"Playing Risk in Cosplay by Accident" - Floss Answers Sydney Sweeney vol.1

As part of a regular blog, waitress-turned-writer-turned-political-savant Floss Crossley responds to baiting questions from Editorial. Crossley mediates on political apathy, slacktivism, dictatorial boardgames and the continually futile philosophising of micro-trends. WE THANK HER.

I just invaded China by candlelight. The electricity has run out.
I lost my card again so I can’t take money out so I can’t top it up at the store.
But it’s ok we have some old wax burnt down to a height too ugly for
tomorrow’s restaurant guests. My ears are warmed by an aviator hat I refer to
as Russian and my boyfriend’s upset his new jacket will be my new jacket now because he
thought he was a woman’s small. His six silver buckles are
creaking out a whistle from any slight movement.

My friend L starts shouting at my friend M. M’s dressed like he’s a
young Sci-Fi concubine- loose twisting linens and high-laced
leather boots. L is in a tall Prussian Cavalry hat, black, red
lining, gold stitching. M rolled a six, as he always seems to
do, and now his two green men are a massive threat to L’s
five orange occupying Scandinavia. My friend E is bored
and wants to actually hang out and talk and things. She has a
weed leaf and a Jamaican flag on the camo jacket I gave her
that came in the post for me, but I couldn’t have ordered. I’m
in a coat that makes my shoulders extend to far greater
lengths than our grandmothers could have hoped for us in
the 70s when they burnt their bras.

Most of my legs are covered, but the last button is only nay heigh so the two parts of the
coat swing open to reveal my cute little brogues. They
ripped open on a job interview- but luckily the interviewer
was an artist, so I got the job and he taped them up, but the
only tape he had was for his artwork, which was real camo
tape from Operation Desert Storm, but then I’m not sure if
I’ve got the job anymore because this was six months ago and
it’s subject to funding. But now, if I take Russia, I’ll have the
whole of Asia, and I can expand west. I’ll let L and M shout
and I’ll laugh every time they emasculate each other so that
they will make rash competitive moves and not notice how I
benefit from a weakened Europe.

While L dramatically rolls his dice, I check the light box in my hand. I click “See Post Anyway” to a trigger warning on Instagram. I see a dead child. Their face is obscured by blood. Below reads “liked by my ex boyfriend and others”. I know he’s liking the journalism, not the content, but it still reads in bad taste. I look around at the kitchen. The room is foggy. E’s clothes dry dangled over the kitchen cabinets. She did not manage to get all the dog period out of her new Polish T-shirt so her Black Water merch really is stained in blood. The heat of the room - the wet smoker’s breath locked in to keep out the winter wind - causes the tape which held an old photo against the fridge to finally give up its last grip. The glue’s dried out. The paper floats calmly down - the space heater’s upwards breeze allowing it to fall in slow motion- turning seductively from a mysterious food-stained blank side to reveal to me a long enough flash of text and garment- Melania in Kakhi:

I DONT REALLY CARE DO YOU ###

When S. Sweeney asked me to discuss the correlation between my milieu’s habit of wearing military regalia and the current accelerating political climate, I have to admit I was a little defensive. My reasons to be so I think are summed up in that historic image of the First Lady climbing the steps of air force one.

1. I. Trendy Military jackets are nothing new, we’ve only just moved on from last decade’s olive green high street revolutionaries.
2. II. I’m forced to address or even allude to the Indie Sleaze revival, and in a worse extension, I’m forced to address that a notable response of my friends and I - in the wake of mass global horrors - is as immaterial as a mild change in style and self-imaging.

   

One line of Research:

Vogue says:

Few garments better encapsulate the “I love typewriters and casual amphetamines” spirit of the indie sleaze than ornate martial jackets.

Even typing the words indie sleaze to say you don’t care about indie sleaze feels too much like an authorial legitimising of indie sleaze. (That's five
times I’ve said it now) I’ve always been
disgusted by the Hellp and the fit of their jeans. I
think it’s nice when my best friends waddle
around in tight denim and pointy sandals, but I
don’t want to see a plastic outline of what men
are lacking. I understand that the military jacket
is now often associated with the post-Celine
Opium for white boys vibe you see on evil “What
Are People At The X Gig Wearing” reels. And I
am uncomfortable with a restaurant coworker
assuming my association. But I do
own a typewriter and am prescribed
amphetamines. Separate to any contemporary
influence in this trend, there is definitely a bit of
newly or not-so-newly adults just dressing up as
what they thought a cool person looked like
when they were twelve. We have given up faith in new ideas of cool as they seem untrustworthy,
manipulated by all the microplastics and blue light rays we have since allowed to poison our imaginations.

There’s a very Gothic current to the English Memory of the World Wars. As a child on the 11th of November a melodramatic solemnness would take over me. In the shade of the town’s memorial monument, I’d display my plastic poppy on the square breast of my duffel coat with all the seriousness of a junior cadet. Staring up at the awesome obelisk, I would whisper a prayer for my troops and my country. The cold turning my little cheeks and fingers pink, I’d yearn for my father’s hand as he stood a foot behind me far away on the beaches of Normandy. I’d then wake up to shake my head at classmates slightly further along in puberty then I, their sweet perfumes smells and metallic crisp rattlings invading my total sensorial immersion in the still, calming fantasy of an old world war. At school, I took Evacuee Day so seriously that I was scouted by a teacher to play a sickly Victorian child in mortar and pestle workshops at the local community centre.

Maybe the hot nazis in New York think they’re being Libertines when they wear a trump hat and say retard. And the anorexic revival of this fashion is definitely not completely detached from their popularity. I do think, however, that a real fascist dress code is a lot more The Row than Slimane or Ali Express. People looked at Melania’s inauguration outfit and choked at the return to fascism. The Chanel style tailoring and colour scheme was certainly 1940s inspired, but I’d argue this is still cosplay over continuation. Georgia Meloni is a real fascist and she is one of the most normal looking people I have ever seen.

And, now, months after I began writing I’m still sitting around the table playing my board game. America and China are now in a trade war. Germany has promised to increase their military spending. I’m losing all of Europe, isolated in my island territory with a few guilty figures in the Middle East. They’re quietly well defended but unable to expand. It's Spring now so I wear a light Kakhi jacket I borrowed from L to dress as one of Gadaffi’s bodyguard for Halloween. I’ve paired it with a cute Glastonbury vibe dress just like TikTok showed me to. I want the white dress to feel like the end of the Hunger Games, I have my man and a child and a large expansive field with only birds over head. I'm not from District twelve, I'm from London and could probably do this all right now if I really wanted. But late at night I'd watch the Tesla satellites cross past the stars and know I’d still be in cosplay. The world is very loudly falling apart, and we know that we are not the real victims, nor the true perpetrators. We’re complicit through our impotency, we’re zombie soldiers dragged through comfortable trenches, hoping at least one of us could be a Sigfried Sasoon or Wilfred Owen.