What's This Whole Cultural Appropriation Thing, Anyhow,?

    One of my readers commented to me Monday about the subject of cultural appropriation, and my thoughts and opinions on it. So here goes.

    First off, the notion of cultural interplay and cross communication is not only intrinsic to the Attire language, its an essential element of it. Just as every language out there, including French which gets jealously guarded, morphs, and adds new terms to their lexicon based on interaction and appropriation of terms from other cultures that are deemed worthy and useful, so does the Attire language largely survive and grow, based on interaction between cultures.  So lets just be clear here; we all appropriate from each other, all the time. Is it appropriation when you go out and buy a pair of shoes you saw a friend wearing because you liked them so well?  Sure is.  Did you ask if you could?  Bet not.  We ALL do this.

   
    From the very earliest part of human history, and certainly after the beginnings of recorded history, there are endless examples of sartorial appropriation back and forth across oceans and landscapes.  The Greeks and Romans had no knowledge of flax before starting to trade with Egypt, but the textile made from it became a full part of the apparel vocabulary afterwards.  Similarly, artistic motifs sailed back and forth from Constantinople to Rome, eventually allowing garments and accessories to be created that were a full mix of both cultures, and as such, spoke in a new way.  The art, architecture, literature, music and of course, clothing of both sides of the exchange were altered and enlarged by the process, giving both cultures new ways to express themselves.

              Greek inspired Egyptian sphinx, now residing at Chiswick House, Great Britain

    When the British colonials moved into India, and began sending back the fabrics and art works of that amazing land, did they appropriate it without any return happening?  Of course not. It is true that there was just as much sharing back to India of culture and ideas as were "borrowed". No, no one got asked if it was okay, but that has never been the reality of such exchanges.  Whether the interaction is a fully free and above board one, or one steeped in imperialism, does not change the fact that both sides end up getting something out of the process.
    When China and Japan started trade relations with the West, little did they know that their cultures, as closed to outsiders as they had been, would be changed and made more complex by the reality of trade with another land and people.  Insofar as Attire is concerned, the Western countries got spectacular silk textiles that instantly changed how people all over Europe dressed.  The East got new ways of dressing too as influences from Europe, brought by the very traders they dealt with, crept slowly into use.

                                                French toile de jouy with Chinese motifs

   

        Chinese woman in mid 19th century western styled dress, with Chinese decorative motifs

    But this question of cultural appropriation is deeper than just this; and has much more far reaching implications for change.
    First of all, if a person sees a garment or accessory of some other culture for sale in the open marketplace, and they choose to purchase that item, how is that appropriation? Also, if a designer can freely use the art and culture of another country or time to inspire and drive a collection of clothing, how is that appropriation?

              Poiret coats with influences from Japan, Russia, and the Middle East, respectively

                                    Designs by various people all using Japanese inspiration

     Secondly, the idea of appropriation carries with it an implication that a group or country has sole proprietary rights to the use and wearing of their cultures clothing.  Though some may think this is so, and good that it is so, it is also impossible to contain. Social and business interactions between countries expose people to new ideas, and even unknowingly on a conscious level, they have their influence; changing how a garment is cut subtly to mimic something seen, adopting a style of embroidery, or an artistic motif and including that into jewelry, or textile design.

  
     We are, as I have stated more than once here, moving into a truly global state as a world culture.  That melding of different people into a more cohesive whole is not going to be easy, nor is it going to be done in a blink.  This whole subject of appropriation is an example of how tough its all going to be.  Ultimately the notion of a culture having sole right to look a certain way through dress is simply a kind of sartorial nationalism.  Its a way, and many people think its a good thing, of keeping us all separated.
    What I will champion here is the free exchange of all these Attire words, back and forth. We need to drop the outmoded notion of nationalism, in all its manifestations, including clothing related ones, if we are going to move ourselves fully into this Global culture we are building right now.  If we open up to giving these ways we adorn ourselves to others, and they to us, we can grow to understand each other a little bit better than we did before.  And what, I ask you, is wrong with that?
   

Let's Be Frank, Shall We?

    We all understand that sexy comes in endless iterations.  What's interesting is that we have, since we started this whole mishegas way back in the day, sometimes decided that a very direct approach to sex, potential mating and eventual progeny is a good idea. So, routinely, over the eons we have thrust women's breasts out and up, shaped clothing to accentuate the hipline, and in recent times, raised skirts to a level allowing, shall we say, free access to the good china, if the lady so wishes.  For men, we have oft times packed the junk into a sock that stuck out in front, loudly proclaiming the sexual prowess of the owner.  We have gotten men into tight hose that showed of their butts, and made clothing that deliberately exaggerated their shoulders, to imply great physical strength.
    And very often too, these notions have expressed themselves to outrageous extremes.  I'm not even discussing fetish gear here, which is its own special thing.  I'm talking about the Creatan fashion for women being entirely bare breasted, with a tight waist girdle beneath. Or the codpiece fashion for men, which sometimes was so huge that it could be, (and was) used to store personal items other than the gentleman's wedding tackle.

    The recent vogue for sheer panels here, there, and nearly everywhere, for women, and sometimes for men, too, takes what was a subtle reference and turns it into a demand for acknowledgement.  For myself, I find such overt clothing curiously un-sexy.  The number of times I saw a man in the 1980s wearing spandex tights with nothing underneath so you could tell his circumcision status from a  distance, well, I don't have a number, but its significant.  And then there was the dreaded camel toe.  Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not getting judgey about this. I'm only remarking that we sometimes feel a compelling need to leave those who view us in no doubt whatever of what we have to give.

     In these days of increasing pressure on both sides of the sexual aisle to look perfect, whatever that is, it seems more people are resorting to these unquestionably obvious looks to get attention and keep it.
    A few years back I was in Las Vegas with a few friends for a long weekend.  I noted something curious.  In the evening, on the Strip, the young women who were there to party were, to a person, dressed nearly identically.  They all had super short minidresses on, with insanely high heels, and usually that dress was also cut very low in front, and often in back.  And always tight, tight, tight.  The result, oddly, was that since all the women were dressed in that way, they failed, any of them, to stand out in the way they wished to.  So, to a large degree, the success or failure of a really overt statement of sexual availability and skill, is dependent on the number of others around doing the same thing.

    Its a problem we've never been able to entirely address with facility.  We have this dichotomous need to both fit into the tribe by dressing similarly to the other members, and also to stand out as special and worthy of particular note.
    As I mentioned in yesterday's post, its an issue that we are looking at increasingly as our culture continues its rush towards real globalization.

Dissonant Composition

    Here's a great example of the current design exploration of dissonant composition.  The individual words in use here do not seem at first glance to work to create a coherent statement.  What makes it focus into something readable by the viewer is the palette of colors chosen.  The softness of the colors helps to merge the bulky shape of the sweater, the architectural stiffness of the skirt and the fragile quality of the camisole, into a sentence we can comprehend, even if we don't care for it.  Without that hook for us to hang onto, this combination would be a visual shout that would leave us perplexed.
    The reasons, I believe, that designers are looking into such seemingly unrelated combinations are as profound in the way they speak about us as they are interesting to look at.

    The first reason is that with the ever expanding access the interweb has allowed, influences and products are shifting around the globe with far greater speed and over much greater distances.  We are now able to shop in stores in Tokyo, or get custom items from a fashion house in Berlin, without leaving our homes.  We can purchase a necklace from Nepal, mud cloth from Africa, and crocheted lace from Ireland all in one go, and if we wish to, mix them together to create a statement, sartorially, that has never been uttered before.

     The second reason relates to the first: originality.  Such a beguiling notion, that of being able to say something truly unique, has a powerful appeal in this globalized world where malls everywhere have precisely the same vendors, marketing precisely the same things. The idea of being able to, and free to, mix items from disparate cultures and times into a melange that is new, and wildly personal, is one that more and more people are looking at with interest.

     Since so many people on the streets are examining this idea, designers are working to fulfill that need in production garments, which to a significant degree, really diminishes the impact of the original idea.
    But perhaps the most important of the reasons why this technique of mixing is gaining ground. is the sense so many of us have of being lost, unheard, and unseen.  We live in a culture that increasingly asks us to conform to ever more unrealistic ideals of beauty, style and achievement.  More and more people, in a psychological expression of demand for notice, are choosing the simple and very effective expedient of individualizing their apparel.

     For most people this is as simply realized as the wearing of tribal jewelry, or a vintage jacket.  For others, the need to be seen and heard within the throng leads to much more complex efforts, requiring far more personal commitment to get to, and maintain.  But for them, the cost in effort is worth the return in notice.  Sure, this may seem a shallow, vain thing, this desire to be seen; but when everyone looks just like everyone else, it can, for many, become impossible to do anything other than rebel.
    For my own self, my choices in this regard mostly took form in my kilt wearing.  And recently it has taken form in other ways, largely through interesting shoes and brilliant color combinations.
    What ways, if any, do you see yourself expressing your Attire voice in a manner designed to garner notice?  I will be interested to hear your stories.

And The Walls, Come Tumblin', Tumblin'

    I've written more than once about the ossification of mens apparel; about how for 200 plus years men have been stuck in a relatively unchanging and restricted mode of dressing that has had a few small tremors shake its walls, but has been left essentially unchanged.  That is finally beginning to alter.  Of course the outer fringes of mens clothing design have been attempting to push those walls over for a very long time, without success. What is changing, albeit slowly, is a subtle increase in color variation, and pattern usage.
    No, it doesn't mean that the walls are down for good and all, merely that some cracks are appearing.
    These efforts from the FW 2014 Paul Stuart collection are emblematic of what I'm talking about here.  The changes are sometimes tiny, but visible to someone willing to look.
    This suiting look is superficially rather quiet, but the mixing of stripes, the bolder color of the suit, and the contrasting patterned butterfly bow tie all are subtle pushes against the wall.

     The second look is even more subtle.  The interplay of textures is what is bringing this up and away from more traditional mens dressing.  Previously there would've been no more than two textures happening; here there are four.  Its a kind of subversive dressing, almost encoded.

     Ensemble number three is similarly quiet in its subversion.  The outerwear as interior wear, and the brown shoes with an otherwise gray palette are inferring that long held rules are now made to be broken.  Cracks appear in the walls.

    Here its color range and scale that are the motivators for placing this outfit in front lines of this quiet challenge to tradition.  The huge graph paper check of the jacket breaks scale boundaries. The choice of a pink shirt and a boldly scaled paisley tie take nearly all the warm color to the top, which the dark charcoal pants and gray socks counterbalance.  Such combinations would have been off the table in prior years, but now, with sly looks like this having gained acceptance the edifice of men's dressing is getting a little more teetery.

    And this final look relies on pattern mixing for its ability to face down the two century stoppage of menswear progression.  Here we have herringbone tweed, a two color check, a paisley and a print all in play together, once again a whisper quiet statement of change is uttered.

      Now, why do I think such minutiae are significant?  Because, coupled with the seemingly relentless relaxation of all sorts of other social rules, and arbitrary boundaries of gender identity, these very small movements are the ones that will seep into the culture the most effectively.  Men who would not wear aggressively forward clothing would consider these looks, and so take a few small whacks at the menswear wall.
 

Scatter #22

    Its been the requisite seven days, so its time to delve into my storehouse of stuff and nonsense.
  
    The first thing to show you is this marvelously detailed and beautifully constructed recreation of a court gown from 1750. It was created by the obviously talented hands of Olivier Henry in 2011 and was recently used in a French museum exhibition of period garments and how they are constructed.  The entire bodice is worked with metallic appliques and bullion work, and the cool gray tone of the grandly scaled skirt fabric makes a great counterpoint.  I love this.

    Balmain menswear collection, F/W 2014.  I was taken by this interesting variation on a biker jacket. The over scaled leopard print takes it somewhere new, and creates from a known Attire word, a new one.  In fact it amps up the subtext of danger to a new level.  I admit I'm rarely gone for animal prints, but this really works for me.

    In the 1860s, it didn't matter if it was 98 degrees, a lady still wore the hoops and petticoats and a long dress.  All that was different was what those things were made up with.  The petticoats would be lighter and the dress, as with this charming example could be as light as a cloud.  This dress is made of three textiles, the dominant one is a cotton gauze with a tiny print. The second is a blue cross hatched cotton and the third is a ribbon floral cotton.  This is the sort of thing a lady of fashion would have worn to a dinner or to a summer dance.  Its full on delightful looking.  She must have still been dying of heat prostration by evenings end.

    Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor did a turn in 1967 in The Taming of the Shrew.  The Franco Zeffirelli film was notable for the lavishness of the costume work, and these costumes in especial are worthy of note.  Taylor has been costumed to maximize her beauty, and also to imply the compliant stance she will later adopt in the text of the play. Burton is tricked out pretty much precisely as Shakespeare described Petruchio in the wedding scene.  Its too long to quote here, but trust me that every particular of this outlandish outfit is set forth by Shakespeare.  And if you've never seen the film, its one of the few times the full physicality of the characters contesting relationship is given free rein.

    One of the most unique collections in Yves St Laurent's career was his famous African inspired collection.  I had the great good fortune to see many of the dresses from this collection up close when the De Young mounted a YSL retrospective some years back.  The key element that brought all of it together was the amazing embroidery work done by Lesage.  Every piece was an amazing almalgam of wood, glass and stone beads, often, as in this outfit, creating a beadwork mesh over tunic.  Its still dazzling stuff.

    There is something I find poetic and appealing about this look. Perhaps its the counterbalance between the big wide legged pleated trousers and the black chiffon shirt with the flower details.  I'm not entirely sure, but I find this look interesting, and I think about its relevance in the Attire vocabulary. I think this could play a role.

    This promenade dress is by Emile Pingat and was made in 1888. It has a clear reference to the men's suits of the late 18th century, since the upper half of the dress is a direct steal from the men's court suits of the late 1700s.  The entire costume is in deep olive green silk velvet, with a loden green waistcoat and under ruffle.  Its a marvelously unified look that could have gone very wrong in less skilled hands.  The perfect balance has been struck between the ruffles of the skirt and the rigid structure of the coat and waistcoat.  Bravo, Mr Pingat!

    A headdress of this sort must weigh a good deal. This is a Tibetan piece, from the early 20th century. The entire surface is covered with semi-precious stones in simple tumbled form.  I just found it arresting looking and couldn't resist posting it.

    This is a Yupik Eskimo hunting visor from 1870.  Its a wonderful look at sympathetic magic and our desire to garner onto ourselves the qualities of the animals we stalk.  These bone pieces confer a power to the wearer, aiding in the hunting process, while also proclaiming to the viewer what a skilled and powerful hunter this person is.  And its also just plain beautiful.

    Final note today is a Comme De Garcons wedding dress from the 2012 Spring RTW collection.  Its unusual for Comme De Garcons in that its actually a believable piece, that styled differently I could actually see some bride wearing proudly.  Sure, it still pushes boundaries, but with a less insane bit of headgear, I think we'd be onto something.

Have a Grand Weekend, Y'all!

Survival

    I've never before done a post here about a single ensemble.  But this is just so flat out extraordinary, that I really must.
    I was searching around this morning on various blogs, doing my usual gleaning of images for use now and later on Attire's Mind, when I stumbled upon this court ensemble, created by the venerated house of Drecoll, Vienna; and found through carolynforbestextiles.com. It was made up somewhere in the late 19th or very early 20th centuries.

    Now, most of what we know about, or think we know about court etiquette, comes from the British monarchial traditions.  Things varied considerably from place to place with regards to the regulations of attire for presentation to a sovereign. The style of this costume places it in Eastern Europe, where the court traditions required an adherence to apparel that recalled traditional national attire.

     The dress itself is of genuine gold lame'. The sleeves are overlaid with gold lace. The dress body is unadorned lame'  The fact of this being actual gold lame' makes this not just court appropriate, but it would have been a supremely costly item, as the silk thread core of the fabric is wound with actual gold wire or strip. Only gold, silver and copper are fully malleable enough to be used in this way. Other metals would break quickly under the continual flexing of motion.
    The entire bodice front is covered with a silk net plastron that continues to the hem.  The net has been embroidered with glass beads pearls and paste stones, as are the cuffs of the gown.

  The cuffs are of interest because they are a clue to why I think this was for use in some east European court.  it was very common, especially in colder countries for clothing to have extra long cuffs on the sleeves, to help keep the hands warm.  The very long embroidered cuffs here are perfectly in line with that idea.

  Also, the dress does not follow the existing fashion trends, with the exception of the gathering of the lace on the sleeves.
    Then there is that amazing trained vest coat.  The large scaled silk brocade is a gold and white composition of bouquets of flowers on a lattice work background.  This, like the lame' is a textile of the very highest order; and Drecoll wisely kept the style simple to allow the fabric to sing as it should.  The entire outer edge of the coat is bordered in ermine, which has clearly been stored well, since it would have otherwise dried out and begun to deteriorate.

    All in all this is a truly remarkable thing.  Its survival owes, I am sure, to it having been tucked away after its use, and carefully tended over an entire century of time.  So many things of this sort ended up being cut apart and reused, remade into masquerade costumes, or worse yet, given over to children to play dress up in.

    Considering the fragility of textiles, this is a wonder.

The Tumultuous 20s

    The 1920s were a decade that almost literally changed everything for women.  Women got the vote, entered the workforce in amazing numbers, distinguished themselves in the sciences, arts, and in literature; and finally broke forever the bonds that had tied them endlessly to the kitchen and the hearth.  Sure, there would be intervening decades where it seemed the old rules were firmly in place (blow back happens); but the change had occurred, irrevocably.
    Nowhere was that baseline change more evident, than in the clothes women chose to express themselves with.
Gone, were the street grazing skirts and the suffocating corsets. Gone, were endless layers of furbelows and frippery.  Gone, were the things that hampered them from moving into the 20th century with full confidence.

    In the teens of the 20th century, designers of every stripe toyed with new notions like bifurcated dresses, shorter silhouettes, and simpler lines.  All these things danced on the tip of our sartorial tongues.
    But.
    We enter the 1920s, and something quite extraordinary happens.  The war to end all wars is over.  Women are taking a larger place in the world, partly because the male workforce is so frighteningly diminished.  For the first time in western history, women are taking power for themselves, not at the behest of men they serve, but because they deserve it themselves, for their own merit.  It is not a surprise at all, that the clothes they chose reflected that new power, and that new found freedom.

    Where clothing for women in the teens and earlier needed dozens of hooks, eyes, and snaps to close, and probably required the services of a lady's maid to put on correctly, the newer fashions could be donned by oneself, and in a short time.  The hats didn't require careful sitting on one's massive coiffure. The undergarments were simple, light, and easy to deal with.  The dresses were nearly tube shaped, and so, slipped on effortlessly, in a way they had never done before.

    Try to picture yourself in this position.  You have been, from a very early age, constrained in restrictive clothing that is dour and stiff.  You have few freedoms socially, and none professionally.  Your life and world revolve around your inevitable marriage and production of children.  Suddenly you find yourself able to not only access, but freely wear, clothing that allows you to do anything you want to with ease. You can drive a car, play sports, work at a job, or keep up with any man in his world.  In short, nothing that has kept you behind, is any longer doing so.  Wouldn't you JUMP at the chance to get that advantage?  Of course you would.

    And this is why I say the 20s was the most influential and transformational decade of the 20th century.  Every decade after that claimed to be deeply transformative, was working on the foundations built during the 1920s.     
    While it is observably untrue that these changes happened over night, or were born fully formed, the fact remains that the realities we take for granted now were born in that decade. Women's apparel became often frankly ambiguous as to sexuality,

and everything about the styles in place allowed for a level of physical freedom, a range of free movement that had never been in place for women.
   Look at women today and how they dress themselves.  Everything we see owes itself to the beginnings laid in that decade. We owe a deal of gratitude to those women back then.  The grandmothers and great grandmothers who did the Black Bottom and rouged their knees, Those ladies who learned to type write, and decided that staying at home just wasn't good enough. We owe them a lot.

    It was their energy that drove the designs of the day to loosen, lighten and lift.  It was their vivacity that made clothing for women less restrictive, more practical, and more fully modern.  It was those women, our grand, and great grand mothers, who charted that pathway, and wrote for us a good deal of the Attire vocabulary we use today.

    So, take a moment to think about how quickly you can dress now, when you've a need to.  Slipping a top on, and climbing into a pair of pants takes not much time at all.  And think about the related advantages to those pants and that top, or a simple sun dress that slips over your head in seconds.  All those things, and many more, are owed to that remarkable decade.