather and denim with reckless liberty. Her indifference to modern trends and subtle changeability would make her an outcast from the cutting edge fashion crowd and her dangerous sensuality would expel her from the old- fashioned traditionalists. She meanders between lovers in an attempt to feed her thirst for passion, acceptance and a feeling of belonging. Her fashion preoccupation alters depending on which one of the men she is accompanying, going from carefree to pretty to tough- as if each man is a style patron enabling her addiction to tasting different roles.

It is not until the end of the video that Del Rey finds her ‘people’ and thus a sense of belonging. This epiphany where she accepts her clan as those who are ‘wild’ and believe in ‘the freedom of the open road’ is represented by a tribal-esque outfit of a white, fringed crop-top and shorts.

Therefore, fashion plays a revitalising and symbolic role in Lana Del Rey’s Ride video. It showcases the image she wishes to embody in the eyes of the viewer as a romantic wanderer who ultimately accepts that predictable life is not her destiny. The clothes energise and glamorise the barren location and the character’s nonchalant state of mind. In fact, the whole 10minute experience is like fashion hypnosis if you equate the tyre on which Del Rey swings at the beginning and end of the video as a pendulum dreamily entrancing us into her surreal state of existence. But I’m warning you, if you go under, you won’t want to come back out…you’ll want to ‘just ride’.

*This article was originally published in The UCC Express in November 2015, during my time as fashion editor.