Well, it's that common knitting-design quandary. I'm deeply immersed in secret projects at the moment, and while I'm super-excited about all of them, I obviously can't blog any of them yet. There's a little something I'll be releasing on June 1, but for now, all I can offer is a little rant.
For starters, have you seen this?
It's a very, very silly article. VERY silly! Is this the kind of thing the Washington Post generally publishes? I was under the impression they were a pretty reputable paper, but now I just don't know. So, for those of you that don't like to click links and read long, silly tirades, George Will tries to claim here that blue jeans are a sign of moral and sartorial decay, symbolizing a cultural decline into infantilism (yeah, you read that right) and slovenliness. Plus, he says, they look bad on fat people. He locates in denim a harmful nostalgia for everything from a Steinbeck-esque agrarian lifestyle, to the 1950's rebel-without-a-cause posturings of James Dean and Marlon Brando. This nostalgia, says Will, is really bad. It's emblematic of everything wrong with our country. His solution? I quote:
For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don't wear it. For women, substitute Grace Kelly.
Fred Astaire. Way to sock it to the destructive nostalgic longings for an unattainable past age, Mr. Will. Very nicely done. A top hat and tails is just the thing for a family picnic. And Grace Kelly! What a practical, reasonable suggestion of a sartorial role model. I mean, she was a Hollywood star and also a PRINCESS, routinely clad in such bargain-basement brands as Chanel and Givenchy. She not only carried a $5,000 handbag, but had one named after her. So, conforming to her style choices should be easily within reach of the average American. And crinolined, wasp-waisted organza party dresses are so flattering to the obese among us!
I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm a huge fan of Grace Kelly's wardrobe. That pink suit she wore in To Catch a Thief, with the matching open-toe pumps? That amazing black and white confection Jimmy Stuart makes fun of in Rear Window? So gorgeous! But this article exemplifies a certain attitude, one I'm always afraid, as a person interested in vintage clothes and the stories they tell, that people will think I share. So let me go on record as saying that while I do think the fad for pre-distressed jeans is a bit decadent, and I have some concerns about the sustainability of cotton as a crop, I am socially pro-denim. I am not in favor of reverting to an idealized version of the past, in which gender roles were upheld even more rigidly than they are today. I am not for enforcing five pounds of underwear per woman, a top hat for every man, and a barrel and sheet for anyone who doesn't fit into those two categories. Classic 1940's and 50's femme is a place I love to visit, but oh honey, I would not live there if you made me Princess of Monaco.
Not only that, but I think denim is just as eloquent a storyteller as formalwear, and I think its stories are just as worthy of being heard. One of the many ridiculous claims that Will makes is that people who wear jeans now - he evokes, for example, Apple CEO Steve Jobs - are attempting to cash in on a Brando-esque rebellious image of which they obviously fall short. He doesn't acknowledge that the social meanings of fashions, as of all art, evolve over time. Steve Jobs is not making himself out to be Marlon Brando; he's making himself out to be a casual, approachable guy who likes to be comfortable, and likes his audience to be comfortable.
To see just how silly Will's argument is, let's think about music. Let's think, in particular, about the waltz. Modern conceptions of the waltz range from stodgy to romantic: floaty Regency women circling around a ballroom in the arms of Napoleonic officers. A nice instrumental waltz makes pleasant background music at an afternoon tea to which you're inviting your grandmother. Yet when the waltzing fad hit Britain in the late 1700's, it was so scandalous that even Lord Byron, notorious bisexual bad-boy and rock star of Romanticism, found it to be too much. H.C. Robinson, a contemporary of Byron's, wrote that
The dancing is unlike anything you ever saw. You must have heard of it under the name of waltzing, that is rolling and turning, though the rolling is not horizontal but perpendicular. Yet Werther, after describing his first waltz with Charlotte, says, and I say so too, 'I felt that if I were married my wife should waltz (or roll) with no one but myself.
By Will's logic, then, any young person wishing to learn the waltz is tempting scandal and should be taken firmly in hand. It's preposterous. Just like Brando's cosume designers changed the meaning of denim in the 1950's from "country laborer" to "teenage rebel," so the signification of denim has continued to evolve and branch out. Depending on how it's worn, it can now mean "raver kid," "50's schoolgirl on a picnic," "80's skateboarder," "crusty punk," "mainstream casual weekender," "hippie/free spirit," "little league coach," "spunky co-ed," "down and out," the list goes on. All of these types can evoke stories I'd like to hear, no matter what George Will has to say.
And the funniest part: Grace Kelly?
She wore jeans, too.
Are you sure it wasn't a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek piece?
Do you read it that way? I can't quite manage to. What about all the "not developed past the age of 10" stuff? Or paragraphs like:
The first time I read it I assumed it was a joke, and maybe it is...if so I should probably have linked to Akst's original article, which I wanted Will to be lambasting, but with which I think he's actually seriously agreeing. I mean, I do think he's trying to be light-hearted, but to me it's seems like the brunt of his sarcasm is genuinely directed toward jeans-wearers, rather than those criticizing them. You know?
I couldn't decide whether or not he was using hyperbole to mock the original article or not. I kept going back and forth.
This?
Seventy-five percent of American "gamers" -- people who play video games -- are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote.
WTF? Because I like video games I shouldn't vote? (Well, probably not, because I'm a mere woman, after all.) I think Self's closing confession to owning a pair of jeans convinced me that he wasn't joking.
Well now I'm all het up as it were with ideas and thoughts, one of which is a familiar one: that George Will is an unmitigated ass. But perhaps I am too harsh.
This quote, however:
"In their undifferentiated dress, children and their childish parents..."
cracked me up, as differentiated dress between children and adults was a fairly recent innovation in fashion history. Certainly, my history of fashion book is stuffed to the gills with paintings of children as wee miniatures of their parents, looking stiff and uncomfortable in crinoline and whalebone.
I think the real problem with Will's article, whether tongue in cheek or serious, or, most likely, some combination thereof, is that it is historically inaccurate and inconsistent. The past should be our model, but only the formal past, and only of a certain period. The tuxedo was a radically casual garment when introduced, but today we associate it with only the most formal occasions. When Will harkens to Astaire as a model of gentlemanly sartorial taste, he seems to forget that Astaire's dapper style was dapper only because of the context of period. In times past, his clothing would have seemed informal and unmanly. Moving into the present, can you imagine taking a man dressed as Astaire terribly seriously? Will strips context entirely and leaves us with only his own personal impressions, none of which have a basis in any contextual reality. Let us not forget that Astaire was, at the time, representing a more CASUAL sartorial style. From a book about Astaire's style of dress, I quote, "Replacing the stiff-suited, aristocratic uniform of the day with his looser, more democratic look of tweed sport jackets and easy cut flannels, Astaire became a new model for the Century. Nonchalance, natural charm and effortlessness would now replace the pomp and circumstance of men's style that preceded it."
Context, then, is everything. And today, context includes the demon denim. Sorry, Mr. Will.
Yep, I totally have a problem with Will's article. As noted in previous comments, his article is ill-researched and hearkens to false nostalgia, which is a problem and even constitutes study in academia these days.
He is totally stripping context out of garments and culture, and fails to recognize that perhaps there is nothing wrong with having fun no matter your age, and that it is quite liberating for a woman or girl to be able to climb a tree or stay warm in Winter or not have to worry about boys looking up her skirt as she sits in the bleachers.
Sounds like Will detests anything other than the hetero-normative, but forgets who the voting public is going to be in 20 years. Or maybe he just hates that. At any rate, if he was serious, I think he's an ass. hole. Because those are the opinions of a jerk - someone who doesn't believe in equality, essentially. He's just expressing it through clothes. Effing A!
ps - sorry for swearing on your blog, but sometimes I just can't hold back from calling people what they seem to be. Though if I were to be more descriptive, I would say that based on his article, Will seems to be an uptight, boring, chauvinist pig who would like to believe that everyone who isn't exactly like him is just wrong and should be forced into a mould. And that's just wrong.
oh and ps - doesn't he have anything more important to write about?!
I thought he was joking at first too, but the remark at the end regarding 'the author owns one pair of jeans that he wore once to a theme party' convinced me otherwise.
To all the Will-refutation in your post and the comments, 'ditto'.
It reminded me a little bit of Eunny's infamous post deploring modern sartorial taste.