Investing In The Fantasy

    In both the literal and the figurative sense, most of us invest ourselves in the fantasy of Attire that is presented by the fashion industry.  It is difficult to avoid.  We are bombarded at every opportunity with imagery and text telling us what is hot, cool, sexy, and fun to wear.  Every city street presents us with endless variations on the same theme.  Every fashion periodical, and fashion blog deluges us with ideas bent on one goal, to get us to buy into this fantasy.  And by fantasy I mean that rich, lithe, young, hip dream that is at the core of nearly every advertising campaign.  We have been schooled to think that we are only worthy when we are in our 20s and 30s, have less than 5 percent body fat, and have so much financial wherewithal that spending 8000 dollars on a coat for the spring season seems a reasonable idea.  The reality as we know, is something less than that.

   

    Okay, granted. We get presented with this largely unattainable ideal of physical perfection and superficial beauty. Got it. Having ideals to climb towards is essential to us if we are to challenge ourselves and progress.  What we can do, however, comes down to two things.  We can, if we wish to, take those fantasies and re-invent them for ourselves at our own level, and with our own available means.  That is the course that the vast majority of us take.  In fact, it's the course the retailing industry hopes profoundly that we will take. Their success, and their profits depend upon it.

    This massive industry, which generates trillions of dollars world wide, (when you consider all the parts of the Attire language that make it up), wants one thing above all others, to get us to spend. They are not ultimately interested in how good we really look.  They are interested in profit.  Sure, many designers out there really are trying to move things forward in terms of how we see ourselves, and our true understanding of our nature.  But the huge majority of purveyors of fashion are interested primarily in the bottom line for themselves. What is going to sell.

    I can't really fault a business person for being interested in profit. It is, after all, what business is about to a huge degree.  What I fault is this. I fault the design community when it forgets the real needs and aspirations of its client base.  For example. Women's clothing typically has either no pockets at all, or only vestigial ones that serve no purpose.  Why?  Because the industry simply refuses to acknowledge that women want to carry stuff with them that is not in their handbag.  Nearly every woman I know would LOVE to be able to reach into a pocket in their pants and pull out their phone.  But anything other than jeans makes that impossible.

    And for men there is a different but equally profound disconnect.  Throughout the animal kingdom it is the male animal that shows the brightest colors, and the most extravagant patterns.  Just walk into any menswear department and you will find the exact opposite.  Gray, black, and navy, an endless sea of it. Why?  Men like color. I like color.  Finding it is a problem though.  Because we have been schooled that it is not masculine, it is not safe.  For the retail industry that has worked so hard to support this, that narrow range of color means money in the bank.  Colorful means potential loss.

    All of these things are part of the fantasy we get given. All of these things are part of the dream that the fashion industry wants us, needs us really, to believe.  They themselves have invested in, created a fantasy, and pushed very hard indeed to get us to accept it as truth.
    The problem is this.  We are not a fantasy.  You and me are real folks with real lives. We might have our fantastical aspirations, but they do not suit a real world and a real life. So, we can choose to remain with this first choice I mentioned, and manipulate some diluted version of the common style.  We can choose by that to be of the herd.  And for many of us, that is what we really want. I don't mean to decry it.  Most of us don't really want to stick out that much.
    We have another choice. If we wish.  If we have the moxie, the brio, the chutzpah, we can chart our own course entirely. I can honestly say that for me, the people who get the most attention are those whose apparel choices are not entirely normative. I find those who make choices outside of what is stylish or safe, to be exhilarating, and delightful, even if I don't entirely understand what they are about.

    I'm not saying that this choice is for everyone. It's not.  I will say that I have seen people who have few means, but enormous creativity, take whatever was to hand and make a whole new subset of the Attire language that refers particularly to them.  I applaud these extraordinary folks, and want only to be more like them.

    So I will leave you with this. Think about it. Think about what you bring to the table.  Is it really you? Is it the safe and cozy you? Is it only partly you?  Perhaps it's time to push your own boundaries a bit, and show people more of who you truly are.

Scatter #105

    Good Morning All!
    It feels great to be back to work here.  And I have some terrific things to share this week for your delectation and entertainment.
    So, no shilly-shallying.
    Onward!

    This is obviously a contemporary costume, not a ritual one.  But it struck me quite hard when I saw it.  It embodies so much of our innate needs in one package that I found it breathtaking.  It is at one go a celebration of life, an acknowledgment of death, a version of human sexuality, a bonding to our animal selves, and a towering example of our search for the beautiful and the extraordinary.  What especially makes me smile, looking at this, is that we do these things routinely in our daily lives, without really knowing it.  All these things express in our apparel and behaviors.  So to see it all melded together into one supreme vision of the human experience is awesome in the best sense.

    It always makes me very happy when an antique piece of clothing gets displayed fully, and correctly accessorized, so that we can see as fully as possible the garments as they were meant to relate to each other.  This Afternoon/visiting costume is from 1870, and was made in Charlotte, North Carolina. The less elaborate nature of this visiting costume is entirely appropriate to the more conservative style of dress favored in the American south at the time. Each of the accessories chosen for this display contributes to a vision of what a well brought up woman would have worn while out and about.  As a side note, the dress carries a detail which would gain increasing popularity over time during the latter half of the 1800s.  The skirt bears a huge, and heavily decorated exterior pocket on one side, which is visible under the manikin's right arm. So, the dress makes a nod to super-fashionable style, without going too far.

    As has been the case for some time now, the place where the most advanced style exists is not really the runways of the world, but on the backs of real people with the moxie and vision to create themselves their own visual vocabulary.  Combine this with our access to apparel choices with origins all over the world and we get combinations like this emerging.  This is, to my eye, a wonderful intersection of tradition and modernity.  And of course I love that it challenges us a bit about our preconceptions.  Bravo, mister.

    Time for something just plain lovely.  Rene' Lalique was, and is one of the most influential artist/designers to appear in the last century plus.  His passion for, and understanding of the Art Nouveau movement helped immensely in its gaining such popularity.  His effect has been strong enough to aid in carrying the movement's appeal forward for another 100 years.  This glass and ceramic hair comb was made in 1900, and it is every bit as gasp worthy now as the day it was completed.  The perfectly rendered orchid bloom is flanked with leaves that, though they reference the natural, are presented in a way that is true to the Nouveau aesthetic.

    Sometimes the shifts that occur that are small delight me.  This ensemble from Kolor is one such.  It's a gentle, baby steps method of chivvying us along towards new ways of thinking of men's dress.  Superficially it seems little is going on.  The point of change is in the jacket with its faux layers.  The more traditional shape of the outer surface has been shrunk a bit, allowing the under-layer to emerge.  Both are collarless.  It's almost as if the tweed layer is a skin being outgrown, and we are seeing the more colorful new skin peeping out, giving us a hint of what is to come.  Perhaps I read far too much into things, I can't say for sure.  This is what I see,w hen I look at this, change happening, in tiny increments.

    This is a wonderful example of how the simplest of materials, used in a straightforward manner can create wonderful rhythm, and great beauty.  This is a boar tusk bracelet from Hawaii.  It was created in the mid 1700s, and as an object it has great visual power coming from the repeating curves of the tusks. If we were to see this exact shape rendered in manufactured materials, like some kind of metal, this would appear fiercely edgy and modern. As it stands it is also a testimonial to whoever was a good enough hunter to gather these together.  As well, it is another example of our need to touch the animal world, and take its power to us.

    In 1961 the house of Dior presented this astonishing wedding dress called Hymenee'.  It is monastically spare, and renders the model into some sort of virgin votary.  Only her pronounced eye make up makes us question it.  What also appeals to me here is this glimpse at how a couture house used to present its clothes.  Crowded into small rooms at the design house itself, clients, fashion writers, and buyers are all jammed together with the models having so little room that the viewers are routinely brushed by the clothes.  No special lighting, no props, no outrageous runway styling.  Simply the clothes being given front and center.  There is a great deal to recommend this method, free of theatrical distractions.

    Avant Garde designer Thom Browne is nothing if not bold. This detail from his 2015 Menswear collection for Spring and Summer is as compelling as it is disturbing.  Not many folks would be willing to walk the streets looking like their skin had been peeled from them.  But as a potent commentary on our natures it's hard to ignore.  Part of what I love here is that the pleated material is one we would normally see in some floaty elegant evening dress.  Constrained and padded as it is, it becomes muscle tissue.  That this effort is also rendered in pastels makes it that much more a statement.  Strange, tough to look at, and yet, intriguing because it forces us to remember who and what we really are.

    From the disturbing, to the divinely lovely. Jeanne Lanvin designed this superb evening ensemble in the 1930s.  Made of pale gold chiffon that has been perfectly embroidered with motifs drawn from classical cultures, this is a marvelous example of the pared down, but very grown up sexiness that had become the norm by the 30s.  There was a knowing quality to the manner in which women dressed that implied a greater knowledge of both the world, and of sexuality than had been allowable only a few decades before.  Also the sense of effortlessness that the bias style presented was one that women were very happy to embrace after lifetimes of constriction.  These were clothes for women who were grown ups in every sense.

    Sometimes exuberance is its own best reward.  This detail of a Manish Arora ensemble from 2014 is super saturated with color and detail, and yet it still manages to serve the wearer, not the other way around.  Sure, this is a paid professional, so she understands what it takes to shine forth within such complexities.  That said, nothing keeps any of us from doing similarly, but our own lack of belief that we can.  Somehow our eyes are drawn, regardless of all that is going on, to the model's face and eyes.  It can be so with us too.  Believing in oneself, makes it so.

    In 1771 painter Alexander Roslin did this portrait of King Gustave III of Sweden and his brothers.  What came up for me was the sumptuousness of the textiles.  The kinds of fabrics available to the upper echelons of society were a kind of craft that not only is far more rare, but virtually doesn't exist any longer.  The level of attention to detail, the density of weave, and the quality of the base threads was at a level we no longer feel we need.  Even within the couture, fabric quality is not as high as it was.  We no longer think of materials as something we would wish to survive for multiple decades.  Our disposable culture, and our constant need for the new makes the idea unpalatable.  But oh, how glorious these materials were.  (I sigh quietly).

    As a finish to this week's scatter another something both compelling and disturbing.  This image comes from the April 2015 issue of Vogue Russia.  What is finally being said here is somewhat confusing.  The outrageous splendor of all the masses of jewelry is offset by the model being nearly entirely inundated by it.  And with the placement of pieces over her face creating some bizarre parody of a human expression it becomes darkly menacing.  When we finally do see one real human eye dimly visible through a layer of red chiffon are we seeing the emergence from captivity, or a willing  acquiescence to luxury in all its forms?  Whatever the intent of the image, beyond hawking lavish costume jewelry, we are given the opportunity to see more if we wish to, and perhaps gain another layer of understanding about us complex humans.

That's it for this week, folks!
Have an amazing weekend.

Pushing, Pushing

    Every one of us desires one time or another to either follow the pack, or break away from it.  For some of us, diverging from the normative is a dangerous thing we shy from, and so it takes extraordinary things to make it to fruition. For others of us, adhering to the common ideals is anathema.  So, let's be honest with each other, shall we?  All of us push the limits now and then.  We did it as children, trying to learn what was okay, and what wasn't. We did it as teenagers, wondering what we could get away with.  We do it as adults, knowing what the realities are, and playing them when we can, to get what we want. Some of us even exceed those boundaries, and get away with it because on some level our culture approves our transgressions. We applaud those who push at the limits, but not too far.  There is always a "too far" to be dealt with.

                                                                 Yep, thass me.

     But, what does it mean, socially, societally, to transgress, to exceed, to push the edges of the normative?  What do we gain, and what do we suffer?  Well, the results are significant on both sides of the question.  We gain a good deal, because we learn ourselves more truly, and become stronger people as a result.  We might even gain the superficial approval of the culture at large.  But we divorce ourselves eternally from the mass of the world, who will not comprehend what we do, or accept it even if they do partially understand.  Those who might admire us for our differences, do not understand us fully.  They can only yearn to be more open themselves, and so, desire to be like us.
    Some of us, and I admire you, all of you, have the fortitude to brave the discontent of the world and chart your own path without thought of consequence.  Brava, and Bravo.  Most of us, like me, have chosen a middling path. We challenge, but only meekly.  We question, but quietly.  We stretch, but in small moves.

    I realize as a man who wore a skirt/kilt every day for over a decade I could hardly call my challenge meek in small terms.  But when I look at the conviction that others bring to their visual self,  (and I see these people daily in my city of San Francisco), I am humbled by my small dissents.  When I look at those who choose to have no defined sartorial identity, I am humbled.  They go where I feared, and most of us fear to tread.  And they lead us, and the Attire language as a whole, into new territory while they go there.

   Viewed from another point, I am proud that I took, and take my own stance, regardless of what some might surmise about me.  That my choice of dissonance was relatively mild is of no matter.  The point is that I chose it.  The larger point is that we all can choose it.  Whoever you are, whatever you do, wherever you live, and whatever you life is like, you do have the choice to move into your own expressive sphere, however limited it might be by circumstance.  You have the right, and more importantly, (though others might deny you), you have the power.

    And let me say this now and for always.  It doesn't matter one little bit if you can afford a huge designer wardrobe of the latest of everything.  Money has nothing to do with style, personal expression, and a facility with the Attire language. What it has to do with is a willingness to look at what is to hand and make it YOURS in caps with lights around it.  Find what works, really works for you, what expresses in honest terms what you most need to say, and then make of it your own visual voice.

    Even if it is only a scrap of ribbon snatched from a rag bin, you have the choice to take that small thing and make something new of yourself that has no reference to anyone but you.
    Sure, I see this through the lens of the Attire language, but it resonates through the rest of our lives.  Make of yourself what you most desire.  What others think is of little matter.  Not a size 2? Who cares?  Not 24?  So what?  Didn't make 10 million last year?  What's that mean? No big dick, no big boobs, no six pack abs or long legs?  Join the real world, baby.  We all have our beauties, it remains to each of us to find them within ourselves, and move them forward.

    What means something in the last is that you communicate your true self to the people around you.  Do it with your deeds, your words, and yes, your Attire too.  It doesn't take huge amounts of money.  Much can be done with little. It doesn't require designer labels.  Couture isn't the answer.

All that is required, is you, straight, no chaser.

One Shot: Jean-Phillipe Worth Ball Gown 1900-05

    

    It is a thing un-repeated in couture, and somehow fitting, the the first couture house would be the only one to pass the helm on to the son of the designer after his passing.  When Charles Frederick Worth died on March 10, 1895, the House of Worth was taken up by his two sons, Jean Phillipe, and Gaston-Lucien.  Jean Phillipe became the new head designer, while Gaston handled the business end of the enterprise.  During their tenancy, which ended in 1924 with the death of Gaston, a grandson, Jacques took over as designer, eventually handing the business to great grandson, Jean-Charles, who saw it through till his retirement in 1952, 2 years after the house had been purchased by a rival concern, the House of Paquin.
    As a designer, Jean Phillipe had every bit as cultivated and grand a vision as his father had, and an even more refined eye for detail.  The work done under his hand is some of the most sumptuous the ateliers ever turned out, and some of it's boldest, most extravagant gestures, were designed by him.
    This magnificent, and beautifully balanced ball gown is a perfect example of his taste and skill.  The house employed two dominant methods of design. One was to employ solid color materials and then embellish them with abandon, the other was to utilize hugely scaled woven patterns, keeping other decorative elements to a lower level.  Here is the first of those recurring ideas, rendered in an ideal way.

    Heavy Duchesse satin forms the body of the dress. It is decorated over the majority of its surface with rococo inspired forms of urns, flowers, vines and scrolls.  The placement of the embroidery work performs another few functions beyond the decorative. The ascending verticals disguise all the seam lines of the 7 paneled skirt, and the lines also lead the eye upwards, while fooling us a bit about the wearer's shape.  Also, leaving the sides at the hip line mostly free of decoration allows our minds to edit that area out, helping the illusion that the lady's figure is narrower of waist than it actually is.

    The decorative work itself is amazing.  Metallic threads and cording have been couched onto the surface, creating the main design elements of vines and scrolls. Ivory colored marquisette is used to create the three dimensional petals of the flowers that arc out of the various trumpet shaped urns in the design. Finally, silver gilt beads and paste gem stones add final sparkling notes to the entirety.

   

The bodice is densely worked, which is natural considering that the intent here is to draw the viewer's eye eventually to the face. The corsage is as low and wide as propriety would allow at the time, and the sleeves are of blonde lace, hung en point.

    This must have been glorious to see gliding about a dance floor that was lit by candles, reflected in crystal chandeliers.
    As a final thought,  the garment number label lists 66970, which should give you a good idea of just how well regarded Worth was at the time.  Women of means from the world over patronized the House.  To have clothing from Worth, was a supreme visual gesture.

 With grateful thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of New York

Fashion Plates: Artfulness, Rectitude & Position

    Though the idea of an image that delineates fashionable attire far predates the 1700s, it was not until that century that fashion imagery began to emerge as a consistent, and important way of presenting Attire changes to the world.  Naturally, at the time, such imagery was available only to those with significant financial means.  What happened in the 1700s, with the ever increasing use of the printing press, and the emergence of the daily newspaper, and regular publication magazines, was that images of fashion could be disseminated to a much broader audience.

    What happened then was as interesting as it was unique.

     The first fashion images, wood cuts, or steel plate engravings, gave no thought whatever to utility, or to social conformity.  They were, at first, simply fantastical images of idealized female and male glory, through apparel.  They were meant to convey the apex of style to which others could aspire.  That, at least, remains unchanged, though the images are now digital, not laboriously crafted by hand.  And they were aimed entirely at the top of the market, those who had both the leisure, and the coin, to do whatever came into their heads.

I should veer off a moment to explain the notion of a fashion plate.  The idea comes from there needing to be a printing plate from which the image could be reproduced.  The wood block, or the steel engraving plate would be created by a skilled artisan, taking many hours of time, so magazines and newspapers could only afford to have a few.  Over time the idea of a fashion plate by definition, has come to include persons who are so au courant with the prevailing mode that they are virtually printed images of style, brought to life.  So at the end it means both a printed, reproduced image, and a real live person who embodies the current style.

    The revolutions that occurred shortly before and after the flip of the centuries from 17 to 18 made sure something else happened with regard to fashion imagery.  It acquired a sense of rectitude, based on an increased sense of republicanism and order, and it promoted, albeit subtextually, a role as arbiter of not only style, but of comportment and morals.  This same idea continues today, though we might decry some of the abandoned and dissolute morality that expresses in style imagery now.

 

     During the 1800s, however, the role, in especial of women in fashion imagery, was constrained to an extremely narrow range of ideas.  Motherhood, friendship, beauty at the service of men, fragility, piety and meekness.  Whatever pictures you discover of the 1800s that are fashion images, they are a kind of desperately subtle propaganda. It was the aim of the myriad of ladies periodicals to keep everyone abreast of not only what to wear, but how to behave.  The several meticulously rendered plates in something like the the Godey's Ladies Book, showed women all in correct dress, acting correctly.

   

    I focus on women's fashion imagery here because men's fashion images routinely displayed men not interacting in any way at all.  If more than one man was in the image, they rarely had little relation to the other figures, and could be entire strangers.  I suspect this was as much in service of how men were expected to behave, as the women's pictures were.  Women, when grouped together, were always arrayed as though they understood and knew each other, that they had a relation outside of the image presented.

    What I find intriguing here is that this same practice of moving the morals and ideals of behavior forward, along with the clothing, has continued right up to today. Our most contemporary style imagery often gives us just as many cues about what is expected, as these staid looking engravings.

   

Have we come very far?  In some ways we have. Certainly we are a good deal more free about sex, and about the reality of women's equality in the world.  Yet we still look to these images to give us clues about how to be.  What is interesting is that those images veer further and further from achievable reality all the time.

Man Skirts

    It has been interesting to me to track the rise of the man skirt.  For decades avant garde designers tried with no success whatever to forward the idea of skirts for men.  This was largely due to their utterly misreading how to go about it, along with the culture simply not being ready for it.  Social changes with regard to sexual identification, and a loosening of attitudes about gender roles have opened the door for man skirts to start making an appearance.
    First, it was with kilt wearing fellas, like myself, who, through companies like Utilikilts braved the streets and broke a few barriers.  Then designers all over started showing kilted looks, and now, full on skirted looks that take every variation of well known women's skirts and re-imagine them have been hitting runways.

   

    Are they making real world inroads yet?  Well, I can tell you that in San Francisco, I do see men in skirts now and again, and they might get a raised eyebrow depending on the neighborhood they are in, but not much else of note.  So in more progressive areas like here, they are showing up, and the fact that designers continue to present them with greater frequency means that they aren't going away any time soon.

 

     What has made a huge difference in their successful presentation is that most designers have learned that they have to make them look hot and sexy.  So those who do present them tend to use models who are more studly looking rather than more effete looking young lads. That said, they are now branching out into types of skirts that employ materials traditionally reserved for women, like tulle, and bias cut satins.

 

    So, what I muse about is how long this process is going to take.  Will there be a tipping point reached where they will suddenly become normative?  Or will there be some person, or situation which will trigger it?  Some famous fella?  Some unknown who just happens to hit the right place a the right time?  Who knows?  But it certainly seems like it's on its way to us.

 

After that happens we will have to find something else to experiment with.