Fashion Designer’s Nonsensical Anne Frank Interpretation May Sell T-Shirts
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
It may have only been a blip in the ironic T-shirt-clad world of hipsterdom, but if culture-tracking websites like Jezebel and Vice see it fit to run images of aleXsandro Palombo’s latest clothing designs, well, who are we to argue?
The provocative, arguably iconoclastic, Italian designer and illustrator recently posted a set of politically charged T-shirt designs on his Humor Chic art blog. While North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il holding a multi-colored phallus-shaped lollipop might be cheeky, a grinning Anne Frank wearing combat lingerie and brandishing an AK-47 is slightly confusing.
Maybe this is just the latest in the Jewish revenge fantasy meme that’s brought us movies like “Defiance” and “Inglourious Basterds.” Palombo seems to suggest that this militaristic super-heroine Frank, were she real, could vanquish all of our societal ills — “mediocrity,” “absence of identity,” “aesthetic obsession” — including anti-Semitism.
First, she has to sell some t-shirts.
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