6B — Thursday, October 31, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

It’s hard to overstate the cultural significance of Bob Mackie. 
While his legacy is intractable from that of Cher (being responsible 
for her most iconic looks), his work spans from his sketch work 
for Edith Head and Jean Louis in the early ’60s (including the 
dress that Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday” to President 
John F. Kennedy in), to assisting his future lifetime partner, Ray 
Aghayan, on “The Judy Garland Show” and “The Carol Burnett 
Show,” to his work with Cher and just about every celebrity of 
note over the course of the mid-to-late 20th 
century. His career spans almost 60 years, but 
his eponymous ready-to-wear line, Bob Mackie 
Originals, was comparatively short-lived and 
failed to fuel him in the same way as the work 
he’s done designing for studios, Broadway 
shows and world tours. Unlike other designers 
considered to be a household name, Mackie 
didn’t build a brand that was marketable to the 
public — he’s never stepped out and done the 
creative direction for a massive conglomerate, 
designed an it-bag or even thrown his name 
upon a storefront. Even during his years doing a 
ready-to-wear line, he has never been that guy. 
Bob Mackie has spent his years in pursuit of 
the costume, stitching together an endless sea 
of paillettes and Marabous, creating marvelous 
and fleeting moments that live on in history 
through photographs. 
Part of what draws people to special events 
is their temporality. There’s a special brand of 
allure that comes with only being able to wear 
or see something once, and one of the central 
tenets of the costume is that it’s meant to be 

frivolous. The visual arts have historically been discredited due 
to their political feminization — high fashion is often viewed as 
wasteful and gluttonous, with little regard given to its greater 
societal impact or its role in the economy. Red carpet looks and 
garments used for tours and on sets for TV shows are at the most 
unlucky intersection of perceived inaccessibility, wastefulness and 
feminized discreditation. This may be why Bob Mackie never had 
the opportunity to brand himself the way that, say, a longstanding 
leather goods company with a high fashion line already has built 
into it. He never fought to turn his name into a behemoth. He 
didn’t capitalize on the media frenzy that his work has created 
time and time again. There were perfumes, sure. There was 

a ready-to-wear line and a QVC collaboration. There’s even a 
limited collection of Barbies. But Bob Mackie is a tried and true 
dressmaker. He is a costumer who has undoubtedly helped shape 
how the world considers what is possible in fashion. 
To commit oneself to the costume, either through embodying 
it over the course of a night or, in Mackie’s case, a lifetime, is to 
commit oneself completely to a fantasy and throw caution to the 
wind. Excess and unadulterated flair have external validity in a 
capitalist marketplace (if that’s your thing) when they become a 
source of inspiration, but the point is that cannot happen if any 
mind is given to whether or not bits and bobs can be reinterpreted 
into something consumable. Bob Mackie may have (mainly) 
worked for pop stars and production studios, 
thus needing in some way to interact with the 
notion of acceptability in his work, but he has 
spent the majority of his career unbeholden to 
retail sales. References to Sontag’s 1964 essay 
“Notes on Camp” have reached their saturation 
point, but she refers to the concept of visual 
camp in this way, arguing that camp turns its 
back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic 
judgment. Camp doesn’t reverse things. It 
doesn’t argue the good is bad, or the bad is good. 
What it does is to offer art (and life) a different 
— and supplementary — set of standards.
To realize a concept with the purest intention 
possible, as Mackie often did, is not to concern 
oneself with what’s considered to be in good 
taste, or possessing the proper ingredients 
to achieve a certain level of popularity. It 
is to pursue a vision to its fullest extent, 
communicating an idea with the greatest level 
of efficacy that can be achieved. Bob Mackie 
took the absurd and brought it to the eyes of 
the mainstream, and we’ll be forever grateful 
for it.

Bob Mackie and embodying the fantasy ... also Cher

SAM KREMKE
Daily Arts Writer

FACEBOOK

In the last week, even the least bothered of us have considered some of 
the angles we may take with our costumes this year. With three years of 
Halloween in Ann Arbor in the bag, the following is what I’ve solidified as 
the categories that encompass 95 percent of costumes on show and they’re 
the spooky truth. 
The Nostalgic Costume
The shrieks and sobs produced by a nostalgia-inducing costume are the 
reason for the popularity of this category around campus. As we’re all from 
different places, we seek the ties that bind us — nationally-televised ’00s 
cartoons, the club hits that played at elementary school birthday parties, 
the earliest memes of 2011 or 2012. Finding the Cosmo to our Wanda or the 
milk to our Reese’s Puffs or the Brad to our Angelina on a night out instantly 
elevates such an interaction to one of predestiny. Whether as points of 
shared love or sharp contention, nostalgic costumes carry emotion without 
much conceptual or executional heavy-lifting. 
The Sexy Costume
The thirst trap has been so fully integrated into university costume 
culture that it could almost be a costume in itself. For a few years only 
certain costumes were sexualized — cats, nurses, Freddie Mercury. But 
now, it wouldn’t be so radical to conceive of a sexy Cheerio. When people 
asked me for costume advice this year, I reminded them that the point of 
Halloween is to look good. This can’t, however, be at the expense of the idea 
itself. If you go as a mafioso just because you look good in a white button-
down and want to fiend cigarettes all night, your costume is actually not 
that great. 
The Scary Costume
Being scary on Halloween just doesn’t have the same appeal it did as a 

kid. At this point, completely unwillingly and regretfully, I’ve seen actual 
beheadings online. Costumes in this category these days are therefore either 
terrifying or trivialized by an undeniable layer of sex appeal. A costume that 
attempts but fails at scariness should either adapt to satirizing/sexualizing 
itself or it should go home.
The Niche Costume
The thrill of the arts, baby. Some of us ride or die so hard for particularly 
influential figures in our respective fields of interest to the extent that we 
forget their existence is known by maybe 10 percent of our peers. When it 
comes to the big day, we prep for hours putting the finishing touches on a 
representation that channels this character or person’s very soul. But the 
night only breeds disappointment and demoralization as our peers don’t 
even know who Rick Owens is and we get guesses from Keanu Reeves to 
Steven Tyler (that’s just bad).
The Pregame-Decided Costume
While some of us workshop costumes in our phone’s notes app for 
months before the actual events of Halloweek, others of us couldn’t be 
bothered to think critically enough about it until the big night itself. 
Thankfully, though, some girl at the pregame needs a boy to complete her 
Taylor-Swift-in-the-“You Belong With Me”-music-video look. 
The “Number of Friends You Have” Costume
If you’ve got one friend, you’re good for Batman and Robin, maybe a 
pair of boobs. Two guys and a girl? Harry, Ron and Hermione. Four Mean 
Girls. Five Spice Girls. Incestuous squad of six? Friends. Conceive of this: 
going as the seven continents! Or maybe the eight directions on a compass. 
Nine ladies dancing? Ten beer pong cups. Eventually you can just be 
Brockhampton.
The “Just Abstract” Costume
Many of us have likely seen the Buzzfeed concept of going with a t-shirt 
that says “life” on it and a bag of lemons to give people. I did this my senior 
year of high school. But with an internet culture that hybridizes and layers 

references more than ever before, as well as new generations of students 
who spent a larger percentage of their formative years within this culture, 
Halloween has begun to reflect such thinking. You could go as super-
thicc, but specifically the distorted Photo Booth “Twirl” effect version of 
this. You could go as the hissing cat meme itself. You could go as “Bort,” 
the poorly drawn meme version of Bart Simpson. You could ironically go as 
the tapestry and Christmas lights that your roommate put up because they 
don’t represent you. You could go as the video-game screencap of “Ah shit, 
here we go again.” You could go as the generic vaporwave mannequin in a 
suit with a big “stonks” sign, or better yet you could go as a bar graph of our 
national debt with block text over it that says, “Honestly I’m just fucking 
vibing rn.” 
All angles have the potential for success, but only in their purest form. 
The only thing worse than a bad costume on Halloween is not going all-
in. So even if you’re Taylor Swift’s boy-toy from that music video every 
else seems to know, you’re gonna take photos with her and the signs you 
supposedly have to flash one another from your windows, and you sure as 
hell are gonna get that slow dance at the end of the night.

Categorizing and calling out classic Ann Arbor costumes

BEN VASSAR
Daily Arts Writer

B-SIDE: COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK

B-SIDE: STYLE NOTEBOOK

‘Orphans’ & ‘Arabesque’

Coldplay

Parlophone

SINGLE REVIEW: ‘ORPHANS’ & ‘ARABESQUE’

After 
nearly 
five 
years, 
Coldplay has emerged from 
musical stagnation with two 
singles off their upcoming 
album, Everyday Life. The 
album’s title seems to be the 
exact 
premise 
of 
the 
singles, celebrating the 
small moments in life 
with a blend of saxophone 
solos, bluesy guitar riffs 
and dynamic horns. 
“Orphans” sounds like 
the Coldplay we’ve heard 
on past albums, with 
its bubbly “woo-woos” 
and Chris Martin’s passionate 
chanting 
throughout 
the 
verses. The lyrics are nostalgic 
in nature, walking through the 
loneliness of being away from 
home while still maintaining 
an overwhelming and spirited 
sensation of freedom. The tune 
ends with an overpowering 

blend of drums and background 
vocals as Martin sings the line 
“I want to be with you ‘till the 
whole world ends,” crafting the 
signature Coldplay euphoria. 
“Arabesque” 
is 
more 

experimental in nature, slightly 
deviating from Coldplay’s soft 
rock tradition. The tune starts 
off with noises from a bustling 
city and transitions into an 
angular guitar riff before the 
introduction of a protrusive 
horn section that has its 
own solo towards the end of 

the song. Unlike “Orphans,” 
“Arabesque” is more lyrically 
abstract as it attempts to 
deconstruct Western fears of 
Islam in the wake of terrorism. 
Interwoven in the folk sounds 
are Middle Eastern motifs, 
such as the prominence of 
percussion 
instruments 
and the usage of horns.
Despite the time away, 
Coldplay 
still 
sounds 
like the euphoric rock 
band 
they 
established 
themselves as back in the 
’90s. While “Arabesque” 
slightly diverges from their 
traditional rock sound, both 
singles revisit the signature 
sound of the band. The singles 
are complex yet captivating and 
serve as a promising precursor 
to Everyday Life.
— Kaitlyn Fox, Daily Arts 
Writer

PARLOPHONE

‘I THINK’

Tyler, the Creator

Columbia Records

MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW: ‘I THINK’

Tyler, the Creator’s IGOR alter 
ego, Wolf Daley, returns with 
the music video for “I THINK.” 
Directed under Tyler’s Wolf 
Haley alias, the video features a 
caption that reads “a fraction of 
the video*,” indicating more to 
come. The lavish scenery of “A 
BOY IS A GUN” is replaced by 
a grimy club scene — a sketchy 
restroom, 
claustrophobia, 
reprehensible 
hookups 
and all. Whereas Daley’s 
last appearance reflected 
a 
more 
emotionally 
unhinged side, “I THINK” 
is less dramatic, zeroing in 
on a simpler narrative many 
of us can relate to with 
some comical glimmers 
along the way. Wolf dons an 
on-brand pastel Neapolitan suit, 
his signature bowl-cut wig and 
tinted sunglasses as he wanders 
aimlessly in pursuit of yet another 
Timothee Chalamet-esque love 
interest in the club. 
A ’70s clad crew of men 
sequester themselves at the edge 
of a bleak restroom, rolling dice at 

the very beginning of the video. 
From there, the video pans and we 
find Wolf stepping up to use one 
of the urinals as a couple leaves a 
stall and some people walk in and 
out of the entrance. Wolf then 
makes his way to the bathroom 
mirror where he sings the song’s 
lyrics while preening himself. 
Hell breaks loose when a fistfight 
occurs between the men from 

earlier, and Wolf is shoved out 
of the bathroom and into a wall. 
Unbothered by his surroundings, 
he ventures into the club, pushing 
and shoving his way to his 
unknowing love interest. From 
here, we pan to a photo shoot of 
various characters from earlier 
in the video, including Tyler, the 
Creator in GOLF gear, Kendall 

Jenner and then finally Wolf, who 
occupies the last quarter of the 
video. The camera then zooms in 
on a forlorn Wolf and then looks 
up to a hand on his shoulder, 
presumably that of the individual 
he pursued earlier. 
The video is an anomaly in the 
series of IGOR videos. Rather than 
presenting Wolf as the primary 
focus of the video, it provides 
insight into the experiences 
of other people at the 
club. This effect is more 
humorous than anything 
else, Wolf sticking out like a 
sore thumb, neglecting the 
interactions 
surrounding 
him in his ridiculous garb. 
There’s a comical backbone 
to this video, but it doesn’t 
overpower its sincerity the way it 
does in “EARFQUAKE.” Rather, 
it embraces the all-consuming 
nature 
of 
love, 
awkwardly 
unfolding in a casual club scene 
we’ve all experienced before.
— Diana Yassin, Daily Arts 
Writer

COLUMBIA RECORDS

If you’ve got one friend, 
you’re good for Batman 
and Robin. Maybe a pair of 
boobs.