Blur Tool

“It’s not a costume,” BUBBLES said of her bespoke attire, a flurry of blue-green tulle, gold spandex, and a trawling net’s worth of sequins, shells, coins, gems, and starfish. “We are real mermaids: a ‘merfamily’ who comes here once a year to represent for the creatures of the sea.” It was the Forty-First Annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade, and Bubbles, ATHENA, and SERAPHINA were there to spread the mergospel to those gathered along the boardwalk leg of the parade route. “Fish live in the sea,” said Seraphina, “[Humans] are invading their privacy when we go in with our boats or go fishing.” And theirs is not the only display of human-marine solidarity. Thirty feet down the boardwalk, CARO BRATNOBER sported a comparatively modest ensemble of cuffed blue shorts, aviators, and a navy blue T-shirt that promoted something called the Interspecies Anti-Yacht Alliance. “Orcas are attacking rich people’s yachts in the ocean,” noted Bratnober, adding in a conspiratorial whisper, “It’s not a real organization.” But if there were a lesson to the day, it was that homemade fashion can transform hopeful fictions into galvanizing community. As last year’s Mermaid winner and a twenty-year veteran of the parade, SUZIE SIMS-FLETCHER, put it, “Embrace the blur of fashion. It’s sort of like the blur of mermaids…. You put on some glitter and you blur into a mermaid!”