Slaying trends
*This post contains spoilers*
When you hear a film is going to be about a killer pair of jeans, you can’t help but roll your eyes at the concept. I saw this trailer a few weeks back in my weekly email, The Bite by Shudder, a Tuesday email capturing short snippets of stories and horror news of the week. If you’re not subscribed I highly recommend as it’s a great little slice before bed. As soon as I saw the trailer, this was one I knew I had to cover and watch because how could a costume designer not want to watch a pair of pants slash and kill people. What I didn’t expect was the message that this movie is steeped in, which is a topic that is close to my heart.
Part The Stuff and part evil Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, this is the story about an evil pair of jeans that is seeking to kill it’s wearers. Branded in the film as “Super Shapers”, these unisex pants have the technology to conform to the wearers body giving you the “perfect fit”. As anyone knows buying jeans when you find a pair/brand that works you stick with them, so to have a jean that senses your body shape and forms to fit, is a revolutionary idea. What writer director Elza Kephart so brilliantly weaves (sorry had to) into the story is all these undertones of what actually is happening in the fashion industry. The fashion industry today is one of the biggest contributors to the waste in our landfills, and I am sure that we have all heard the stories about the dangers of the “fast fashion” industry. Not only is our planet being exploited through this system but so are the workers, who mostly are women and children in impoverished countries.
When our story opens, new employee Libby (Romane Denis) is starting her first day at Canadian Cotton Company, an H&M/Uniqlo type clothing store. We can see each section of the store broken up into color blocks of clothing items, ranging from pants, shirts, to athletic wear. Libby has been hired to help the current employees work the overnight shift in preparation for their “Madness Monday” sale where they will launch their new product, the “Super Shaper” jeans. Libby a bright eyed sixteen-year-old has dreamed to work for CCC and looks up to company CEO Harold Landsgrove (Stephen Bogaert) as an activist role model. We as the audience are even brainwashed by the companies promises of “Fair Trade, NON-GMO Organic Cotton” used in the making of their clothing, a tact used all to often by companies. Right away we can see the messages at play here and they are brilliantly done. Greenwashing is “the disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image”, we see this in extraordinary amounts now because more and more people are searching for products that are “free from” and ethically sourced. This doesn’t just happen in clothing but in cleaning and beauty products as well. We can also see the structures of consumerism and being a “slave to the trends” when employee Lord (Kenny Wong) tells Libby that she must stay up to date on the current CCC trends. When Libby expresses that her current outfit is from CCC, Lord asks “when did you buy them”. With Libby to respond, “last month” Lord is quick to tell her that “last month was three seasons ago”. Many fashion brands put more demand on capitol market by leading you to believe that you must stay up with trends in this manner. In the early days of fashion, or what we now call “slow fashion”, we saw seasons circulate every spring and fall, now we see upwards of 6-7 seasons a calendar year: that’s an insane jump! This image is mirrored in our influencer character Peyton Jules (Erica Anderson), who is shown in cuts to us via her YouTube videos of hauls and unboxings she is sharing with her fans. These influences made by social media and corporations milking us for our money and telling us we are of less worth unless we are partaking in this cycle is extremely harmful. Not just the unrealistic beauty expectations being set forth, but the monetary ones.
By the time our first victim is taken, we are on a ride that is at times zany but holds such an important message. Jemma (Hanneke Talbot) steals a pair of the “Super Shapers” before they are announced to the public or even put on the floor. We are taunted by the posters in the stores warehouse that read Employee Theft Hurts Us All, a foreshadowing notion for what is to come. The double meaning in this message is not only the pain that these unsuspecting employees succumb too, but the idea of stealing the rights of the workers behind these garments as well. We come to realize that Craig (Brett Donahue) is so focused on becoming a regional manager at the company, that he will cover up these murders in anyway that he can, even so far as knocking Libby out and stashing her away when she asks to call the police. We see Jemma disposed of as one of the mannequins and Lord stuffed in a boxed, again among store mannequins, as if we are being told when you become complacent within the problem you might as well be lifeless.
How we discover the backstory to these evil jeans, comes about in a comical way but then the seriousness of the message really hits home. While folding clothing Shruti (Sehar Bhojani) is humming along to Bollywood music and we see the pants begin to dance. This gets captured by the camera on the floor left by the victim who was holding it (that of the influencers camera crew who came to the store at midnight to do a live stream and promote the new product). Libby finds the camera and quickly shows Shruti. The girls realize the threat and stash themselves away in Craig’s office, who is reluctant to let them in. Shruti notices that the jeans have taken an upper torso mannequin to form a whole body, but the spirit has also added a bhindi to the forehead of the mannequin in blood. Shruti begins to communicate with the spirit in Hindu, one of the many languages spoken in India, and since the spirit cannot speak she uses a severed hand and the blood of a corpse to communicate through Devanagari script on the walls. This is where we learn of Keerat (Pritha Mazumdar) a thirteen-year-old girl who works in the cotton fields for CCC. As she goes to dump her basket into the gin her scarf gets caught in the gears and she is pulled into the machine. Horribly executed, her blood has now spilled into the cotton and her essence becomes part of the weaving of the pants. She now seeks revenge for what has been done to her. We learn that CCC dose not practice the message that they preach.
While the way in which this is presented to us in this film is fantasized, all to often women are hurt or killed on the job in similar ways to Keerat. We see factory fires consume the lives of its labor force, with no proper way out of the building, and women and young girls can be raped to continue production speed. Without proper advocation of working conditions, no unionized labor in these sweatshops, the horrors of the fast fashion labor network get swept under the rug. The realities of the fashion industry are bleak, and this is not just with box stores like H&M, this happens with bigger houses and brands as well.
Eric Poirier is the costume designer of this film and he has done an excellent job with the color blocking. We see the simplicity of the clothing used making the largest impact within our characters. I had a professor in grad school who used to tell me constantly to never put jeans on the stage, that they are the most boring piece of clothing and tell you nothing of a character. I argued to her, and still will to this day, that you can learn a lot about the character of the person by the jeans that they are wearing. This film proved that they are not a boring piece of clothing, but a staple item in everyone’s wardrobe. Through the message that Elza and her cowriter Patricia Gomez developed through this film is that we really need to take a hard look into the items that are in our closets. It is so vital that we fully research where our clothing is coming from and ask the questions. Are any workers being exploited in the process of me getting this item? Am I being greenwashed or is this company really being transparent in what they are telling me? I know that a lot of the 100% ethical companies can be awfully expensive and not everyone is in a place to afford those pieces, my biggest advice and I participate in this as well is to thrift. Thrifting, repairing existing items you own, or upcycling them is the best way to keep the demand out of the ready to wear market and out of the landfill. Yes, at the time of original purchase there is a chance of exploitation, but when you thrift buy clothing you are not putting the demand back into the market. We can each take small steps in our own shopping habits to prevent companies from ruling our lives. Vote with your dollars, and know where your products are coming from, companies want you to think they are in control when really the control lies within us the consumer. Without us these companies would not have a demand.
