Tråkiga som tapeter.

"--Det är en bluff, Baby, sade jag överlägset. Men ni har inte frågat ett ord om bröllopet.

--

Fanns det sköna kvinnor? Hade de vackra kläder?

sade Eva, och jag märkte, att hon var glad att komma så helskinnad undan från sin ofrivilliga dumhet nyss.

Dresses made of wallpaper for the "Superior Interiors" issue of the 

Financial Times'

 "

How to Spend It

" Magazine. See it

here

.

--

Där det finns sköna kvinnor finns det alltid ännu skönare kläder, sade jag, och här var båda delarna. Men nästan alla var tråkiga som tapeter.

Jag frågade mig själv, hur det kan komma sig, att vi, som knappt har tid att manicurera oss, mycket mindre att ha högre intressen, genomsnittligt är så mycket trevligare och roligare." (102)

Wägner

, Elin.

Norrtullsligan

. Falun: Scandbook AB, 2011 [1908].

"'Where there are beautiful women there is always even more beautiful clothing,' I said, 'and there were both [at the wedding]. But almost all were as boring as wallpaper.'"

It's always better to be poor and interesting than rich and boring, don't you think?

Simple and Fresh

"We believe that Steely Dan will crush you hard with love and renewed gratitude if you’ve ever longed for any person or golden age while killing dead-end days in Southern California. Fuck the devil, fuck sensible clothes, and steer clear of life vampires with their shit drugs and bad intentions, that’s what we believe."

Sensible Bud Cort as The Bond Company Stooge in The Life Aquatic.

From "Here's Our Fucking Healthy Fast Food Philosophy," by Dan Kennedy. Published on McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

Yeah, forget sensible clothes, go crazy! Reminds of this, obviously, or even better because you can imagine the guy has seen that poster in everyone one of his friends' rooms and it has creeped into his unconscious.

The Single Strain

"Annabel had invented the game; or rather she had evolved it from an old one. Basically, it was no more than the ancient sport of what-would-you-do-if-you-had-a-million dollars? But Annabel had drawn a new set of rules for it, had narrowed it, pointed it, made it stricter. Like all games, it was the more absorbing for being more difficult.

…

Ad for Gunther's Furs, 1937. Silver fox coat: so terribly common.

Midge played with a seriousness that was not only proper but extreme.

The single strain on the girls’ friendship had followed an announcement once made by Annabel that the first thing she would buy with her million dollars would be a silver-fox coat. It was as if she had struck Midge across the mouth.

When Midge recovered her breath, she cried that she couldn’t imagine how Annabel could do such a thing—silver fox coats were common! Annabel defended her taste with the retort that they were not common, either. Midget then said that they were so. She added that everybody had a silver-fox coat. She went on, with perhaps a slight loss of head, to declare that she herself wouldn’t be caught dead in silver fox.

For the next few days, thought the girls saw each other as constantly, their conversation was careful and infrequent, and they did not once play their game. Then one morning, as soon as Annabel entered the office, she came to Midge and said that she had changed her mind.

She would not buy a silver-fox coat with any part of her million dollars. Immediately on receiving the legacy, she would select a coat of mink.’

Midge smiled and her eyes shone. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘you’re doing absolutely the right thing.’” (30-32)

Parker, Dorothy. "The Standard of Living" in The Portable Dorothy Parker. New York: Penguin Books, 1973.

But how would one know such things if one didn't have such a tasteful best friend? I just love that she changes her answer and that makes everything right, just the saying of it, and how satisfied Midge is with the professed upswing in taste.

You are High Priority

"You do not have to be a big fat queer to get a ride from Homobiles...but it does help! No, just kidding. But, you know, you have to understand that the real reason we are here is for people that don't get rides, normally, from anyone else.

Try getting that hair into a normal taxi. Lady Bunny, from here.

And so, if you're putting on all this padding, high heels, a wig, and three sets of false eyelashes and a bunch of glitter, you are high priority at Homobiles."

From "The Making Of...The Homobile" by the Kitchen Sisters.

How you look affects how you are perceived! No one should be denied a ride.

The Silly Gown

The Red Dress

I always saw, I always said

If I were grown and free,

I’d have a gown of reddest red

As fine as you could see,

To wear out walking, sleek and slow,

Upon a Summer day,

And there’d be one to see me so

And flip the world away.

"A Girl in a Red Dress," Pietro Antonio Rotari, 1775. El Paso Museum of Art.

And he would be a gallant one,

With stars behind his eyes,

And hair like metal in the sun,

And lips too warm for lies.

I always saw us, gay and good,

High honored in the town.

Now I am grown to womanhood…

I have the silly gown. (212)

Parker, Dorothy. The Portable Dorothy Parker. New York: Penguin Books, 1973.

What is it to be grown and free? Or just grown?

Most Peculiar

"Even more curious were the resourceful methods authors used to compel themselves to execute their daily quotas. In the fall of 1830, Victor Hugo set out to write The Hunchback of Notre Dame against the seemingly impossible deadline of February 1831. He bought an entire bottle of ink in preparation and practically put himself under house arrest for months, using a most peculiar anti-escape technique:

Young Victor Hugo.

Hugo locked away his clothes to avoid any temptation of going outside and was left with nothing to wear except a large gray shawl. He had purchased the knitted outfit, which reached right down to his toes, just for the occasion. It served as his uniform for many months.

He finished the book weeks before deadline, using up the whole bottle of ink to write it. He even considered titling it What Came Out of a Bottle of Ink, but eventually settled for the less abstract and insidery title."


From The Brain Pickings newsletter, Sunday, September 29, 2013.

What a way to avoid going outside!

Birkenstocks are out of the question.

"'Boots on the ground.' It's what the Obama administration told us that we needn't worry about. It's what lawmakers and pundits said that voters could never abide.

Ben Wiseman for the NYT. Originally published with this op-ed.

No 'boots on the ground.' Definitely not 'boots on the ground.' It was if we were talking about footwear: rest assured folks, wingtips and Birkenstocks are out of the question. But we were talking about lives, about American servicemen and servicewomen, the kind who were dispatched for dubious reasons to Iraq and the less dubious ones to Afghanistan, some of whom didn't come back, some of whom will never be the same." (3, Sunday Review)


Bruni, Frank. The New York Times, Sunday September 15, 2013.


When clothing-based euphemisms become abstractions. Regardless of how you feel about war/Syria/Iraq/Afghanistan, this is an interesting case of how overuse can eliminate or obfuscate meaning. As Bruni mentions at the end of his op-ed, there are human beings in each of those boots (as well as in each pair of Syrian boots, although this is not mentioned).

Is it especially easy to obscure when the turn of phrase includes clothing/fashion-based terminology? Does this have something to do with the anonymity of uniforms? The physical and emotional distance from the war most of us enjoy, and boots here just happen to be universal to the servicemen and servicewomen far from home?

The Delmars

"The Delmars had a library--nothing but books in it and paneled in oak. Samuel, by borrowing, had read many more of the Delmars' books than the Delmars had. In that day an educated rich man was acceptable. He might send his sons to college without comment, might wear a vest and white shirt and tie in the daytime on a weekday, might wear gloves and keep his nails clean.

James and Hazel Bellamy in pretty dancing shoes. From here.

And since the lives and practices of rich men were mysterious, who knows what they could use or not use? But a poor man--what need had he for poetry or for painting or for music not fit for singing or dancing? Such things did not help him bring in a crop or keep a scrap of cloth on his children's backs. And if in spite of this he persisted, maybe he had reasons which would not stand the light of scrutiny." (44)

Steinbeck, John. East of Eden. New York: Penguin Books, 1979 [1959].


Culture is necessary, no matter what you can afford to wear!

Scenic Cravat

"The young man with the scenic cravat glanced nervously down the sofa at the girl in the fringed dress. She was examining her handkerchief; it might have been the first one of its kind she had seen, so deep was her interest in its material, form, and possibilities.

From here.

The young man cleared his throat, without necessity or success, producing a small, syncopated noise.

'Want a cigarette?' he said.

'No thank you,' she said. 'Thank you ever so much just the same.'" (24)



Parker, Dorothy. "The Sexes" in The Portable Dorothy Parker. New York: Penguin Books, 1973.


So opens "The Sexes," one of Parker's best-known short stories. It feels like an exercise: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Does she tell you everything you need to know about the characters in this first sentence, through their clothing?

Telltale Signs

"Studying Lakey with the customs man, they asked themselves, in silence, how long Lakey had been a Lesbian, whether the Baroness had made her one or she had started on her own. This led them to wonder whether she could possibly have been one at college--suppressed, of course. In the light of this terrible discovery, they examined her clothes for telltale signs. 

Mercedes de Acosta, 1934. From here.

It was a Schiaparelli suit she was wearing; Kay had asked that straight out--she had guessed it was a Schiaparelli. "Schiap mades all Elinor's clothes,' the Baroness had remarked, and they had watched that nickname, casually pronounced, take the wind out of Kay's sails. Lakey had on silk stockings, quite sheer, high-heeled calf shoes, a green silk blouse with a ruffle. If anything, she looked more feminine than before. With the Baroness you could tell, though she did not have a boyish haircut or a man's tie; she wore a heavy tweed suit, service sheer stockings, and pumps with Cuban heels. Yet it was odd to think that the Baroness had been married and Lakey had not." (478)

McCarthy, Mary. The Group. New York: Harcourt/Harvest, 1991 [1963].


What are the "telltale signs" of "lesbian" in the 1930s? Today?

Clothes are the Enemy

Waitress at Vegetarian Restaurant: Oh, thank you sir, Nudism is such a worthy cause. We must bring the message to the people. We much teach them to unmask their suffocating bodies and let them breathe again. CLOTHES are the enemy.

From here.

Without clothes there'd be no sickness, there'd be no war. I ask you sir, can you imagine two great armies on the battlefield, no uniforms, completely nude, no way of telling friend from foe, all brothers, together.

Richard Sherman: Goodnight.


From The Seven Year Itch, with Doro Merande as the waitress and Tom Ewell as Richard Sherman.

Bodies were certainly more suffocated then! So great that the Vegetarians also support Nudism.

But Now We Had Entered European Waters.

"We left Port Said early the next morning. A pilot rode out in a launch, came on board, and guided us out of the harbour. In his unconcerned manner he was similar to the man who had led us into the Canal with whistles and yells. I imagined them as twins, or at least brothers. Completing his task, the pilot strolled away from the bridge, his two-rupee sandals snapping at his heels, and climbed down into the launch that had followed us out. The harbour pilots from now on would be more ceremonial. 

White bucks, c. 1950. From here.

In Marseilles one came on board in a long-sleeved shirt, white trousers, and blancoed shoes. He hardly moved his lips as he whispered instructions to bring the ship into harbour. The pilots I was used to wore shorts and seldom removed their hands from their trouser pockets. Their first request was usually for a cordial and a fresh sandwich. I would miss their air of loafing, the way they appeared like necessary jesters who felt they could stroll safely and behave as they wished for an hour or two in the court of a foreign king. But now we had entered European waters." (166)


Ondaatje, Michael. The Cat's Table. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.


The shoes make the pilot, East vs. West.

Old School

"There are noble mausoleums rooted for centuries in retired glades of parks among the growing timber and the fern, which perhaps hold fewer noble secrets than walk abroad among men, shut up in the breast of Mr. Tulkinghorn.

Tulkinghorn, Guppy, Dedlock. From here.

 He is of what is called the old school—a phrase generally meaning any school that seems never to have been young—and wears knee-breeches tied with ribbons, and gaiters or stockings. One peculiarity of his black clothes and of his black stockings, be they silk or worsted, is that they never shine. Mute, close, irresponsive to any glancing light, his dress is like himself. He never converses when not professionally consulted."

Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Originally serialized 1853-54.

What a perfectly direct observation (really spelling it out for the reader): "his dress is like himself." The relativity of "old school" is lovely here. The man sounds a bit like Hawthorne's old, mourning New England women in their muted crapes. Great description of textiles also--that texture is not only noticeable but significant to one's character.

...secretly, I haven't read Bleak House yet, but thanks to Katie for the tip!

The Churlish Vein

"But to tap still more deeply into the churlish vein, it is the belief in the extra-soothing power of the universe that gets me since, as best as I can determine, the universe cares not one jot for you or me. It really doesn't. As the writer Melissa Bank points out, the only proper response to a tearful "Why me?" is, sadly, "Why not you?"

An installation from the series "Fashion Victims" by Yolanda Dominguez, commentary on the collapse of Rana Plaza earlier this year.

The sunniest most positive child in Malaysia laboring in a fucking sneaker factory can visualize all the good fortune he wants, but without concrete changes in international models of global trade, finance, and educational opportunities along with some very temporal man-made policies, just for starters, guess where he's going tomorrow morning? (A hint: it rhymes with shmucking sneaker factory).


Rakoff, David. "The Bleak Shall Inherit" in Half Empty. New York: Doubleday, 2010.


Concrete changes, please.

New Book Review on Worn Through

My favorite review so far, although not really my favorite subject...however that works.

Photographs from the spread, “Looking for a Certain Ratio,” by Daniel Sannwald, originally published in Vogue Homme +, 2011. Reproduced in New Fashion Photography, edited by Paul Sloman, 2013.

ALSO: You can win this book! Check out my post here to find out how to win! Worth $50 in monetary terms, much more in aesthetic educational value.

The Wide-Assed Sexlessness of a Dad.

"We are allowed a thirty-minute break for lunch. My co-Ambassador, Sammy, takes an hour and returns without a word of apology. I run to the Burger King on the corner. I wonder what it is about my uniform--an outfit consisting of a white T-shirt with navy banding at the cuffs, a blue-and-white grosgrain belt, white shorts, and white sneakers--that immediately marks me as wearing one. In college, I briefly favored pajama tops as shirts, until one of my professors leaned over one day and confidentially told me, 'You know, no one would know if it wasn't for the buttons.' She was right. They were the size of Mentos.

"Dad jeans" are also apparently now a thing. Wide-assed, sexless. Also a type of uniform?  From Vanity Fair.

With my Hiawatha uniform, I think it's a combination of the fact that if you're all in white on Collins Avenue, that means you're in service, coupled with my clothes' fastidious cleanliness but rather casual approximation of proper fit. I'd hoped to be wearing something a little tighter and sexier. My present loose attire only accentuates my unmistakable forty years of wear and tear, the love handles, and male pattern baldness. I project the wide-assed sexlessness of a dad. In other words, I am invisible in South Beach. Exactly what a uniform is designed to do." (97-98)


Rakoff, David. "Beach Bummer" in Don't Get Too Comfortable. New York: Doubleday, 2005.


What an apt question: "What is it about my uniform that immediately marks me as wearing one?" Rakoff, the great observer.

Unproven Fashion Newcomers

"Manhattan has had an outsize impact on the world's culture and economy in large part because of its economic diversity. Home to broke writers and wealthy publishers, starving painters and well-heeled collectors, unproven fashion newcomers and the established houses, and countless other symbiotic pairings." (14)

Beach cover-up (made of a picnic tablecloth?), Tina Leser, late 1940s. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Davidson, Adam. "The Illusion of Control" New York Times Magazine July 28, 2013.


I think this is especially interesting both because of the "creative" nature of all of the named professions/industries. What about small business owners? Or....you know, other poor (but useful, hard-working) people reliant on rich people?

"Smart"

"'New York City is in my blood,' Lhota said. 'I'm one of the few candidates running who was actually born here.' One grandfather was a firefighter; the other drove a cab. Lhota dresses 'smart,' as it used to be said: fitted blue blazer, four brass buttons on the sleeves, striped tie, coral-blue shirt, trim copper-gray beard." (48)

Joseph J. Lhota, former MTA chairman. From here.

Meier, Andrew. "Can't Anyone Here Play this Game?" New York Times Magazine July 28, 2013.


A smart dresser, not a description you hear often in the 2010s (as insinuated by Meier). In this piece, the author only mentions the clothing of a few of the candidates he briefly profiles; when is the outfit important, telling, typical, descriptive? How does he make that choice?

Roguish Rajaratnam, Genteel Gupta

"Her reporting is meticulous. The minutiae are instructive, though at times relentless. There is more men's clothing here as in Barney's New York, and these two defendants really are what they wear: 

Rajaratnam in paisley. From here.

the roguish Rajaratnam in a white captain's cap smoking pot on the upper deck of a yacht; the genteel Gupta in a black Nehru suit with a red handkerchief at President Obama's first state dinner.

...

...ultimately, the story has an Indian-American Judas as well: Anil Kumar ('charcoal suit, white shirt and blue tie'), another successful Indian immigrant who attended Wharton with Rajaratnam and was Gupta's protege at McKinsey." (20)


Partnoy, Frank. "Inside Men" NYT book Review. June 30, 2013.
From a review of The Billionaire's Apprentice by Anita Raghavan [Business Plus, 2013].

I know what the captain's hat means (and the pot), but what does the Nehru suit say about Gupta? I really enjoyed that Partnoy acknowledged the importance of all Raghavan's costume notes.

A Throat-Catching Odour

"I was used to the lush chaos of Colombo's Pettah market, that smell of sarong cloth being unfolded and cut (a throat-catching odour), and mangosteens, and rain-soaked paperbacks in a bookstall. Here was a sterner world, with fewer luxuries. There was no overripe fruit in the gutters. There were in fact no gutters. It was a dusty landscape, as if water had not been invented." (103)


Ondaatje, Michael. The Cat's Table. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.


First saw him on Babel. What few costume references there are here are beautiful. What sort of odour can sarong cloth give off? Oh, experience! It's a subtly exotic reference; we all know, in theory, what a sarong is (or a 1970s, Hawaiian version, or whatever), but how many of us knew that there might be a smell to the Sri Lankan cloth so distinctive that it brought one back, was identified with the markets at which it was sold?

I really like that he didn't describe the smell, although I want to know very badly what it is...

Photo Credit: Sarong, Sri Lanka, 1950s-1960s. From the Canadian Textile Museum.