Best of Lookbook: We Still Love Saggy Clothing, Looking Waifish

This is entitled "coffee & novels" even though I bet he is really drinking a skim soy latte. This guy seems very influenced by the Olsen Twins. I say he can do better! I'm tired of people saying gay gays dress better than straight men. They both dress bad. I guess this guy has some flair, but it's misplaced. A few more examples:

It's like they're in a costume, but they don't know what they are supposed to be. I guess I appreciate the campiness of it, but I think lots of gays seem to dress in parodies in a sort of version of masculinity, hence the the male cast of Jersey Shore in the Village Voice queer issue, illustrating the "guido ideal." But these looks, like all the looks here, are desperately high-fashiony, except I guess the guy in the headband, who looks more Portland 2008. No one seems influenced by anything cool or really belonging to an interesting subculture, just by what is trendy.






This is a big look for girls. It's a kind of swaddled, diapery look. Everyone is into pants with saggy apendages, like dropped crotches and voluminous ankles. More neutral. More 90's. I think maybe the two bottom ones are wearing the same flowy skort? Isn't it weird that not long ago these ladies would be wearing low-rise Sevens and Juicy suits? Like the guy above, they strive for a rumpled "I just threw this flowy skort on," look.




Also hot: tucking something voluminous into a pair of 501 cut-offs and posing with a fashion hunch.



In: long hair for the ladies. But, not curly, wild long fair. That's gross. It's lank and straight, like the pleats in your shorts. And bowler hats and faux vintage sunglasses and skorts or at least a really big shirt with no pants. Standing knock-kneed and unsteadily, as usual.

Who wore the Smiths T-Shirt Better Competition:

That first guy looks your sixth-grade dream date, whereas the second guy is doing the ubiquitous pigeon-toed 90's floral thing. Which goes to show that gay guys dress no better than straight guys, but also that everyone also dresses the same, basically. Also, that everyone is, as usual, harboring the delusion that they alone control how they dress.

The Future is Here

I'm so tired of this idea (often presented on Jezebel, among other places) that because plastic surgery is a CHOICE women make about their bodies, it therefore is equal to abortion or something and therefore one cannot denigrate it, and to denigrate it is to tell women what to do with their bodies/criticizing their bodies, and therefore patriarchal. Well, isn't anorexia a choice? Isn't hating yourself a choice? Isn't abusing yourself and holding yourself up to a horrifying standard a choice? As Gaby so eloquently put it, "Feminism isn't about choices! No one ever said feminism was about choice!" Choices like these are not made in a vacuum. They are reflective of disturbing, patriarchal cultural practices in our society, which contribute to an eerily futuristic and homogenized idea of beauty, marketability, femininity, and value. It is women caving into these demands, and it's fucking scary and horrifying.

I understand that some cosmetic surgery is supposed to be more culturally acceptable- ie, having a nose job if you have a prominent nose, but we have to understand these surgeries also do not spring from nowhere. We must remember it was our culture that made you feel bad about your nose, not the nose itself. Before there were mirrors, people barely had any idea what they looked like.

How ridiculous that Jessica Simpson has that TV show "The Price of Beauty" where she is supposed to be pointing out how twisted and weird the world's beauty practices are, when she and others spend their time having massive amounts of unnecessary surgery, having plastic balloons and rubber pieces inserted in their bodies, having flesh carved or sucked out of them, having skin pulled back and sewn back into another place, and being injected with fluids and chemicals? Like, take a step back, people! It's not okay, it's not a stylistic choice like your haircut or anything like the choice to have an abortion, and it isn't equivalent to what plastic surgery was designed for, which is for people with actual deformities/disabilities/etc. We shouldn't encourage a society where this is the standard. It is wrong. Period.

Mary's Musings: More on Globalization, Bowler Hats

Above: Unique Assorted Looks from Across the World, courtesy of Lookbook, which I always want to make fun of but can't because it is basically this photo repeated 10,000 times.

1. Apparently the Face Hunter has decried globalization, saying:

"Globalization is a myth. The belief that international brands and pop culture are making the world a standardized society populated by clones is an old-skool science-fiction vision of the future, not the reality of the 21st century."

and

"we should talk of 'creole-ization,'" which is "customizing identity from fragments of culture from different parts of world."

and

"Trends are dead, baby! Become what you are' is now a reality."

Well, obviously he's not going to say that everyone looks the same everywhere because of globalization, and that the ten million people wearing a bowler hat and posing pigeon-toed from Norway to Korea is indicative of that.

But it's not like globalization only relates to big brands and corporations. Cultural globalization has everything to do with the fact that everyone with a computer can view people and trends from across the planet, whereas once cultural influences were insular and therefore had to be somewhat unique. It has to do with the fact that people's cultural references came largely from where they were from, instead of from a glowing box. And let us not forget that street style can trickle up or down- the current trend of wearing huge, teetering platforms with crap hanging off them (or "big ugly shoes" as I call them) obviously started with designer fashion, as the style is one of the few thoroughly modern looks popular, and there's not really any skewing going on there.

I have been using my razor-sharp observation skills to look at the people of New York City, where I currently am (uh, do you have a job for me? List of jobs I'm interested in will follow at end of post.*) People in New York look a little more polished, a little more on-point, but they are overwhelmingly just wearing the same trends we have all seen so much and made so much fun of: Saggy pleated shorts, chambray shirts, boxy blazers with rolled sleeves, the aforementioned bowler hat (for the love of god, stop wearing those!!!!!) and, for guys, the Sartorialist look which is at least a cute one.

Lastly, everything today has gotten so fashion-y. There used to be a huge divide between designer and plebeian. Maybe this is apropos of nothing, but remember that Britney Sometimes video? I do. I remember watching it in horror as she capered around in a white cropped turtleneck and baggy pants, like her stylist had walked blindfolded into a Deb sale rack and shortened the first thing he could find into a half-shirt:



Anyway, it blew me away how fugly it was. It was that really thick ribbed knit, too.

I just think this sort of thing wouldn't fly anymore, you know? Everyone collaborates with a designer, and every fashion blog features some fourteen year old jerking off over the new
Alexander Wang collection. When I was in high school, no one knew about this stuff. To them,
"designer" was the Paul Frank monkey or Mavi jeans or something. The pervasive idea that you can take designer looks and "skew" them and make them your own is supposed to democratize fashion, but you're still echoing the establishment- the same with designer capsule collections for cheap stores.

The point is, globalization and the like is more insidious than you think. It's not just kids in remote China eating happy meals, man! And as for the "old-skool [skool??!!] science-fiction vision" of the future, let's not forget if someone from the past flash-forwarded to today and saw a zillion people staring at little glowing screens and wearing wet-look leggings, they'd be pretty freaked out!

2. Words I wish never to hear again:
panini, I hate saying this word, and I hate how every crappy chain restaurant in the world is all over ciabatta and microgreens and all this fancy stuff that only makes sense when it doesn't come out of a baggie in the freezer.

pimp and all its variations. The 2000's were the worst, and now that I am reflecting upon them a lot, I am getting more and more angry that I had to come of age in such a horrible, turtleneck/half-shirt wearing decade. Using the word pimp as an adjective or verb is not okay.

3. Here is a funny blog for you guys to read: Godmammit I'm Mad. This is a lady after my own heart, who hates Sea of Shoes and whose hero is Patti Smith, and who posts amazing photos of herself as a teen runaway hanging out on Sunset Boulevard in the 60's and 70's. It's worth reading the back entries, except that most of 2008 is just anti Sarah Palin posts.

* Jobs:
1. Malcolm McClaren-esque band manager. Give me a band clad in turtleneck half-shirts and I will turn them all into stars!
2. Gaddabout. Hire me for your magazine and I'll make droll observations about parties I attend for free.
3. Costumer for whatever. No longer will no one sit in the audience and fume about how this movie supposedly set in the 1970's clearly features people wearing modern jeans!
4. Simon Doonan or Amy Sedaris or Judy Blume, or assistant to Simon Doonan or Amy Sedaris, but not Judy Blume because I guess she is retired.
5. Vintage museum curator.
6. Trend forecaster, but used for good, not evil.
7. Glam rock expert.
8. Basically any other sort of job, hopefully something to do with vintage clothing, YA fiction, feminism, writing, editing, or similar.

PS: Malcom McClaren's coffin:

Mary's Musings: The 00's Are Over

What have the 00's wrought? I've really wanted to write a post about the '00s for awhile, but it's pretty difficult to really say what I think the significance of the past ten years has been, because technology, the internet, and a the worldwide phenomena of globalization truly has made this past decade unlike any one before. What is weird to me is that technology has changed everything quickly and dramatically, yet it has also happened so quickly that people don't want to stop and take any time to examine it and its repercussions.

Technology itself is not "bad" or "good." There are great benefits to technology, as well as unrelated but obvious advancements politically and socially. There is a sense of ease-maybe even a sense of freedom- that we can enjoy. The internet and widely available knowledge snippets are useful not only for informational reasons, but because they can help free people from isolation, which might not mean much if you just want to find other people who like 40's dresses, but could be really helpful if you are the only gay kid in your small hometown or something. I also think "publishing" on the internet and having one's own space to promote yourself or your work or whatever (this blog is an example) can really give people a platform they otherwise wouldn't have and hopefully can help circumvent the typical and more hierarchical ways of getting yourself heard. And there are many other reasons to appreciate technology.

But with cultural awareness comes a huge shift in how things are created. I think art and culture have always had false pretense about them; the artist has always lied about who they were to sell their product. But now everyone is aware of everything- not just the history within their own culture or field, but everything- every subculture, every marketing scheme, every trend. I always read first-person accounts that were like, "Oh, growing up in the 70's, I loved Kiss, because they were the hardest thing around," but today, there is so much to choose from, and as a result, you doubt the authenticity of anyone's cultural experience. It's not so much that people seem like posers as much as everyone seems to be coming from the same place.

Besides the awareness of all different scenes and cultures, there is the awareness of irony, itself a real cultural hallmark of the past ten years. Everything has been rehashed and made fun of and then rehashed again- and the dominant pop culture scene is nothing if not an example of this. Remember the "garage rock revival" of the early 2000's? And everyone was like, "The Strokes are so great!" even though everyone realized they sucked like six weeks later even though I just read an interview with Julian Casablancas in New York in which "Is This It" was referred to as "masterful"? But The Strokes never seemed real. They seemed so self-consciously aware of what they were imitating, and of the history of these old New York bands even though New York didn't even exist in the same way anymore. It's like, sure Richard Hell was a poser in his own way too, but, back then, there just wasn't much to copy. You had to be sort of authentic in a way to start all these cultural movements because you weren't reviving anything. It was the first time. Punk hadn't been invented yet. But it's not like now you are ever like, "I've never, ever seen/heard/imagined anything like this before!" because most things are self-consciously ripping off something else.

Fashion is like this for sure. What did the 00's bring us that was new, besides cultural homogenization? The disparities between the high/low market really began to lessen, what with every designer's crappy collections for Target and the availability of cheap, trendy, disposable clothes from H&M and Forevs. I can certainly appreciate the fact that these stores are cheap and that many more people can afford to wear the newest and trendiest because of them, but they also contribute to an impending sense of overall uniformity. And it's not just because you saw 50 other people in that H&M coat (seriously, I had an H&M coat last winter and I thought about taking photos of every person wearing it besides me, which was a lot) but the fact that everyone's clothes were made in the same cheap, disposable way. I see the 90's being revived, and though they sucked sartorially, there was some new stuff there. But how will the 2000s be revived? There wasn't a strong enough perspective.

Obviously it doesn't bother most people, but to me the fact that everything got super, super ugly in the past decades is a real downer. It's depressing that my generation will leave so much (plastic, cube shaped) crap in its wake. People can say that it's stupid to collect records when you can have an ipod full of mp3s, but ipods are ugly and records are beautiful and make sense because they have aesthetic value, and aesthetics are an important part of the culture of music, and I would argue, an important part of the world at large because we use our eyes every day and all.

This is not to say that everything sucks and things are over and art is over, or that the rise and fall of The Strokes is an unparalleled and profound metaphor for our times, just that, if you view these large, sweeping worldwide movements, they certainly point to vast shift in our culture. Which is all a little futuristic for me. Why do movies set in the future always assume everything is going to look like a punk rock desert or something when clearly they should take place inside a Best Buy, man?

PS: Probably the biggest argument for technology run amok: plastic surgery face (and body.) It's not exactly a reflection of healthy times, you know? For all our advancements, our standards of beauty and what is valued are as rigid and terrible as ever, perhaps more. It's definitely a little dystopian for me.