front page 24 May 2020
About the objects (sourced from V&A gallery descriptions)
- The metal-free bra and a non-underwired bra are the type worn by women working in electronics factories in and around Shenzhen. One bra is made with plastic supports, the other has no wire support at all, meaning that they are not picked up by factory metal detectors at security checkpoints located at entry and exit points. The market for metal-free underwear has arisen because these garments allow female workers to avoid invasive (and possibly abusive) body searches from male security guards. Rates of abuse are high and access to help is limited. The choice of the type of bra worn is a consequence of the sexual politics of Shenzhen manufacturing.
- On 24 May 2020, the front page of the New York Times marked the harrowing milestone of 100,000 deaths from Covid-19 in the United States. A list of some of the people who had died from the disease included their name, age, location and a poignant line from their obituary. The New York Times’ design director Tom Bodkin stated that, for the first time in at least 40 years, the paper chose not to illustrate the front page. In an image-led culture, it demonstrates the difficulty of representing the global pandemic with a single picture.
- The colour ‘nude’ is often used in fashion to describe a light peachy-beige tone representing the colour of Caucasian skin. In autumn 2013 the French fashion house Christian Louboutin launched ‘The Nudes Collection’, a range of shoes in five skin tones. This was one of the first times that a major fashion house had adjusted its definition of nude to include skin colours other than white. Window displays used elaborately mounted mannequin arms to show how the new shades matched various skin tones. Arms were used instead of legs to avoid sensitivities in countries where the unclothed leg is taboo.