Heroin chic

All you want to know about Heroin chic

Fashions
name Heroin chic
era 1990s
type Aesthetic, Drug
date 1993-1997
Kate Moss in a 1990s Calvin Klein ad

Heroin chic was a look popularized in mid-1990s fashion and characterized by pale skin, dark circles underneath the eyes, and jutting bones.

Contents

Background

At the time during which heroin chic emerged, the popular image of heroin was changing for several reasons. The price of heroin had decreased, and its purity had increased dramatically.[1] In the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic had made heroin use increasingly risky.[1] However, heroin's new purity allowed it to be more easily sniffed, snorted, or smoked, and the dominant mode of heroin use changed from intravenous injection to inhalation.[1] These changes allowed heroin to find a new market among the middle-class and the wealthy, in contrast to its previous base of the poor and marginalized.[1]

The heroin chic trend in fashion coincided with a string of movies in the mid-1990s – such as The Basketball Diaries, Trainspotting, and Pulp Fiction – that examined heroin use and drug culture.[2]

Rise and fall of the aesthetic

This waifish, emaciated, and drug-addicted look was the basis of the 1993 advertising campaign of Calvin Klein featuring Kate Moss. Film director and actor Vincent Gallo contributed to the development of this image through his Calvin Klein fashion shoots.[3] The trend eventually faded, perhaps in part due to the overdose death of a prominent fashion photographer of the genre, Davide Sorrenti.[4]

Criticism and analysis

Heroin chic fashion drew much criticism, especially from anti-drug groups.[5] Fashion designers, models such as Kate Moss and Jaime King, and movies such as Trainspotting were blamed for glamorizing heroin use. Then-U.S. president Bill Clinton condemned the look.[6] Other commentators denied that fashion images made drug use itself more attractive. "There is no reason to expect that people attracted to the look promoted by Calvin Klein and other advertisers...will also be attracted to heroin, any more than suburban teen-agers who wear baggy pants and backward caps will end up shooting people from moving cars," wrote Jacob Sullum in Reason magazine.[4]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d Durrant, Russil & Jo Thakker. Substance Use & Abuse: Cultural and Historical Perspectives. Sage Publications (2003), p87. ISBN 076192342X.
  2. ^ The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. Women under the Influence. Johns Hopkins University Press (2006), p98. ISBN 0801882281.
  3. ^ Calvin Klein special on the Biography channel
  4. ^ a b Sullum, Jacob. "Victims of Everything." Reason Magazine (May 23, 1997)
  5. ^ Turns of Phrase: Heroin Chic
  6. ^ President Clinton on Heroin Chic
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin_chic"

No comments have been added.



Your name:

City:

Country:

Your comments:

Security check *
(Please enter the number into adjoining box)

 

  • Ads

           
eXTReMe Tracker