Vogue ItaliaSo, thinking more on ways to take up the flounce without getting caught in the pretty-but-boring conundrum Kate references in her recent comment, here's some shots that seem to overcome the problem. And, just to be clear, Michael Jackson's Number One videos are playing as I post this. That is, further inspiration for screwing with traditional categories (an example of what I mean: in "You Rock my World" Michael gets challenged to a knife fight in a bar and he responds by destroying the situation with dance. As Rachel likes to say, "dancing can be dangerous.").
Vivienne Westwood dress, with vintage upside down jean jacket, Chanel heels
lost the reference for this, unfortunately. i think it's by tommy at jakandjill.com
Balenciaga, Fall 09Apparently, I need to find a good blazer.
As a result of having been thrust from the cashmered embrace of a comfortable salary into the relative poverty of studenthood (not to mention into the pages of Adorno, Marx and a temporally relevant if at times catty synthesis of the two, a book called The Rebel Sell by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter), my reflexes have been to interpret your claims of re-self-imagination as little more than a healthy fetish (complete with rubber thigh-highs & garters) for commodities - a compulsion (if capitalism has been doing its job) that is ascribed indelibly to our conception of our selves. I wanted to say - and I'm only being honest - "must be nice," when it occurred to me that I'm just jealous.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, owing to a prolonged and problematic struggle of self-identification supplementing the stress of being in post-affluence debt, my disenchantment with fashion-as-identity has grown less out of a newfound revolutionary impulse (I'm not that naïve) and more out of a lament for the days where I could replace the happiness lost by my socially-mandated inability to kill, eat, take or fuck whatever I want with some really dope threads, and maybe a vacation or two. There's a reason why a couple smart people say that money actually can buy you happiness until you're making around $50K/year. It affords us a way to assert ourselves as selves distinct from others in a society that must judge a book by its cover, because there are just too damned many of them for us to care what's on every page.
What I'm trying to get at here, with unintended other meanings hopefully aside, is that I think I'm just trying to find out which ways I will begin to re-imaging myself in the coming days, months, decades, and that I wish I had more to contribute that relates with your sartorial sensibilities; I started out a few years ago by buying Diesel jeans in a Wranglers hometown, but I don't believe my intended meaning then would jibe with who I think I am now. At an unstable, unpredictable and relatively humble point in my life, I am stuck trying to ascertain an intention by which my actions and words can 'mean', and to do it on a dime. This is difficult amid the din of nihilistic pessimism's Siren Song (the Unabomber had a point), and with the utter consumerist waste I see swirling around me, the quest is infuriating to (Ugg) boot.
However, there's more to life than pondering how shitty it may or may not be, and there's nothing quite like the momentary bliss of seeing (or being seen as) a gorgeous body in a killer blazer. So let's go shopping!
commikaze: 1. Socrates was reputed to have been a very poorly dressed, bombastic and gerrulous old man who abtrusely challenged people's motives and opinions. Athens couldn't stomach his presence and put him to death: he wasn't wearing a blazer! 2. Never forget that "dancing can be dangerous"!.
ReplyDeleteE3P2S: The blazer has in the past year or so become my favourite article of clothing to try on!