On Fashion
Anyone who knows me know that I love clothes. If I had to make a choice between clothes and books, books would win, but it would be a long and painful decision. I blame the whole thing on my mother for taking me to Marshall Fields State Street store when I was nine or ten-she bought me two dresses-one was dark blue with white cuffs and the other had white flowers on a pale blue background (until I washed it and the background turned pale gray-still pretty though) with a matching white silk scarf that had long fringes. I wore those dresses for years and kept the scarf until high school and it may still be in my parent's basement. That was the beginning of my love affair with clothes and it's just gotten worse-but the thing is, clothes were an escape. Michigan while I was growing up was cold and dreary with pedestrian clothes-and we were lucky if they were just pedestrian and not outright ugly. My mother likes nice clothes and she wears them well (hence the trips to Chicago to go shopping) but it was the 70's-the decade of bad taste. But Vogue of the 70's showed glamorous people wearing outrageously beautiful clothes and I was captivated. It showed there was a world out there of great clothes, not just the jeans and sweathshirts that people wore to high school (Not me, though. I wore jeans to high school and had a teacher say to me that she didn't know that I OWNED a pair of jeans) How I started reading Vogue in high school is another story, but let's just say I fell under the influence of a person who loved fashion as much as I did. She turned out not to be a nice person, but she did have great style.
There are so many things I like about fashion that's it's difficult to know where to start-but let's start with the runway. Many people don't like the runway shows or think the clothes on it are bizarre and expensive-and that's true. But the best runway show both tells a story and sells you a fantasy-the same is true for good print ad or an editorial (these are the pictures shown in a spread in a magazine). You may have no need for jeans with a crystal fringe at the bottom and sequins on the butt and embroidery up the side but if it's done properly, you're sitting there looking at it thinking "yes, I could wear those for the apres-ski party in Switzerland, even though I hate snow wouldn't go to Switzerland for free and would much rather go to Greece-where I could wear that beautiful white columnar dress that I saw in Vogue with the model standing on a portico with the warm blue Agean in the background". Or how about that Ralph Lauren dress that would be perfect or afternoon tea, even if my afternoon tea is usually taken at my desk and not in front of a roaring fire in my Connecticut country home with my imaginary horses playing outside?" I may not be able to afford the trip, the hotel or the country house-but I can have a pair of jeans with embroidery on them from Target or Emporio Armani-I can afford that. That's the beauty of fashion-it can sell the fantasy and give me a small piece of it.
And make no mistake, the items on the runway, whether it's a color, a shape or an idea do filter down to something affordable-whether it's a Missoni knockoff skirt at Banana Republic (which drew stares in New York-I wanted to tell them all that it wasn't the real thing) or a knockoff pair of jeans at Target for $10.99. One of my favorite parts of the Devil Wears Prada was Meryl Streep looking at Anne Hathaway's shapeless, baggy blue sweater and telling her how Yves St Laurent showed that color on the runway two years before and how it had filtered down through time and other designers until it ended up in the bin from which she had fished it out. Practically everything everyone wears was shown on a runway someplace, sometime in some way, shape or form.
What you wear sends a message as well. In Washington, the message is usually that the person wants to be taken seriously-because if you care too much about how you look in Washington, then you can't be considered a smart, serious person (this is not true in many other cities, but it's true here). But clothes also offer a form of protection-either armor against the world (an Armani suit), passport into a certain social class (Laboutin heels) or merely to say to the people around you-"I belong here", no matter where you happen to be. Unless you want to say that you really don't want to be there-that's the message being sent when someone wears a t-shirt to a formal function, unless you're really important, in which case the message being sent is one of being so important that one doesn't have to care about about looking formal-that's the what's happening when top Hollywood executives wear flip-flops to a meeting. And I am endlessly fascinated by what people try to say with their clothes and how they try fit in or don't. The tourist family in Washington who all wear matching yellow and white outfits-are they trying not to lose each other or do they want to say that they all belong together? The obnoxious rich kid who wears the message t-shirt to his Mother's society ball-is just trying to tell her to fuck off personally or is directed at the world in general? If people dress to show the importance of the occasion then what does it mean when the Secretary of State wears high-heeled, pointy-toed boots to a high level meeting? Does she want them to fall in line with her way of thinking, or does she want to kick their collective asses? Trying to puzzle out the message is always interesting-and I have to give credit to Robin Givhan, the Washington Post's fashion editor, because she is a master at this-and a Pulitzer Prize winner because of it.
There are so many things I like about fashion that's it's difficult to know where to start-but let's start with the runway. Many people don't like the runway shows or think the clothes on it are bizarre and expensive-and that's true. But the best runway show both tells a story and sells you a fantasy-the same is true for good print ad or an editorial (these are the pictures shown in a spread in a magazine). You may have no need for jeans with a crystal fringe at the bottom and sequins on the butt and embroidery up the side but if it's done properly, you're sitting there looking at it thinking "yes, I could wear those for the apres-ski party in Switzerland, even though I hate snow wouldn't go to Switzerland for free and would much rather go to Greece-where I could wear that beautiful white columnar dress that I saw in Vogue with the model standing on a portico with the warm blue Agean in the background". Or how about that Ralph Lauren dress that would be perfect or afternoon tea, even if my afternoon tea is usually taken at my desk and not in front of a roaring fire in my Connecticut country home with my imaginary horses playing outside?" I may not be able to afford the trip, the hotel or the country house-but I can have a pair of jeans with embroidery on them from Target or Emporio Armani-I can afford that. That's the beauty of fashion-it can sell the fantasy and give me a small piece of it.
And make no mistake, the items on the runway, whether it's a color, a shape or an idea do filter down to something affordable-whether it's a Missoni knockoff skirt at Banana Republic (which drew stares in New York-I wanted to tell them all that it wasn't the real thing) or a knockoff pair of jeans at Target for $10.99. One of my favorite parts of the Devil Wears Prada was Meryl Streep looking at Anne Hathaway's shapeless, baggy blue sweater and telling her how Yves St Laurent showed that color on the runway two years before and how it had filtered down through time and other designers until it ended up in the bin from which she had fished it out. Practically everything everyone wears was shown on a runway someplace, sometime in some way, shape or form.
What you wear sends a message as well. In Washington, the message is usually that the person wants to be taken seriously-because if you care too much about how you look in Washington, then you can't be considered a smart, serious person (this is not true in many other cities, but it's true here). But clothes also offer a form of protection-either armor against the world (an Armani suit), passport into a certain social class (Laboutin heels) or merely to say to the people around you-"I belong here", no matter where you happen to be. Unless you want to say that you really don't want to be there-that's the message being sent when someone wears a t-shirt to a formal function, unless you're really important, in which case the message being sent is one of being so important that one doesn't have to care about about looking formal-that's the what's happening when top Hollywood executives wear flip-flops to a meeting. And I am endlessly fascinated by what people try to say with their clothes and how they try fit in or don't. The tourist family in Washington who all wear matching yellow and white outfits-are they trying not to lose each other or do they want to say that they all belong together? The obnoxious rich kid who wears the message t-shirt to his Mother's society ball-is just trying to tell her to fuck off personally or is directed at the world in general? If people dress to show the importance of the occasion then what does it mean when the Secretary of State wears high-heeled, pointy-toed boots to a high level meeting? Does she want them to fall in line with her way of thinking, or does she want to kick their collective asses? Trying to puzzle out the message is always interesting-and I have to give credit to Robin Givhan, the Washington Post's fashion editor, because she is a master at this-and a Pulitzer Prize winner because of it.
posted by SHbookworm at 6:47 AM
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