Collection

Something about changes in fashions (whether in apparel or not) always fascinates me, especially when particularly long-running trends are finally bucked. It's been liberating to watch delicate (or no) necklaces overtake ugly plastic "statement" pieces, and few miss the once-ubiquitous Stupid Platform Heels, I suspect. But now it's going to be a showdown ... When grey paint dates in a few seasons, we can take it. When subway tile comes back - and then goes back out again, we soldier on. But fella babies, ROOMS are making a comeback. It's exciting in the same way fear of death is exciting for some - whatever will the world come to, if they put walls into our houses? Hang on tight, y'all. Purpose-built rooms and privacy could be returning soon to a domicile near you.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL CAT DAY! I think this Aussie moggie is my favorite.

From: The Atlantic

Drag RACING

Royal Ascot fun.

Isn't this composition absolutely perfect?

And don't tell me for *one second* that drag isn't mainstream.

Collection

Have you ever found yourself feeling a kind of ... distrust, when you find out someone isn't a reader? Or special admiration, even a crush, on a writer? Even the smallest phrases can be great storytelling; I am able to clearly remember some of the things that have swept my heart away: Beloved Ex's calling me a wonderful bag of things. Humorous, sure. But ... "telling" in a way that was important to me. A girl who once said to me, I have a voice like rain and brownies baking. The friend who called me a flower-eyed waterfall. And Mr. X ... that time he said to me, "You use your wit and intelligence as if your appearance had no power, and the effect is devastating."

Why the self-aggrandizing intro, today? Well, READ on, my friends. On the evolution of storytelling. It keeps humanity alive, literally. And the best storytellers get the greatest rewards, in egalitarian communities. Hmm.

And now, a little consumer culture ...

Of all the people I have known in the 25-year SUV trend, I am aware of ONE who ever used their winch, and none who ever went offroading, or even camping. (In the 1970s, my cousins did have a proto-SUV, but they skiied and camped and hunted and used its immense capacity in full, though not every single time they drove it.) SUVs looked to my contrarian eyes like a Baby Boomer/yuppie fad from the start, and what rugged behavior I ever *have* seen with them seems to be confined to drivers imagining that "SUV" confers upon them not merely invulnerability but also immunity to the existence of others on the roads when it is snowy and/or icy. (Strangely, this does not appy to rain; everyone in this whole town seems to just *crawl* when there is rain, mist, or drizzle anywhere in a 50-mile radius. No matter what they drive.) Anyway, to the link, Batman: on SUVs, and the developing social structure in America, over the past 30 years. As always, there is room for quibbling here. But it's an interesting wider look at "trends" ...

The older I get, the more I LOVE investigative journalism. Doesn't matter when it's a couple or few years old; the detective stories hold up, and truly good writing never goes out of date. Here's a great piece about discovering provenance, and for my writer friends, stay tuned to the end - the bit about publishing a book is priceless.

Here is a joyous(-ish ...) stocking stuffer for you all! More demented cover fails with the Caustic Cover Critic, guesting over at the Australian Book Designers Association. Featuring: Jane AusTIN and Slash. You know you wanna click!

Collection

This is a short, but achingly clear essay about the forced intimacy of disability (author's word choice). It's both obvious and something most of us probably never think about. And it's heartbreaking. Go read it - please.

Shrew are you? Super neato-spedito piece about the winter shrinkage of the shrew. Because shrews' heads were not NEARLY small enough. Amusingly written, and may provide some excuses for human seasonal lassitude as well.

Why do men who have never experienced this form of attack get to define what an attack is?

Like great writing? Funny, but honest - the humor that comes not merely from that certain kind of anger that engages us, but also reaches out to consider the anger together? Click here. Yes, it talks about sex. It also talks about things that definitely are not sex.

I have neglected this blog's penchant for fashion, style, costume, and beauty of late, so here is a curious look at (sniff of?) Commes des Garçons' strange brews. Personally, I love sandalwood. But did you know that concrete is absolutely devastating to the environment? Won't buy. Might sniff ... if I ever actually go to a department store.

Question for my writer pals, Reiders, readers, and anyone generally a nerd for a word: HOW COME NONE OF YOU EVER TOLD ME ABOUT THE OED BLOG??? Because I am mad at each and every one of you. Y'all going to make me caterwaul, I'm all tears and flapdoodle I never saw this site before. Another sample: litbait. Hee.

RIP KJL

Kenneth Jay Lane was a jewelry designer. I can't say I love his work across the board - I can't say I seek his pieces when I am browsing jewelry on eBay (which I do a LOT, just for fun). But his line in the article here struck me: "Our jewelry is designed for people who want to be noticed."

On my first day at my previous job, I wore a necklace my mom had given me at some point. I didn't know who'd made it, and never wore it often (I still don't; it's a heavy piece), but I always thought it was special. I wear it when I want something even a little more profound than a Pop of Color.

My friend Cute Shoes took a look at the new admin, and the way I was dressed (simple navy dress, big bold necklace) and decided there might be something to this chick.

Never trivialize fashion, clothes, style. And never forget that you are always visible - but you can punch up your visibility, without a doubt.

She told me about that first impression early in our friendship, and a few years later she even found the necklace herself, trolling eBay in the same way I do. Hers even had the original box, and earrings! I think that was when I even learned who designed the piece at all.



The other association I have with KJL is one of those elusive things I saw once, looking at a particularly large search result on eBay - a big, chunky necklace which wasn't even really my style ... but which had the single best copy of one of Childeric's Bees that I have ever seen. I recall being tempted to buy it, and kicking myself when I didn't. So, ever since, whenever I'm bored and happen to do a KJL search, that is what I am looking for. The bee that got away.

There is plenty of bee jewelry to be had on the 'Bay. Joan Rivers had a big line in bees, and I own at least one - a gift from Cute Shoes, one I just love. But KJL's bee was more like the stylized, possibly fleur-de-lys-prototype bee so famously excavated in 1653. And he has done s-necklaces that recall royal collars of office, and clearly he enjoyed playing with history in his designs, not merely shape - but story. And that is what attracts me in true couture fashion - the way it harks, intentionally, to history. Fashion and design are at their pinnacle when they are SMART - not just "smart".

And I could care less that Jackie O wore his work.

I care that Cute Shoes noticed when I did.

Daytime-ization

Not too long ago, I said I was going to do a post about the twentieth century transformation of evening and formal textiles/jewels into day wear. The idea is one I've cogitated on for many years, not as a blog post, but in a more philosophical sense. I was reading one of Ann Rice's Lestat novels, probably Queen of the Damned, in which he had awoken to the modern world and observed how everyone now had access to glimmering clothes and finery. Written in the 80s, and read by me in the 90s, the idea did stick with me - that we had an abundance of riches, in the modern world, which were unreachable in centuries past.

A little age, education, and experience puts a great deal of perspective on the equation of flimsy acetate with cloth-of-gold. But the point of abundance is not quite negated, and the point that we're a flashier lot these days holds pretty firm.

As much as I rail against the idea that humanity has "evolved" (oh, and the semantics baggage in that word) from stupidity and filth into any new-and-improved form, it doesn't do to deny we've invented a whole lot of stuff. Good and bad. But production is a different question than quality - see also, the difference between centuries-old handmade cloth of gold and mass manufactured lame or acetate of any variety of shiny-ness, boldness, etc.

And so we turn to quality, and the evolution of its usage.


As a younger lady, I was addicted to Miss Manners. Sure, what she actually had to say was always splendid, but the real draw was her writing. Like Roger Ebert (with whose movie reviews I almost *never* agreed), I read her columns faithfully, because she could express ideas with eloquent insight. AND so often the ideas were something much more than answers to straightforward questions.

One of the more concrete things you can learn from the study of etiquette is the language of gems. Like the language of flowers, certain stones denote certain implications, not all of which have to do with the months of our births.

All this may seem very quaint and perhaps romantic to many people, but the value and magic of nonverbal communication never dies. We just find different ways to do it.

It was the concrete rules of dress that laid the groundwork for the somewhat more subjective messages sent by what we wore - and when. Ask a fan.

And so it was: there was a time diamonds would never have been worn during the daytime. In the evening, they conferred elegance, glamour, and conspicuous consumption upon the wearer, but during the day, anyone in any glittering gem (pearls and I believe mourning jet were acceptable; if anyone knows more than I, I'd love your comments!!) was nothing but gauche. Display had rules. Getting the rules wrong only demonstrated someone's ignorance of wealth, but probably what we now call "trying too hard" (if not, worse, actual depravity).

Then diamond engagement rings became de rigueur, and the rules began to shift.

Certain necklines were acceptable only in the evening as well, and dress followed the appropriateness of the hour of the day, the age of the wearer, their status and station (see above), and the activities they had afoot. Morning dress, riding habits, low gowns, certain hats.

Oh, hats. There is a wonderful fun bit in one of the early episodes of "Are You Being Served", iterating the acceptable hat styles for various levels of employee at Grace Brothers department store. Bowlers are right out, unfortunately, for Captain Peacock, a floor walker - higher in status than the sales staff, but not so high as manager Mister Rumbold.

And yet, a bowler suits Peacock ever so well.

Another fine scene involves the proper fluffing of a pocket handkerchief.

These things matter, was the issue - and big issues they were, even so late as the 1970s. It wasn't so long ago. Mrs. Slocombe might wear any color hair she desired - but Captain Peacock needed dispensation to sport that bowler.


For a look at an encapsulated moment in the timeline of women's fashion, watch seasons one and two of the American show, "Remington Steele". Most famous for bringing Pierce Brosnan onto the Hollywood scene, what tends to be forgotten now about this series is the driving "sit" of this particular com, which was that a woman in 1982 presuming to act as a private investigator was so utterly outre' she had to invent: "a decidedly masculine superior." Hijinks ensued, and a jolly good heartthrob I still don't mind taking a gander at.

In season one of the show, Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist), our inventress, spends an interesting amount of time in hats. Fedoras in particular. She heads to a horse farm wearing a more tweedy ensemble (and woolen cap), but more than one episode sees her costumed almost for one of the old movies Steele constantly invokes as they follow their cases. But she's not costumed like the femmes fatale of these classics; she is modeled more on Sam Spade - or even Columbo. Structured tailoring, subdued colors, sturdy textiles. And always covered. She presents entirely feminine, but her character design still does not flutter nor blush. Even her most spangled evening wear (and spangles there are) speak to power, to her skill in the work she does and the refusal to become a conquest, even as most eps end in breathless kisses in the early going.

The upshot is a woman in "a man's world" - demanding respect and commanding authority.

Season two plays up, in every possible aspect, the Bondian parallels (we will not point to aspirations on Brosnan's part) of HIS character. And hers shows up in shorts and bathing suits rather suddenly. The season premiere is a lesson in what producers felt they had on their hands, and even all but cops the famous Bond theme music.

The good news is, Laura Holt is not reduced to being a Bond girl, but the contrast in production design - in costume design - captures something else of the time. By season three, she's almost always sporting elaborately swirling hairstyles - more Gibson Girl than Big 80s Hair, but still a notable change from our introduction to the character, who only got Gibson for special occasions, and not even all of those.

Even in 1982, as realistic as it was to portray a female lead in need of an imaginary man to make it in business, the fact was, women's place in American society was not quite what it had been years before, when the series was actually conceived (1969).

So, season two. They stopped presenting Laura in the clothes of male private detectives partially because the series changed in tone - and because she had nice legs and so forth - but also because women overall were becoming a little less likely, even then, to package themselves mannishly in order to make it. A little.

Fast forward a couple of years, and we have Maddie Hayes in "Moonlighting" - conceptually similar on several counts, and trying to push even farther. Hayes hardly ever wears anything but brights, in silky fabrics, and always with heels. (Note that Cybill Shepherd famously rebelled against heels, herself.) The fact that this character (and Shepherd) was a former model provided the excuse for the frippery, and the sexual tension in "Moonlighting" was if anything even more prominent than that in RS, but the difference in the female leads' outfitting was fundamental.

Women didn't just gain knees in the early 80s. Take a look at the textiles I mention. From Laura Holt to Maddie Hayes hardly represents all womankind by a long shot (pretty, young, white), but the fashions on these shows make an interesting microcosmic study of the decade. Because Hayes' fashion actually WAS a bit like what we were seeing in the real world. Jacquard silk drop-waist/slim-skirt dresses DID get very popular. My mom wore a baby pink chiffon dress like this for my 1993 wedding.

Following this advent/onslaught of affordable, light, silk or faux silk dresses, I recall a big surge in men's short-sleeved silk shirts, sometimes with mandarin collars. Beloved Ex wore this look well, and I had silk right down to a pair of *pants* in the material, and many long scarves did dedicated duty as belts. In the early 2000s, the light men's shirts of this sort were still on tap with Mr. X as well. This is the transition of a sort of evening fabric firmly into the daylight.

Belts - we got to like showy little belts in the 80s. Skinny gave way to more cummerbund sizes (that scarf wrapped around me twice, back then), and even leather belts were soft, wide, and more and more sash-like. Buckles became increasingly jewelry-like. And then rhinestones crept off buckles and into our workaday earrings, even onto shoes. BLING burgeoned. There are reasons even that word gained the traction it did, when it did.

And more evening daringness made its way into our days.

(Notoriously, of course, many people's hair got excessive. I can't pretend guiltlessness in this, but I did fail Clue-Catchers 101. In some things, it is good to be a slacker.)



Another thing that burgeoned in the 80s was designer labels. It's hard to overstate the nature of this change to anyone who hasn't lived on both sides of the designer era. And this, too, is something of an evening concept brought through the rest of the day. I had heard of  a "Halston gown" when I was little, but nobody was wearing specific-maker-anything in the 70s during the day, to speak of.

In the 70s, it was in fact just weird to wear a shirt that advertised its maker. We'd gotten some memo or other, about a thing called "designer jeans" - but it took the Reagan 80s to cement product placement in our wardrobes. In my world, knowing about Aigner and Izod led almost faster than we realized, to the Hilfiger style revolution still with us, in which everything from sunglasses to purses to jewelry and clothing are logo'd, and that's actually desirable.

(Not so much with me, but that is another day's rant.)

And then came the body parts formerly reserved for special occasions. Grrl Power midriffs have given way by now to "cold shoulder" and side-boob/side/butt, but it is still conceived as special to show the nighttime bits during the day. (Even though this isn't really new, in 20th century terms and thanks to humanity's chronological myopia, it was.) Statement Necklaces and ever-expanding eyebrows ("called it!!") came in after giant implants and fake tans with frost lipstick. Even minimalism seeks a certain boldness. More than the workaday.

And, along with wearing chiffon tops in the middle of any ordinary day, the very textiles we are dressed in are ever more ephemeral, which makes an interesting counterpoint to the perception of ever more "glamour" in their deployment. When clothes are meant to be trashed six months out, can they really be all that elegant ... ?


Things don't change, not really - but our deployment of them keeps us thinking we are brand new.

Music and Fashion - Not Always the Passion

Not long ago, I took in a long-ago recorded documentary some may recall, The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2 - The Metal Years. Apart from Chris Holmes' notoriously bleak, drunken turn before the camera, a great deal of this outing was devoted to poking fun at glam metal even while having a little bit of fun in the scene. The fashion is RIGHT out front, and is presented precisely as many of us saw it even at the time - pretty much ridiculous.

Let it be known, by 1988, I was dating a guy in a band (the eventual, inimitable Beloved Ex, in fact), and I had a few run-ins with spandex myself. The only lipstick in my repertoire for probably the entire stretch from 1985-1993 was a sturdy magenta that went with everything: black. On rare occasion, I will admit - I wore white minidresses and white spike heels. But mostly just black. I had a couple spiral perms, of varying burned-out 80s-osity. I had this great HAT. I wore that hat to my office job sometimes. I owned and took out of my closet more than one bolero, over the pink suede bustier I was able to afford because it had a broken snap. Indeed, I had several hats. I was remembered for one of them by a colleague of my dad's (I worked at his University on my college breaks) for decades.

Yeah, so I committed 80s fashions. I was NOT much for big hair; I never have been much for doing a lot of styling with my hair - but I just recognized how ugly it was. And damaging (though, again: spiral perms). I once got sneered at by a girl who wanted very much to scam on my husband, "I wish I could wear my hair FLAT like yours!" I brightly replied to her all the hairspray in our town seemed to have sold out after she hit the drugstore. *Shrug*

Over the top fashion does not have a way of ageing well. See also: the would-be Victorian polyester bridal fashions of the early 1970s - complete with giant floppy (matching pastel) hats. See also: 1960s Nehru jackets (the faddishness of which actually I think is a shame; men's tailoring in the West has been stagnated for nearly TWO HUNDRED years now - across three centuries, and a millennial divide!).

So, this morning, when I had nothing of this sort on my mind whatsoever, and I turned on a Grace Jones mix to accompany my work, it took a couple of hours before I began regarding her fashion extremity and remembering that other extremity, and comparing them.

Jones is iconic. She is still, also, unabashed in her presentation. It's something beyond fashion - her headdresses and makeup and her very hair are more than clothing, or style choices. She is living performance art. Confrontational and beautiful, powerful, visually stunning, dazzling.

Why is it Grace Jones' headdresses and cutout appliques to her face, her stripped-down gorgeousness and her sumptuous, presentational costumes have not become ridiculous, like the extensive array of hair and makeup and pleather donnings of the kids and performers of Western Civ?

Even the other two Decline documentaries, both of them focused on punk rock in different ways, feature looks which still are dominant today, in certain subcultures, and even on runways. My old punk brother and I sometimes get a grin realizing kids are still rocking mohawks like they're new and shocking. To us, it's actually adorable. "Aww. You're rocking your granddaddy's rebellion. You're EDGY!"

Punk has influenced fashion since the 1970s, but its widest evolved callback is probably the many Goth looks still prominent in subcultural scenes and on runways.

Grace, of course, is entirely her own. Even when she's not "trying" to be visually arresting - all but nude, or wearing a suit - her art pared to nothing - she is visually arresting. There's no such thing as minimalism with her, because anything she dons is automatically endowed with Grace.

And Grace does not go out of style. Which is rather astonishing. She's either enclosed or encompassing - either way, she bears fashion well outside of fashion itself.

As I have maintained since high school, and she embodies: there is a difference between fashion and style. (And I'd rather have the latter.) Or, as my punk-turned-old-dude of a bro once gleefully laughed about my saying, "Nerdliness is next to youthfulness." Perhaps agelessness.



My theory: the glam fashion was adhered to its connection with youth. Five years on - never mind all these decades down the road since then - if it survived at all, it was not prettily. Some things have very short half lives. Because Grace goes outside concerns like that, she survives, her outrageousness doesn't pall, because she's not acting like a fifteen-year-old. Sixty-eight years of age and OWNING that sh*t, it's not like she's rocking Baby Jane's pinafore and curls. What she started with wasn't anchored to its age. And so she gets to keep her own age, now. And keep the style she brung with her.

Collection

This is a GREAT piece from NPR on fun that's no fun for some - but if you listen, please also read. Because this piece is monochromatic.

Okay, and in the what is old department, we have irony … which, like anything else, is STILL not new again. Does anyone remember the scene from Name of the Rose, where Brother Jorge argues against the idea that Christ ever laughed? It’s a more important question than most of us are really able to comprehend. The turn-of-the-millennium context is strong, but I might quibble with one or two points on the Protestant history in this essay. But the overall point is: one generation ALWAYS complains about the next. (This one is for Jeff Sypeck, as we were so recently discussing the subject of hand-wringing elders!) I would argue the statement that people are especially self-aware these days. And what we’re dealing with nowadays is less “irony” than a couple of decades of SNARK, which has become exhausting.

Walt Whitman, recognized, in 1871, that "the aim of all the litterateurs is to find something to make fun of."

Enclothed cognition has been getting a great deal of attention. NPR’s recent piece by Invisibilia included the issue of feeling in control – a test subject who participated in one study protested that she preferred to feel like she was more in control – but, of course, we take control over this in the choices we make out of our wardrobes in the first place, right? I have had countless discussions with others at the office in any one of my squillion different jobs and offices, about how multiple people seem to be dressed the same way on a given day, or about wearing bright colors to wake or emotionally perk ourselves up.

I personally feel I exert a great deal of control over my emotional state and my readiness for a day based on how I choose to dress. It’s one part of the reason I set out my clothes when I come home rather than trying to choose something in the morning. Planning saves me time and pre-caffeinated “thinking”, and it gets something done I won’t have to manage in a stressed-out state. I also have a little fun with it – ooh, what jewelry will I take out on the down, what style will I deploy? And I go to bed knowing it’s one less thing to deal with. It’s also a decompressive time at the end of a work day. I come home, feed the kids, put Pen in her yard, and Goss and I go up to the quiet bedroom, where I shuck the day literally and figuratively, and plan the next one. It is a peaceful ritual, and gives me quiet time with The Grey Poobah, while Yellow Poobah enjoys some decompression of her own in her beloved yard.

On August 8, as I languished in the Atlanta airport with thousands of other victims of the Delta outage,  one of the things I noticed was the number of people who were dressed WELL. I was not one of these people. When I travel at all, I tend to dress not merely for comfort, but actually for invisibility. When I was young, this was a mechanism to deflect attention to whatever attractiveness I possessed, and to make my way with the least resistance. Flying or driving, I did not want to be approached - traveling alone, nobody wants company at the rest area or sitting tightly packed on a plane. A woman doesn't want to be subject to her own appeal. With age, I continue the comfort-lack-of-style as a matter of practicality and owing to how sick I get.

There is a freedom (hah) in ageing-woman invisibility, but for a lot of us it is also painful. If your figure has also changed with the years, it can be difficult to survey a crowd of thousands and to feel invisible. Or, worse, to think of being seen - for the dowdy old thing you have become. No longer caring.

Mr. X is coming in my direction at some point in the next several months. Invisibility is a problem, and frumpy is a not-having-it deal breaker. So I have invested in some comfort clothes that are less ... beige.


Okay. Enough of that.

Now on from enclothed cognition to ... well, how about literally another way of thinking?

… that Botox thing, where empathy is constrained by the paralysis induced by the botulonum toxin? It’s called embodied cognition. Huh.

Sunday Collection

Gossamer is currently FLAT on the living room floor, even his chin - tail swishing, and in stalk mode. He got a new toy for his adopt-iversary, and he likes it. (7/14 marked our fourth year since he first came home with me.)

The house is clean, and another project I have going in the basement is going well.

The world at large and at small seems to be a difficult place of late. We all know the large pictures. On the personal scale, someone I know just found out a parent was discovered dead at home with their pets also deceased. One of my oldest friends is dealing with the latest variety of symptoms of several chronic, incurable diseases, her husband may have pneumonia, and her father is heading in for minor (we pray) surgery Tuesday. My stepfather continues a precipitous decline from the ongoing status that he is dying in the first place.

Distractions are in order. And so, ironically, my first link today will echo the points made here ...

Advanced Style (the documentary) looks at the denial of death by way of fashion in a way more uplifting than my post above. When death comes closer, denial of it can be more affirming than oblivious, and the result is literally and figuratively beautiful. There is also a blog, which goes beyond NYC. Everything about Beatrix Ost's style, I adore. The boots look like American Duchess!

I'm not a great follower of celebrity, and so to me Jennifer Aniston is one of those word-pairs that generally keeps me from clicking. And yet, something or other got me here last week, and I have to admit: if this is her actual voice, her words, I entirely respect her thinking. On the subject of her own celebrity - and the resultant headlines about her life (and fantasies projected thereupon).

Less escapist, but something I have followed for about a dozen years; the FLDS church, the Jeffs family's power, and escape from Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah. In the wake of the recent escape of Lyle Jeffs, this is especially relevant and important to know.

There’s not always one right answer. Sometimes you just have to pick one and stick with it.

The Arrant Pedant is always a pleasure, but especially so when he deconstructs prescriptivism. In this book review, I especially appreciate his points on consistency. Sometimes, it's more about choosing your approach than knowing there is any single "right way".

Snobbery, Fashion, and Manners of Speaking

The vocal fry thing was only the beginning.

In recent months, verbal linguistics have been a constant obsession. I keep noticing how speedily pronunciations are evolving, and thinking about how they have changed in the past.

Watching films made in the 1930s, I get a sense of the vogue way to speak when my grandmothers were young - what "modern" used to me - and I wonder how their voices differed from one another in their primes, based on the way I remember them before they died. Both Virginian, but from different places, different backgrounds. I can still hear my mom's mother's voice fairly clearly in my head.

Listening to younger women now - and knowing that, though my generation's ears often find it annoying and even unintelligent-sounding, vocal fry and creak are now considered signifiers of education and success - I listen for different types of this evolved valspeak, and try to understand where the annoying affectations of my own youth became the worthy attainments of a new age ... and I wonder how quickly another mode of speaking will take over, what *is* taking over, and how these things will sound to those finding their own, new voices. How quickly fashion will change.

I wonder, too, how much of this occurred - how quickly speech changed - before media developed and burgeoned and kept us constantly aware of how we and others sound. Those thirties movies came at an era when image was literally projected for the first time, and sound became an emblematic part of fashion.

Clearly, language has always changed its sound. If new ways of speaking had not always superseded old ways - in coinage, but just as fundamentally in sound and emphasis - we'd still be speaking in what we now like to call proto Indo-European roots.

It's hard not to think recorded sound and image have not affected the speed with which these changes occur. It seems only yesterday I was complaining about the ubiquity of people emphatically growling HUJAPASSENT to indicate their certainty about something, and now I haven't heard it in months. Already out of vogue? I'm not even sure when I last heard curate; but artisinal has been fairly popular for a couple of years.


Getting out of coinage trends and looking at pronunciation, current fashion sounds to fogeys of (say) my Certain Age ... well, actually infantile. There is a trend for both overstatement and inaccuracy in diction, and some of the inflections and emphases echo those of a child just learning to speak.

A sampling of pronunciations which seem to be crossing regional lines, so do not appear to be related to particular accents:

Overdone ...

           diDINT (didn't)

           JOOLuhree (jewelry)

           feahMAlee (family)
           FOWurd (forward)

           MEEkup (makeup)

Underdone ...

           fill (feel)
           housiz (houses - first S sibilant)         
           uhMAYzeen (amazing)

           BEEdy (it took me some patience to understand this as a pronunciation of "beauty")
           BEDdur (better**)
 

The intensity of emphasis on consonants in middle of a word reminds old folks like me of a liddle kid's care in speaking words still new to their tongues - training the tongue to every part, every syllable of a word. It is adorable in a three year old, the way a toddler's emphatic way of walking is cute, as they learn refined balance.

In an adult - to more elderly adults - all this sounds considerably strange.



Here's where it gets REALLY interesting:

Considering how strange my slurring and curiously unsyncopated manner of speech must sound to those putting (let's face it) so much more effort into their speaking.

At Janet Reid's blog yesterday, we touched in the comments on the concept of dated voice, looking at slang and its changes since the 80s. But the actual mechanics of my tongue and lips, trained in a different generation, are themselves probably a giveaway of my age.

In the same way that, say Rosalind Russell's or Katherine Hepburn's youthful staccato and volume make people think that the acting in old movies was unnaturalistic, perhaps - my own seventies and eighties infused rhythms and inflections are distinct from the modes of speech in the under-thirty-five set right now, and probably sound artificial, if not downright lazy. It may be a more accurate signifier of my age than the old "check a woman's hands and elbows to see how old she really is" thing.

And oddly enough: Rosalind Russell was the absolute mistress of vocal creak ...

**Lest we think I'm talking only about female voices;

some of the most egregious infantile pronunciation currently available... 

KD James and Donna Everhart

KD James is a fellow Reider, and in a fit of clicking on other community members' names today, I found this post about a wonderful birthday gift. This is so worth a click and a grin, if only to read the things she photographed to share with the post itself, but I highly recommend reading the post too. Great gifts are enough to restore your faith in humanity. And happy VERY late birthday, KDJ!!

Also, apropos of my Reider friends - I am still crooked-smiling that Donna Everhart told me my writing voice is very Cormac McCarthy-ish, and then told the whole gang over at Janet's blog today.

Collection

The Caustic Cover Critic has happened upon a truly stunning trove of wonderfully bewildering cover designs. Some are hilarious, some titillating in the most inappropriate way, many are just head-scratchers ...

The Atlantic has an intriguing look (listen?) at the way we talk on YouTube. Linguistics aren't just for the written word, kids!

Terrorism and radicalization – not just for the “other” anymore. One of the problems with dismissing a terrorist as being mentally ill is the burden of stigma loaded upon those who suffer mental illness and never harm a soul (the majority, by the way).

“Are we worshipping the same Jesus?”

A close reading of the Bible finds that one of its most common refrains sung by angels, humans and Christ alike is ‘Do not be afraid.’

THIS is the “joy” of Biblical spirituality. It has been a powerful message through the ages – “nothing to fear but fear itself” – “fear not” – “fear is the garden of sin” – “the enemy is fear” – “G-d gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love” – “Fear is stupid. So are regrets.”

 

The History Girls has a sad post here. "Our united voices counted for nothing against the commercial imperatives of a shop that employs no local people, sells nothing that we would want to buy (which would count as 'sustainable development') and sources most of its merchandise in far countries."

The Atlantic has another video illustrating a wonderfully diverse sample of the known history of hair styling. This one isn't all about white folks in Europe; a nice look, and some cool music too. They did get the date of the sidecut wrong, though - I was far from the first, and I had that going in 1985.

New Hair?

My fifth grade teacher used to comment excitedly, when one of the kids came in after a haircut, "New hair! New hair!" It was one of her mildly unexpected turns of phrase that came off as comedic because it was nonconformist.

Miss A. never married, because she was a career woman, and her concentration on her job and her kids was such that there was not room for other such encompassing commitments. Miss A. wore polyester skirt and pants suits in purple, neon lime green, pink, and red. Miss A. had the blackest of black hair, and Snow White pale skin. Miss A. is, very likey, no small part of my own sense of style, even if I don't express it in Visa of Dacron double-knit polyester.  Miss A. had a post-retirement career in the movies, working as an extra in quite an array of Hollywood and independent productions; I shared the background with her once, in the 90s, and it was fun to see her after twenty years or so.

I can see her rocking this kind of thing (rocking its bobby sox off):

Vintage Theory

I have a theory and it is mine, but you can have it - indeed, you can comment on it and all those lovely things we can do in blog-land. So go to it!

Today, I wore a soft jersey shirt with a raw-edged asymmetrical cut. It's a flattering top, very very soft, and several years old. The jersey has held up very well, and the raw edge is still perfect, no strings coming loose nor runs trying to open up in the weave. It's wonderfully comfortable, washable, and has a unique style. It is also the first top I bought in what has become a trend: the long-line asymmetrical sleeveless knit top with curious draping/ruching/mixed textiles, and at the time I bought it, it was daring and forward thinking. It's still an excellent design, still not widely imitated to effect as good as its own.

But it is several years old. And it is made of a very light, delicate jersey knit.


This got me thinking.

With the various vogues for vintage style - and this dates well back before Mad Men, Downton Abbey, or even the fashion, beginning in my own much-molded youth, for rockabilly styles - it's always been a mix of re-created ... and ORIGINAL ... vintage clothes. Inspiration for big-shouldered 80s styles lay in an interest in 40s fashion silhouettes, and we resurrect and imitate Victorian, New Look, Flapper, even 18th-century clothes.

Okay, we're not wearing 18th-century, but I've seen people who wear original 19th-century coats in my day. And certainly much of the 20th century is represented in vintage shops and so on.


Here is the thing I realized:

When the first whiffs of 80s retro came  along, I waited for the vintage to come out. And it never did.

Beginning almost alarmingly soon after the decade died, by 1990, Madonna was playing around in giant bellbottoms, and cork plats came into style all too quickly, ushering in the still-extant-to-some-extent 70s fashion rehash. The 60s have been in style since the 80s; plastic-fantastic colors and shapes and Carnaby cute replaying almost without let all along - winklepickers, granny purses, big hair and long hair and staid, nubby boucle knits and Flower Power.

We have pieces of these original decades. I have a 1940s grosgrain purse of my great-grandmothers, which is in spectacular, strong condition, and which I can carry on special occasions. I have a hat nearly as old, a straw hat of my grandmother's. I've seen American Duchess's Lauren modeling dresses she plans to WEAR, not just collect. I myself own a magenta moire' New Look dress made in the UK and very definitely original (that rare original large enough to fit a modern woman's body).

The reason these things can be recycled/reused is this: they were made well enough to survive.


The 80s retro never took off in the way previous decades did because there really isn't as much in the way of surviving originals. They are definitely still *around* - but the quality of clothes made in the 1980s does not stand up to the standards of previous manufacture or hand-making. Even the 70s still used more natural (resilient) fiber and tailoring made to be altered and some expectation that garments should be built to last.

In the 80s, earlier synthetics were perfected ("") and proliferated. In the 80s, seam allowances disappeared, never to be seen since. In the 80s, commerce overcame design, and fashion overcame style to a great extent. In the 80s, the concept of perennial pieces began to be depressed, if not actually opressed or repressed, and short attention spans for fads were built into an industry whose market influence discouraged classic must-have pieces and began heavily to emphasize label uber-alles.

There hasn't even been much whiff of 90s retro, and 15 years on I hear people occasionally actually talking about what they miss in 90s fashion. But the skater-skirts-with-tights and chunky Mary Janes are going to have to be rebuilt this time, because the ones we had bit the rayon-shrinkage or Payless-poorly-constructed dust, or at least are thinner on the ground (and, yeah, in textile) than better made clothes have been for those interested in older decades used to be.


All of it's getting thinner on the ground, of course. With profligates like me WEARING sixty-year-old dresses, they're not going to last the way furniture or architecture might. With others DIY'ing pieces already perhaps compromised - or NOT - even what survives intact is deliberately deconstructed (if not actually destroyed, at least by some lights).

With actual construction being the crap that it mostly is, there won't be many Members Only (or L'Autre Mode ... heh) jackets to go with prefabricated fake DIY Chucks or stirrup pants or Benetton slouches in United candy colors.

No wonder 80s retro didn't take off the way 70s and 60s and so on did before. It'd have to be remade altogether.

And who wants to do that ... ???

To the Nines II

Diane Vallere has a GREAT post at BookEnds' blog, on dressing for a conference - and The Pitch ...

I had some thoughts on this once, too, in my misspent youth.

The IMPORTANCE of Costume

One of the things about the clothes we wear, even people who aren’t obsessed with fashion or looks, is that for most of us, some events or feelings actually imprint themselves upon what we are wearing at the moment something happens. How many men do you know who have a “lucky” pair of shoes or shirt or the like? How many women wear some particular outfit because it was what they wore when they got a particular job or met someone or just had a great day the first time they took it out, and it still makes them feel like a million?

I am not even sure where its box is right now, and will never so much as fit an arm in the thing again; but my wedding dress is one of those artifacts of my life I’ve never found a way to “give up” … Not least because giving it to any relative of mine would bring with it the knowledge that I was a rotten bride and my marriage broke up, but also because I’m not close “like that” with any of my cousins, and my nieces don’t appear to be stacking up (ahem) to the same build I had (chest-less), and my style in 1993 probably isn’t to either of their tastes anyway. But that dress was made for me – literally built ONTO me, over the course of a day – by a friend I still consider deeply dear to my heart. It is a thing of gorgeousness, and its fate – preserved in a box, never to see the light of day – seems largely inescapable. Who would wear it? I can’t bear to cut it into crafts projects. It is the only garment in my life I ever expect to be one-and-done, so to speak; worn only one time and literally never again.

But even lesser things have their psychic cachet. I can tell you exactly what I wore to work on the first day of my last job; one, because Cute Shoes remarked on it to me as the first clue I had some style. And two: because it was the dress I was wearing when I was laid off, on a gorgeous day in spring, from the previous job – and that dress deserved better than that. It got it; I had hated previous-job anyway, and been looking for months before I won the layoff lotto at an employer that “never” did that. Except that one time.

Today, I wore a dress with an odd mix of emotional ghosts attached. It’s a tasteful number in beige and white, just longer than the knees, sleeveless but conservative, an empire waist with a tie, and a little pattern from there up. It made as good a choice as possible, during the heat of an August day, when I had to go to traffic court: and found myself served with a half-million dollar lawsuit.

The lawsuit is over, and at about the moment that happened, last year, I purchased my Prius – getting rid of a *car* freighted with too much emotional weight – and somehow this dress, the thing covering me at the moment I experienced the greatest horror and cowering fear in all my life, does not bring with it the latter emotional recall, but only its own light color and comfortable wear. Yet I can’t wear the thing without knowing its history.

I color that history now with gratitude – because that ordeal IS over, and I am intact. And it feels GOOD to know that, to remember the fear, to have that in the past. And the dress looks nice, its lightness speaks of spring and of summer, its conservative and flattering lines give me a power-boost at work, and the memory of the people who have said it is a nice dress feels good too. Even my MOM liked this dress. It’s a good dress.

And memory is good, and keeping myself honest, and being grateful – these are all important.

Some days, it can feel important just to look slick. Looking slick in comfort: bonus points.

But memory is always there. Of the important things – and the less-so. The day you were wearing the comfy jeans you like, walking alone on an autumn day, kicking leaves. The boots you had on once when you almost slipped on ice, and didn’t – whether they really saved you or not, you’ll always think of them as Good Boots, and you’ll have them repaired if you can, rather than tossing ‘em and buying new when the leather stresses or the laces go or a grommet on an eyelet comes loose. We can develop actual gratitude even for clothes, if the serve us well.

This is why the disposable clothing industry is sad (even aside from its implications for our natural resources).


I have a little jersey jacket. They’re wonderful, little light cardigans that can stretch a sleveless top’s seasonal functionality, or take us from chilly morning to warm afternoon with no changing or little fuss.

This one, I happened to buy the last time I saw Mr. X.

I’d arrived in the town where we were meeting, and it was early afternoon, and I didn’t “need” to check in immediately, so before I got to my hotel, I stopped at a Ross Dress for Less, and bought a couple things. A long blue sundress with beading around the neck; this little taupe cardi with a bit of a peplum and a nice drape.


The thing about jersey – particularly lightweight jersey – it’s a very flat fabric. If it develops a hole or even a run, there is little that can be done. And what heroic measures would even the best seamstress take with a $12 garment already three years old?

This little jacket is great, I use it all the time, through three-quarters of the year. It’s flattering, goes with many things, and stretches any number of outfits’ utility and versatility.

And it has a little hole in the back, in the peplum, in a broad stretch of fabric that wouldn’t lend well to mending even if I had the skills. A patch would be bulky and unsightly – and, indeed, any bulk over a weak spot could actually create weak spots in its own perimeter. This fabric is THIN.

And the jacket has had three years already – in a variety of garment generally manufactured to last six months or less. This is actually part of the design/making of disposable clothes. They’re meant to be ditched. Not fixed. Just replaced. There’s another cardigan jacket out there just as good; there are fifty; a hundred. This is meant to be tossed, replaced by new.


This is something I wore three YEARS ago, when last I saw the man who ruined me for all the other ones. When last I saw the friend in this world who knows me better than even my oldest. When last I saw his laughter, heard it, MADE it. He’s touched those sleeves, put his arms around the back of this jacket. Felt how soft it is, even as I have a hundred times since, without him.



There’s really no way, even with the finest needle, to pick that hole and pull it back together. It’s small, but it is a hole. It can’t really be fixed.

And yet. And yet. I resist throwing the thing away. It keeps me JUST warm enough, it looks good in front still.

If only I didn’t know it had this flaw. This unfixable, and un-hide-able, flaw.

Highly-Critical Mass

Okay, ironic beard boys. When Kevin Spacey is making fun of you in an E-Trade commercial featuring a nice looking woman walking with her bearded boyfriend, suddenly finding herself eyeing the clean-shaven fella stepping out of a doorway?

Your little ironic beards are done. Leave 'em to the men who wear their faces that way for reasons that have nothing to do with proving their coolness, or being fashionable. Please.

Fashion Quote

Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity, and afraid of being overtaken by it. It is a sign the two things are not very far apart.
--William Hazlitt

... he may or may not be using the term gentility loosely here ...

Makeup Styles - and Fashion Itself

Getty Images

The point of interest in this shot is the makeup – not only do both of these women have under-drawn lips (the outline of the lipstick is smaller than the natural outline of their mouths), after years of quite extraordinary over-drawn styles, but they have highly over-drawn eyebrows and eyeliner extending well away from their eyes as well.  Their upper lips still retain some cupid’s bow fulness, but in a much more natural shape, compressing the divet at the center rather than hyperextending it, and not drawing in the extreme horizontal plumpness of the 40s.

The almost lacquered heaviness of the brows is fairly rare today, but I recognize it in some of the women I know “of a certain age”, and also as a reaction against the plucking and even shaving of previous decades.  Through the twenties, thirties, and into the forties, eyebrows had been thinned to varying degrees, and the 1950s’ emphasis on the eyebrow was in a way revolutionary.  After a generation or so of thin-is-in, as it were, softer and fuller hair, and softer and fuller brows were the it look, and it’s understandable even if half a century and more along it looks just as strange in a different way.

Coincidentally, the natural life of an eyebrow may point us to a basis for the styles’ variance over time.  From the age of ten or twelve, most women have ever-thicker brows – not always wild, the way a man’s brows may be, but certainly not the perfect little apostrophe your average waxing technician would hope we all strive for.  Think about Brooke Shields’ brows in about 1982 – she was herself something of a revolution, and those dark, naturalistic, straight, emphatic brows were the frame of a face almost aggressively youthful, when she exploded into the pop-culture scene in her very early teens.  She was the subject of much tut-tutting, that models were younger and younger, that she was such a scandal, that she was so very young and her mother was using her as a tool – all sorts of projections, most of them long since forgotten.

As we grow older, the pigment in the hairs of the brow fade, and the brows themselves grow thinner.  As we can see from the image above, it is a bit of a trick to draw in thick eyebrows and make it look good – it takes a sparing hand and a HARD lining pencil, or you get a dollop of glop resembling a smeary caterpillar.  Fortuitously, it takes little “thickening” to effect the look of a youthful brow.

The extent to which we internalize the messages not only of fashion in garments, but of fashion in cosmetics, has always been apparent in my life.  My dear friend TEO once witnessed my mom scolding me that I looked trashy because I was not wearing ENOUGH makeup (specifically liptsick).  I was a teenager, and in the 1980s (and being possessed of lips with much more natural contrast to my skin tone than mom has), I concentrated on eye makeup, not lipstick.  (I was not a heavy gloss user; never even owned a Bonnie Bell Dr. Pepper Lip Smacker.)  To this day, that moment lives in infamous hilarity.So the 50s were the time of lipstick, big brows, and big, quasi-soft hair.  Compared to the 40s, it was positively pillowy.  And it was a response – in comparison to the 40s, the 30s, even the 20s.  It was a statement and an attempt at change, at modernity – just as were all the fashionable looks before.

And since.

The 60s started to diversify more, and by the time I came along we were a bit of a mess – me with my famously “New Wave” (a drab little Mackenzie Phillips shag) hair, then shaving one side of it just because.  Girls still sporting the Farrah one-long-curl-down-each-side or clue-catcher bangs, all too many forgetting the top and sides of their heads were visible to others.  Zizzy perms and spirals (perhaps the most painful thing ever expensively done to my head – but for that month or so it was new, it was pretty OSUM).  Manic Panic and asymmetricals.

Looking back, much of what seemed cool aged looking suprisingly matronly.  Looking back at today – who knows how we’ll read?  Mis-matchy, perhaps obsessed with ugly purses, and tiresomely addicted to gladiator sandals and stupidly, stupidly, stupidly high platform pumps.  Maxi dresses will be on the way out sometime, and I will be sad to say goodbye to their voluminous coverage … but maybe less sorry to see sublimation prints and chevrons go.  Anthropologie chic may garner less scorn than American Apparel skank – perhaps – but it’s all ephemeral and it’s all going to embarrass *someone*, some time.

That is what fashion is designed to do.

What embarrassments lie ahead?  Fun to watch.

What lie behind?  Difficult to admit.  But feel free, because the comments are all yours …

Edited to add this - a new brow product encouraging thicker, more youthful brows.  Saw this within days of originally writing this post, which was a little while ago.

Pantsless

As the child, sister, and niece of scientists, I have a pretty hard time believing in magic – much though I always wanted to.  *Superstition* - now, that’s easy, it’s just a matter of silly habits.  But actually believing in sympathetic, mystical, or merely physical magic; I’m no good at it.

Yet, since the Conference on October 18-19, there has been a mysterious and complete, inexplicable disappearance in my life, and I am at a perfect loss.

Literally.

This past spring or summer, after Admin’s Day, I used the gift certificate they gave the secretaries in thanks, to buy a simply spiffing pair of palazzo pants.  They were comfortable, went with tons of my things, would have seen me through every season, and were comfortable, stylin’, and flattering.  In short, the holy grail.

I’m saying these were excellent pants.

And the things have either:  run away from home, or simply defied the law of Object Permanence.

I have looked in every closet eighteen times.  With a FLASHLIGHT.  I’ve ransacked the shelves at the back of the closet, pulled back the old box shoe rack to look behind it, inspected the items on every single hanger time and time again, gone through the cabinetry in there dozens of times, looked in the floor, peered in the dark again and again.  Every closet.  Guest room, master, wardrobe, foyer, linen closet upstairs.  Dressers too, guest room and master, because there’s been a seasonal wardrobe shift since the Con.

Nada.

I’ve done laundry countless times, of course, since mid-October.  And these pants steadfastly refuse to miraculously appear – not on the clotheslines in the basement, not in the basket, not in the machines, not in the trashcan in the basement, not on the disused plumbing fixtures in the middle of the floor, not on the ironing boards.  Not behind the washing machine nor dryer.  Not in the kitchen cabinets nor drawers.  Not in any of the storage dressers.  Not in the library on the DVD shelves.

Nope.

I have looked, even, in the mending, which happens to be in my office these days.  I thought, maybe I forgot an the hem was going, maybe I put the pants in the quick-fix pile I keep and never get to quickly.

Every so often, I think of some new place to look (usually:  again).  Every so often, I look.  Again.

Zilch.

It’s maddening, bewildering.  Inexplicable.  This mystery will not be splicked, and heck if I have not tried.  And tried.  And tried.

I’m beginning to think I’ll find an agent (and maybe even be sold) before these damned pants will reappear and satisfactorily explain themselves.



 

Being a woman, of course, I have *looked* for new palazzo pants.  For second-best, for something to settle for.  For (cue that Who riff) a Sub-sti-chute.



Oh, but NONE of the pants I’ve perused desultorily are the same.  Most are cheap, an *awful* lot are not black, are very heavily patterned.  None want to be replicants, rebound stand-ins for The Only Pants I Ever Loved.  None is made with as well-draped a textile, none has the weight or quality of The Missing.  Some veer perilously close to being SLACKS.  Heavens forfend.

I do not wear slacks.

I *can* not wear my palazzos.  I can’t do the great sweaer outfits they’d have been so perfect for, with my cute little shoe-booties, sophisticated colors, and long scarves, warm around my neck.

I cannot wear them: for Thanksgiving.  Horrors!  They’d have been so good for Thanksgiving.  Their kind, yoga-style (non-elastic-banded) waistband – not an option, for the holiday when it would be so very welcome.  Their long, floppy legs, soft and fine for napping in.

Alack!

I cannot wear them in a car, I cannot wear them in a bar.  I cannot wear them, Sam I’m Not.  I cannot wear them, no matter what.



But the real problem is something deeper, something more profound, even, than That Perfect Garment, the comfortable, washable, versatile and good looking pants.

No.  More desperately, and more to the ultimate, mind-deteriorating, insanity-inducing point:  I can’t figure out … What. the. Hell.

It’s a COGNITIVE torture, this terrible case of non-presence.

My brain honestly cannot cope with what has become of these pants.  Never mind not being able to find them.  Not being able to understand what could have become of these things, this item in my care, this bit of flotsam in the material blessings over which I carry stewardship.  THAT’S the problem.


It would be preferable to believe that (a) my pants don’t actually possess the power of teleportation, (b) someone didn’t come in my house just to steal nothing in the world but these precious pants, and (c) I didn’t forget that awkward moment when, apparently, I was driving home from the Con, shucked my pants while in the car, threw them out the window with a whoop of deranged glee, freeing myself from these inexplicable pants, and apparently walked back in my house naked from the waist down.  *Erm*

I’m pretty serious about that (c), too.

Unless I have lost my way around a perfectly ordinary house I’ve lived in for FIFTEEN YEARS now … these pants simply do not exist anymore.  They are nowhere in evidence, in the only possible place I’m capable of *comprehending* they should be.  They are nowhere to be found inside my house.

And yes, I have looked under all the beds.  With that flashlight, and multiple times, again.  And no, I never lent them to anybody, nor took ‘em to a dry cleaner.

I take nothing to a dry cleaner, man.

These pants appear to have renounced molecular cohesion, shivered themselves into nonexistence, and dispersed, to play with the dust bunnies, mold, cave crickets, and dust.  Either that, or they actually honestly don’t exist, even in particulate form, whatsoever anymore.

They’re chimera pants.

Dare I say:  they are immaterial.



*Ducks to avoid the response to that last line*

What’s inexplicable in your life, this Thanksgiving?