With the flick of a lighter, the video for Addison Rae’s first single of the year (and third single in the span of about seven months), “High Fashion,” begins. Directed by Mitch Ryan, Rae shows her audience just how much she believes in the line, “I don’t need your drugs/I’d rather get, rather get high fashion” by appearing in the next scene in a bejeweled gold dress with coordinating heels. The flashes of this moment are immediately interspersed with Rae in what can be described as one of her ”dancer’s outfits” as she delights in various powdered puff pastries that allow her to lay on the metaphor real thick that there are other sweet drugs to enjoy besides cocaine. Not just high fashion, but also desserts (of the variety that cements Rae’s love affair with France [or at least Paris] of late).
The mid-tempo track, once again produced by Luka Kloser and Elvira (who also worked with Rae on “Diet Pepsi” and “Aquamarine”), is expectedly sultry from the get-go, starting with opening verse, “Have you ever dreamt of bein’ seen?/Not by someone, more like in a magazine/Wantin’ somethin’ more than just a hit, ah/Nothing else can make me feel like this.” Apart from addressing the idea that nothing is more addictive than the drug of fame (and yes, Rae did just recently appear on her very first cover of Rolling Stone, the headline being, “The Queen of TikTok is Coming for Pop”), it’s a phrase that also reeks of one, Britney Spears. To be sure, using the term “more than just a hit” seems deliberate on Rae’s part, for it’s an expression that, of course, reminds one of her doppelgänger crooning on 2003’s “Toxic,” “I need a hit/Baby, give me it.”
Indeed, Spears is a clear influence not just vocally on the track, but visually in the accompanying video. With one ensemble in particular standing out for its early 00s/“I’m A Slave 4 U”-esque vibe—the ultra-low-rise jeans being practically a trademark of Spears’ at that time. And yes, Rae has something of a reputation for her skimpy/barely-there attire. Hence, in a 2023 photoshoot for Vogue (in promotion of her then new EP, AR), Rae donned a dress that said, “Don’t judge a girl by her clothes.” But, like Britney before her, what she really meant was, “Don’t judge a girl by her lack of clothes.” As Spears so often was (including an immortal moment of being shamed for her sartorial choices in that illustrious Diane Sawyer interview from 2003).
Having watched MTV as a girl in Louisiana, there’s no denying Spears infiltrated Rae’s mind as she did the minds of so many others. As Rae recalled to Vogue, “I grew up as a really big fan of MTV, watching all the music videos and recreating the music videos in my bedroom, and being like, I want to do that one day. So it was always a dream, but it felt like a very distant dream, you know? I feel like a lot of people have that dream, but it feels so far away. Growing up in Louisiana, too…it’s a very different world. It was crazy. But for me, it’s always come down to the joy of performing.”
Again, this sounds uncannily like Spears’ experience in terms of the joy she got out of performing, specifically through dance. Fame was both a byproduct and a primary goal of that passion in both Louisiana women’s cases. And in the early to mid-00s, the only girl who had more of a chokehold on the nation than Britney Spears was Carrie Bradshaw (a.k.a. Sarah Jessica Parker). Who also seems to get a bit of a nod in “High Fashion” as well, namely when Rae is lying on the wooden floor of her closet surrounded by pairs of very expensive shoes (one assumes). In other words, it’s a Carrie B. wet dream. After all, she is the person who once described herself as follows: “I will literally be the old woman who lived in her shoes.”
Rae might be more okay with that than Carrie, so long as the shoes she’s “living in” are Dorothy Gale’s (a.k.a. Judy Garland) ruby red slippers—which do, in fact, make an appearance in this video. A cameo that adds up not just because of the lyrics, “You know I’m not an easy fuck, ah/But whеn it comes to shoes, I’ll be a slut,” but because of fame, glamor and Hollywood representing an Oz-like ideal for Rae (and all others who aspire to being somebody). But perhaps like both Britney and Carrie before her, the appeal of Hollywood will wear off once she “unmasks” what’s behind the proverbial curtain.
This is something Madonna also speaks on in her 2003 single, “Hollywood.” But more than that track, it’s “Material Girl” that Rae riffs on thematically throughout “High Fashion.” For it was Madonna who declared (even if she did so with more than a tinge of irony), “‘Cause we are living in a material world/And I am a material girl.” That’s, in essence, what Rae is saying here as well, pouring her heart out not to someone, but something. Yet another sign o’ the times indicating just how much romantic love has fallen out of, well, fashion compared to the supposed satisfaction of what material objects can provide (ephemerally, it should go without saying). Hence, Rae crooning, “I don’t want cheap love/I’d rather get high fashion.” And yet, like Madonna in the “Material Girl” video, she does, at certain moments, reveal herself to be but a “simple” girl who doesn’t really want for much. Just to writhe around in the grass among nature…while wearing her Spears-inspired haute couture.
As for the Lana Del Rey semiotics of the video, it already announced itself at the beginning of the video with that lighter (see also: LDR’s Ultraviolence promo photos). The fire element returns anew as the video draws to a close, with various fields (of the “Kansas” type) around Rae suddenly set ablaze. But, of course, Rae is very casual about it. Just another day in “paradise.” And while her homage to Del Rey might not be as strong in “High Fashion” as it is in “Diet Pepsi,” it remains a palpable presence nonetheless via these flame visuals that spark a callback to certain parts of the “Ride” video. That the video concludes with a scene of Rae lying/standing among the burning fields with her ruby red slippers in hand is also “Lana-coded” in that Dorothy is the exact sort of Americana-related reference that Del Rey would be likely to make.
But, for once, Rae has beaten her to the punch on such an allusion. Though not Madonna or Spears, both of whom have already said and/or displayed everything that Rae is in this song (both auditorily and visually). Except maybe the pastry play.
