Back in the city, catching up on piles of periodicals, and thinking again about fashion. In the NY Times Mag Men's Fall Fashion issue, a Tommy Hilfiger ad speaks mountains (or oceans, as the case may be): two handsome young fellas with perfectly-wavy-perfectly-mussed-perfectly gelled hair (one fair/blonde, one dark/brunette), wearing tailored suits over preppy collar-shirts and thick-striped ties, on a rugged (New England) beach, the tide coming in, white water breaking, Hans and Giovanni (I'll call them) each in action stance, reeling in a catch on their tensed fishing rods (yes, fishing rods), and wearing, pulled up over their (wet) Italian-wool pant legs.... Wellies. Kelly green.
My observant friend L., reading my recent post on fashion, wrote to me: "My grandmother wouldn't have been caught dead in Wellies, however colorful. Those are for slopping hogs, child."
Of course, how could I miss it: the appropriation of country function for city fashion. Urban sophistication on a rugged coast, painstakingly styled by Mr. Hilfiger. Wellies and fishing rods as this year's fall fashion statement. Next year, what - orange reflective hunting vests? Bring back overalls? Re-purpose the quaintness of the rube for the urban sophisticate, et voila! High style. (Try the reciprocal, and you will only further rube-ify).
It's all artifice, of course. Not to get too pedantic here, but there is artifice which is art - the crafting of a fiction which is driven by idea, by moral vision, by spiritual truth, radiating out and resonating to depths - and there is artifice which is no more than its own referent. I am not trying (nor am I smart enough or qualified) to be the authenticity police here, but fashion does ring hollow on many counts. Something happens when you take all the function out of something. Function is integral to beauty, I think. In many cases, the function is the beauty. When you take something which was designed for a purpose - and well-designed for that purpose - and remove it from that purpose completely - for what? for commerce, for lifestyle - you've done something perhaps in the realm of homicide. You've killed the thing, its function, its beauty. Mr. Hilfiger (his ad designers anyway) even seems to be toying with the idea of fashion as God: "HILFIGER" in large, ghostly block letters across the background, stamping the skies.
Again, what's the relationship here? Do Hans and Giovanni have any real connection to fishing on a misty coastline, to hog-slopping, to the heritage of plaid or pinstripes even? I doubt it. I'm pretty sure neither of them is even holding the fishing rod correctly.
I'm sounding grouchy, I know. But while I'm on this rant: SUV's. Do soccer mom and dad really need that gigantic four-by-four to get little Johhny and Susie to the playfield? (Let's not even get started on drug-dealer Joe.) Have they ever in their lives gone off-road or into seriously inclement weather on steep inclines in that thing? Their Ford Excessive is clean & shiny; the planet, on the other hand... design and purpose go hand in hand, I think. Some things are, of course, designed purely for pleasure, for observance, for beholding (useless beauty, a la Kant, etc). Some things are created for work, not pleasure alone, and something really terrible - insidious and violating - begins to happen when you remove from a thing completely its best, intended purpose. Perhaps it's the difference between appropriation (mercenary, impersonal, profit-driven) and adaptation (innovative, humanist, purposeful).
It's 85-degrees and humid today, the urban hot-house indeed. My goal is to seek out the good today, or at least be receptive. I need some.
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2 comments:
Rant about manicured lawns, not that YOU see much of them now. Why dispose of fallen tree branches and grass cuttings in the Garbage? Aren't they SUPPOSED to be on the GROUND???
BTW, I LOVE this post. Really funny.
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