My Two Wardrobes

Tie-dyed shirt, thrifted

Butterfly pendant, estate sale, remixed

I've been thinking a lot about this post recently, and the significance of editing - the self-editing just about every blogger does.

I don't show you all my clothes, Fabulous Readers. You don't see my gardening/scrubbing/home construction grubbies, the baggy board shorts I go kayaking in, my lounge-around-the-house-in-a-funk pajamas, my ad-hoc workout wear. You also don't see outfits on days, like today, where after half an hour with the camera I haven't been able to get a single photo that looks decent, that approximates what I see in the mirror.

Is that vain? Absolutely. But there are a lot of facets of me that I don't discuss on this blog: my politics, my religious views, my other areas of interest, what I had for dinner. That's not why you come here, which is also the reason I don't attempt to encyclopedically document every single thing that I put on my body, in some mad quest to be fashion blogging's answer to Samuel Pepys. You read my blog, I hope, to see and hear about my particular (peculiar?) perspective on fashion, its whys and wherefores - and hows.

Clothing might not shape our self-image in toto, but it does help define it to the world at large. I don't expect my clothes to express the sum of my personality to the world at large: instead, they present a carefully-edited version of myself, the parts of me I choose to show.
That process of editing, of choice, is what really fascinates me about fashion. Why do we make the choices we do? What determines why I find one shirt cute and another so unflattering as to only be suitable for the most menial of tasks? Why do we emphasize some parts of our bodies and desperately try to camouflage others?

It's easy to say "because of the dominant social paradigm" in response to all of these questions, but I think that's too simple an answer, and maybe even a bit of a cop-out. What are the forces that drive that paradigm? Where do they come from and what influences them? And what about the people who stray from that paradigm, by degrees minuscule or dramatic? What inspires them?

What do you think? Should style blogging be encyclopedic, a comprehensive catalog of what one person (or several) wears, or would you rather see a carefully thought-out selection of outfits a blogger thinks are interesting, inspiring, or attractive? What degree of (self-) editing is all right before a blogger loses authenticity and thus authority - some? None? Lots? No upper limit? Are style blogs more like diaries or one-person fashion magazines?

PS. Apologies to all you Fabulous Readers who subscribe via RSS: I don't know why this published while I was halfway through writing it!

Fashion "Rules," Part 2: Patterns

Let's continue our exploration of my takes on fashion "rules." I've decided, by the way, that the second word really does belong in quotes.

As far as I'm concerned, the biggest rule - the only rule, really - in fashion is "To thine own self be true." I was going to say "don't get arrested for not covering up certain bits," but maybe you have perfectly valid reasons for racking up an indecent exposure charge. Civil disobedience? Performance art? A social statement about the gendering of our bodies? It is not my place to judge.

I also kind of want to say "speaking of exposure, dress appropriately for the weather," but considering how often I've frozen because of a clothing choice more dictated by aesthetics than practicality, and my fondness for tall boots and velvet year-round, even in summer, I can't, not without courting hypocrisy.

So. "Rules," or at least my own aesthetic, for anyone who is interested. Not, please, to be taken as gospel.

Fashion Rules, Part 1: Color

Fabulous Reader Dranaan sent me this request:

Please discuss fashion rules, especially regarding colors and color combinations. I would love to hear your take on them.

I've been wanting to talk about color for a while now. This is the perfect excuse!

photo: Fabulous Husband

Beaded cardigan: Design History, TJMaxx

Purple layering tee: Tahari, TJMaxx

Hot pink stretch belt: Betsey Johnson, TJMaxx

Buff suede skirt: Daisy Fuentes, thrifted

Burgundy tights: Spanx, TJMaxx

Boots: John Fluevog "Mallory"

Larimar wire-wrapped necklace, bought from the artist in St. Thomas

"Huggie" chunky mini-hoops, gift from mom

Wow, I think I need a daylight bulb in my front hall. The colors are a bit off. Let's get a detail shot in natural light:

 Photo: me

Burgundy, hot pink, purple, blue-purple, and aqua, oh my! However did I come up with that color combination?

Label envy?

 

Above, a Cynthia Rowley dress printed on "a heavy cotton knit" (image courtesy nytimes.com): below, a Hanes Beefy-T (image courtesy hanesbullseye.com). 

This article from the New York Times amused the hell out of me, and really got me thinking about the significance of designer labels.

Once, a couture label was a guarantee of quality and originality. It assured value for price: yes, the garments were extremely expensive, but they incorporated the highest-quality materials and superior workmanship (such as hand-finished hems and buttonholes) as well as the designer's unique artistic expression. If you've ever seen a vintage couture piece up close and personal, you know that these differences are more than just fancy touches: even fifty (or more!) years later, the fabrics are supple and luxurious, the construction amazingly detailed and intricate by modern standards. The inside of a Dior New Look gown bears a striking resemblance to a suspension bridge and has about the same structural integrity (note that the bridge in question is not Westchester/Rockland Counties' Tappan Zee, the structural integrity of which is rather suspect at this point).

This isn't to say that couture labels didn't always have the same cachet, the same status-symbol, um, status, that they do today. However, there was no need to splash a designer's logo all over something to convey it: the details of design were sufficiently unique, the quality sufficiently evident, that the over-the-top branding that we've become accustomed to wasn't really necessary. Creating a tailored garment takes skill: a t-shirt, no matter how rarefied the fabrics used to make it, is... not exactly the pinnacle of the art of tailoring, shall we say?

So, OK, here we have the estimable Ms. Rowley, screening photo images of her latest collection onto heavyweight cotton jersey - that's something very much like Hanes Beefy-T material, by the by - making it up into, essentially, t-shirt dresses that look (if you squint lots, and maybe have a stiff drink first) like the actual tailored ones from her Fall 2010 collection. You can also buy the photo-screened dresses as yard goods and assemble them (or not) yourself, or, on the wow-this-label-whore-thing-has-gone-too-far level, get a $150 sewing kit, that "includes one of Ms. Rowley’s labels, which you can sew into the garment of your choice to make your own statement on fashion."

Did I mention that you're paying a low, low $320 for your t-shirt dress, or $280 for the privilege of doing your own assemblage? If you assemble the dress as intended (and more on that later), and assume a decent-but-not-great labor rate of $10/hour, that means the dress takes four hours to cut out and sew up. For those of you Fabulous Readers who don't dabble in home sewing, that's practically instantaneous in terns of garment construction time. I don't have exact statistics on production times for traditional couture garments, but I'm going to guess as dozens, perhaps hundreds of hours.

As for the uber-expensive sewing kit with status label, to, supposedly, up the brag factor of your plebeian wardrobe? On some level, it reminds me of label switching on vintage garments. On the other, it's kind of amusing, in a fashion-as-metatext kind of way: you don't actually need the designer's product, just the symbol of it. It's the status part of couture without any of the innovation or artistry. Oh, brave new world!

Is this also the time and place to bring up that, ideally, nobody but the wearer sees the label on an article of clothing? That's always been my take on the women who buy dresses a size too small because they have to fit into that size 8 (or 6, or...): Honey, nobody but you sees the label. Cut it out if you must. When the label's sticking out on an article of my clothing, I'm gratified when someone tucks it in for me (thanks, Mom!), so I don't walk around looking like a slob - and thanks to my good thrift-store karma, I've got some moderately brag-worthy labels. I still don't want them sticking out!

As a social statement, though, it would be very amusing to sew that high-end label into the aforementioned Hanes Beefy-T. Or take the yard goods with the printed-on dress and do something completely different with it: Throw pillows? Big, boxy t-shirts (the dress printed on jersey knit has obvious antecedents in those horrible t-shirts from the 80s with tuxedos printed on them)? Curtains?

The only reason I'm amused at this, and not fuming over a designer ripoff (which part of me feels it is, big-time) is the obvious subtext of do-it-yourself fashion. Ms. Rowley is assuming that she has enough of a market that has sufficient sewing skill to assemble copies of her dresses, even if they are the screen-printed tee version. I'm sure there's some expectation on her part of customers personalizing and tweaking the sew-it-yourself design - in fact, if she's really smart, there will be a Web site or Facebook page dedicated to customers' interpretations of the designs. According to the Times article, this is in part a reaction to the fast-paced information lifecycle afforded by the Internet. As we all know, one of the great (and hugely beneficial, in my mind) changes that technology has allowed is multidirectional information flow - it's not just that the designers tell us about fashion: we tell them. Or at least we can, if they're listening, and I hope they are.

So what are your thoughts? Does the ripoff factor of a $150 sewing kit outweigh the participatory-fashion coolness? How should designers react to the instant-gratification nature of today's market, especially if they want to continue to offer the high-end, time-intensive tailoring that is a requirement of haute couture? If you had a sew-your-own Cynthia Rowley dress kit, what would you do with it?

Target vs. Walmart

My spousal unit found this conversation, ostensibly held between two women at a bus stop, on a message board to which he belongs. Whether it's apocryphal or not, it says some interesting things about the way our society perceives things, doesn't it?

Woman 1: Yeah, I like Walmart because I don't have to get all dressed up to go there.
Woman 2: Right, it's not like going to Target or something.

Wow.

This raises a lot of questions. I'm going to gloss over the "why is getting dressed up to go shopping such an unpleasant concept/who really feels the need to get dressed up to shop at a discount retailer anyway?" dichotomy, hold any and all speculation about what getting dressed up might entail for these women (all thoughts of People of Walmart held firmly in abeyance), and get right into what I feel is the meat of it: the perceived difference between Target and Walmart.

As a disclaimer, I should say that I've never shopped at Walmart: there isn't one located conveniently near my home, and I have some ethical issues with the company's business practices. I'll try to set those aside, though, in interest of as fair and valid exploration of the subject as I can muster.

Viewed objectively, the two stores are pretty similar: they're large (both in size and distribution) discount retailers, not really department stores in the original sense of the word, but offering a vast breadth of products, from housewares to clothing to pharmacies and even, in some cases, groceries. Walmart has a bit of a nastier reputation in terms of how it treats employees, suppliers, and communities, but neither one is above reproach on that front.

In terms of fashion, Target has launched successful and well-publicized collaborations with designers both well-established and fledgling, including boldface names like Alexander McQueen and Anna Sui. It's even managed to get shoppers to forget that they're buying clothes manufactured to Target's fast-fashion standards and pay near-stratospheric prices for the store (McQueen's line topped out at $129 - which sounds cheap for a designer item, but is steep for anything at Target). Walmart, on the other hand, has teamed up with designers like Max Azria and Norma Kamali, keeping the price points in line with its other clothing offerings. The items are there, they haven't flopped like previous Walmart ventures into designer-driven fashion, but neither are they as well-publicized as Target's. It doesn't even really feel like Walmart's heart is in promoting its own merchandise in this arena: A search for "Target designer collaboration" turns up hits from Target's site first thing, while similar ones for "Walmart designer collaboration" or "Walmart designer collection" don't even turn up clothing-related links to walmart.com on the first page.

I'm still trying to quantify the huge difference between the two stores - why it's acceptable to go to one store in your jammies and the other requires 'dressing up.' Could that advertising and promotion disparity really be the heart of it?

I'm not going to go delving into the intricacies of marketing theory and design, but I will go this far: just as our clothes are the primary message we present to the world around us, ads and marketing are a retailer's. Just as you don't need to interact with a person to interpret the messages sent by their clothes, you don't need to shop at a retailer to interpret the messages in their ads.

I'm also not going to sit here for hours watching ads for both stores for you, Fabulous Readers, not even in the name of research. I don't own a TV for a reason. I will, however, make some generalized conclusions based on the ads I have seen.

Target emphasizes style first; affordability comes in a close second, but second nonetheless. Their ads have a striking modern sensibility, and they seem to focus on fresh, urban looks. Trendy clothes and home merchandise are prominently featured on its Web site: popular fashion options are easily accessible from the home page, and take up almost as much screen real estate as other shopping categories.

Walmart, on the other hand, sells itself on its low price points, and, as we have seen above, places very little emphasis on the stylishness of its products. Its current slogan is "Save money. Live better." My financial advisor agrees with this advice, but I think he's talking more about mutual funds than cut-price electronics - which, from its home page, appears to be Walmart's primary offering. If you want fashion, have fun finding it - all 'apparel' options are squished into a tiny corner of the page.

So, lacking other evidence, I'm going to guess that's it: the attitude toward the two stores evinced by those two loath-to-get-dressed ladies at the bus stop may, in fact, stem from the attitude of the stores themselves. Where can we get if we extrapolate from that?

Fashion, Clothing, Costume: What's the Difference?

This past weekend was Halloween. Is anybody surprised that it's my favorite holiday? The deeper, darker significance of the holiday aside, it's a time when everybody is encouraged to wear clothes they normally wouldn't. In many cases, costumes are clothes that, at any other time, would be socially unacceptable. Leaving the legions of 'sexy' or 'slutty' women's costumes aside, what other time of year could you walk into a grocery store covered in blood, wearing a full-face mask, and not have the clerk bat an eye?

As a result, I've been thinking a lot about costumes, and what makes them different from normal clothes. Costume is obviously different, right? We use the terms 'clothes' and 'fashion' pretty much interchangeably in many circumstances, though. What the difference there? Is there one?

While I was doing my degree, a professor defined fashion very narrowly: it was the product of established designers, preferably French. Nothing less rarefied or expensive counted as 'fashion.' This definition always struck me as a little elitist, exceptionally Francophilic, and far too labelwhorey. What about subcultures? What about the great majority of consumers who can't afford the haute couture - are they exiled from fashion culture entirely?

With all these questions in my mind, I fetched out my dictionary, looking for some insight, or perhaps a good workout: it's the 1970 second-edition Webster's New Twentieth Century, and a good five inches thick at the spine. Let's see what it has to say (I'm leaving out definitions unrelated to dress, if only because that's a lot of typing).

Clothes: covering for the human body: articles, usually of cloth, designed to cover, protect, or adorn the body; dress; vestments; vesture.

Fashion: the prevailing mode or customary style in dress, speech, conduct, or other things subject to change; especially, the mode or style favored by the dominant circles of society.

Costume: 1. a style of dress; dress in general, including accessories, style of the hair, etc. 2. the style of dress typical of a certain country, period, people, etc., often worn at masquerade or in a play. 3. a complete set of outer clothes considered as a unit and worn for a particular purpose; as, a riding costume.

Dress: (vt) to put clothes on, clothe: to provide with clothing.

Dress: (n) 1. that which is used as the covering or ornament of the body; clothes; garments; clothing; apparel; as, she gives all her thought to dress. 2. the usual outer garment worn by women and girls, consisting of a skirt and waist, generally in one garment. 3. formal clothes; as, full dress.

So, on the most basic level, the terms dress, clothing and (to my surprise) costume are interchangeable. Each one refers to covering or ornaments for the body. There are shades of meaning, as with any set of closely-related similes (which is why, much as I love my giant Roget's, it can be a dangerous tool in an incautious writer's hands). For our purposes, moving forward, let's use the terms thusly:

Dress is the overarching term, incorporating all others. Essentially, it just means "things worn," and that could apply to anything from an evening gown to body paint. Under certain circumstances, it might even be applicable to full nudity.

Clothing is what people in most modern societies wear: pants and shirts, dresses (definition 2), jumpsuits, jackets, socks, etc. This may or may not change according to the cycles of fashion (see below): it incorporates the very trendy as well as items, such as L.L. Bean's eponymous boots, that have not changed in design in a very long time and remain the same regardless of fashionable impulses.

For Costume, I'm going to stick with the second definition for the most part: a codified system of dress, encompassing little to no variation, of a certain group (ethnic, religious, literary, social, historical), worn for certain functions such as a masquerade (a sadly mostly-defunct term: Americans usually say 'costume party' while Brits say 'fancy dress') or a play. Sort of related to this are uniforms, which are a codified, dictated system of dress for a specific duty, activity, or group. However, the definition of costume gets problematic when we look at it too closely. Are the members of style subcultures such as Goth wearing costume or fashion? What about historic dress: where is the line between historic fashion and historic costume? We'll pry further into this in the future.

Fashion is the only distinct phrase: it implies ephemerality, a constant shift in what is covered by the word. In a way, my prof was right - or at least she was for earlier eras. Fashion's not a cohesive, top-down system any more, dictated to the plebes by the exalted few, trickling from the ateliers of the great designers to the ready-to-wear houses to the mass-market wares (wears?) available in department stores. There's some of that, sure, but also a whole lot of movement in the other direction and even sideways. The fashion system has become fragmentary and downright weird: tune in next time for a more in-depth discussion!

Clothed vs. dressed

An astute Fabulous Reader points out that the title's a bit of a misnomer:

I beg to differ :) Everyone puts on clothes. Not everyone "gets dressed." I put on clothes most mornings. Getting dressed -- a mere step away from the coveted getting dressed UP -- is another matter entirely.

and, on some level, I can't help but agree. There are mornings when I'll grab the first articles of clothing that provide sufficient coverage and warmth for the season, and others when I spend hours obsessing over The Perfect Outfit.

However, I can't fully agree. I think that, except in a few very certain circumstances, there's an aspect of selection involved in what we wear, although it might not necessarily happen at the moment when those fibers hit our bodies.

For example, I know a gentleman who often has to rise before his wife. In an ongoing act of true selflessness, he has carefully selected his wardrobe so that every piece coordinates with every other and he can literally get dressed in the dark without waking her. Now, obviously, as he dresses by Braille each morning, he's not making any deliberate choice as to his appearance for the day. The choice was made at an earlier point, but it was still a deliberate, well-thought-out decision.

Then, too, there's what I like to call the "meh" factor. Apathy is a choice too. Not every decision has to be a good one, a well-thought-out one, or even a particularly conscious one. With the exception of gifts, though, most of us have to make some decision regarding getting a new item of clothing into our wardrobes: we have to go to the store, select an item, and pay for it. Even if that choice is one of desperation (ever gone swimsuit shopping, or needed a particular type of outfit on very short notice?) or is, in the eyes of society at large, a bad choice, it's a choice. Sometimes, the statement our clothes make is "I can't be bothered about my clothes."

What do you think? Is there a functional difference between getting dressed and putting on clothes, or are they just degrees of choice and concern? Is it possible to put on clothing without putting any thought into it at all, or is some element of decision-making inherently present, lest we inadvertently leave the house without trousers? Thoughtful and polite comments are always welcome!