Rainy Day Fashion

Sometimes we forget that everyone is naked underneath their clothes. As I watched a long procession of potential buyers and A-list celebrities walk into the Burberry Fall/Winter Fashion show,  I tried to imagine (and not to imagine) certain people naked. Not flesh naked, but bare, so that I saw them only as people, as a single human being, regardless of what designer they were wearing. 

It was nearly impossible.

Why could I not get past the cloth draped over their frame; the curve of a heel on a “to-die-for” piece of footwear; the terrible aubergine jacket with orange trim?

How is it that some clothes make us drool, while others make us gag?

Why can clothes completely bend our opinion of someone, based on what they wear?

If someone says “a man,” no one would think of anyone special, but as soon as they say “a man in a Prada suit” we immediately have an image. He’s a fashionable, handsome man in a really nice suit; probably wealthy; probably important; definitely sexy. Cue drool. 

But what is this mystical power clothes hold over us? What strange magic they must possess to make us spend such a large portion of our minuscule disposable income on them. How do clothes do it?  

 

Maybe it’s because I was born in September, arguably the most important month of the year in fashion. But I doubt only September babies feel the undeniable power of fashion.

To answer these profound questions I turn first, as usual, to the people I respect most.

Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to Clothes” gave me some insight into our bizarre relationship with pieces of fabric.

Ode to Clothes

                             

Every morning you wait,

clothes, over a chair,

to fill yourself with

my vanity, my love,

my hope, my body.

Barely

risen from sleep,

I relinquish the water,

enter your sleeves,

my legs look for

the hollows of your legs,

and so embraced

by your indefatigable faithfulness

I rise, to tread the grass,

enter poetry,

consider through the windows,

the things,

the men, the women,

the deeds and the fights

go on forming me,

go on making me face things

working my hands,

opening my eyes,

using my mouth,

and so,

clothes,

I too go forming you,

extending your elbows,

snapping your threads,

and so your life expands

in the image of my life.

In the wind

you billow and snap

as if you were my soul,

at bad times

you cling

to my bones,

vacant, for the night,

darkness, sleep

populate with their phantoms

your wings and mine.

I wonder

if one day

a bullet

from the enemy

will leave you stained with my blood

and then

you will die with me

or one day

not quite

so dramatic

but simple,

you will fall ill,

clothes,

with me,

grow old

with me, with my body

and joined

we will enter

the earth.

Because of this

each day

I greet you

with reverence and then

you embrace me and I forget you,

because we are one

and we will go on

facing the wind, in the night,

the streets or the fight,

a single body,

one day, one day, some day, still.

~Pablo Neruda 

Clothes become one with us. We become synonymous with our clothes. Who can think “Givenchy black dress” without thinking “Audrey Hepburn”? Or “safety pins and the Queen of England” without thinking “Vivienne Westwood”? Or “charcoal trousers” without thinking “Professor Steven Driscoll Hixson”? In a ceremony of matrimony, we unite ourselves with our clothes every morning. Getting dressed in the dark often leads to a bad marriage, and even divorce. And when our brief affairs turn “last season”, we take our ex-lovers to Goodwill, hoping someone else might elope with them at a seriously discounted price. But what are the rules of engagement? What are the rules of fashion? With a question so stupendous and absurd, I turn to an equally stupendous and absurd figure to answer it.

“The only rule is don't be boring and dress cute wherever you go. Life is too short to blend in.”

~Paris Hilton

The ever-wise Paris Hilton has made an interesting point. Fashion is a form of self-expression. In rare cases, we can see someone both naked and clothed, if their clothes are a true expression of their inner-selves. Or, we can see them both naked and clothed if their clothes are extremely sheer. But in its purest form:

“Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.”

~ Francis Bacon

But fashion is a great paradox. It is accessible only to the elite, but eventually the masses. In a strange “circle of life” way fashion unites us all in an interwoven textile web of existence. A favorite quote from “The Devil Wears Prada” best exemplifies this sentiment:

“This… ‘stuff’? Oh… ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean. You’re also blindly unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.”

But fashion is not restricted to clothing. It is not always found in department stores, corner boutiques, haberdasheries, and runways.

“Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”

~Coco Chanel

 

But like seasons, fashions come and go. Ideas flow, and in the blink of an eye what as cute yesterday is hideous today.

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”

~Oscar Wilde

I’d much rather be called stylish than fashionable.

 

“Fashions fade, style is eternal.”

~Yves Saint Laurent 

If anything, fashion is fickle. It’s flighty and fake and so often shallow.

Open any fashion magazine and you’ll see underweight models who’ve been airbrushed past recognition, so unreal and unattainable they make you feel just guilty enough to eat a bland salad instead of the deliciously greasy sandwich you really craved.

Stand outside in the freezing cold to take pictures of people you’ve never seen before walk into a fashion show and you’ll realize that underneath their Gucci handbags, Jimmy Choo’s, Versace skirts and Prada suits, they’re naked just like the rest of us: their self expression just has a bigger price tag on it.

“Above all, remember that the most important thing you can take anywhere is not a Gucci bag or French-cut jeans; it's an open mind”

~Gail Rubin Bereny

a rainy day food inquiry

 

Food is historical and spiritual. To eat is to engage in a ritual, a scared practice shared by all living creatures on earth. Everything we know today, every action of our lives, can be defined by culture. The root of this word, and the reason humans could develop “culture,” comes from agriculture, “agra” field and “cultura” to cultivate: quite literally “to cultivate soil”. Man had finally understood how to “control” nature, and the human ego inflated once again, creating a relationship with food which was both perverse and beautiful. 

 

The downfall of the perfect world was food. As Eve broke the skin of the forbidden fruit, she also broke our intimate bond with the creator. Perhaps our dichotomous thinking about food stems from this instance. And since, food has remained dichotomous, encompassing both good and evil, life and death. For me, consuming food is as much a historical and spiritual experience as it is an ethical decision. While most people’s decisions about what they eat surround three basic categories, such as “is this what I’m in the mood for?” or “will this make me fat” or “is this worth the price I’m about to pay,” my questions about food become seemingly infinite. Eating an orange is not just eating an orange for me.

Why kind of an orange is this? Is it a Valencia orange? Was it grown from an already existing species of orange or was it grown from a genetically modified seed? Is this strain of orange devastating naturally occurring strains of oranges, overtaking them until the genetic variety is so scarce there only exist in small pockets of the world 7 truly different types of oranges? Who owns the genetically modified orange? Do I support the ownership of genetic material, the building blocks of life? Are there any alternatives?

 

Is there a chemical wax coating to preserve its freshness? Do I need to wash this chemical off? Was that chemical tested on animals before it was approved safe for human consumption? What will that chemical do to my earth once it is placed in a garbage heap?

Where was my orange grown? Whose land was this orange grown on? Did it once belong to native populations, but when a large food company viewed it as potentially prosperous, did they pay the government to slowly force the people off the land their families had owned for generations? Do they crop dust, causing the locals to have serious health problems, and babies to have serious birth defects?  Does the water they used to nourish the growing oranges come from an already depleted reservoir, or a renewable source?

Who picks the orange? Are they paid fair wages? Do they receive good health benefits? Do they live in decent housing? Are they old enough to be considered an eligible worker, or did a child pick this orange?

How did this orange get to this store? Was it transported by a carrier which also pays its workers fair wages? Does it use environmentally conscious methods of transportation?

How was this orange packaged? With plastics that cause so much pollution in their production? With wood, which contributes to deforestation? Who designed the graphics for this company? Did they ever think about what actually goes into the making of this orange, all of the lives, both human and animal, it affects or destroys?

What does this store, which I am purchasing the orange from, support? Are they making black market deals with ConAgra for their produce, simultaneously supporting the murdering of peasants in Paraguay and Uruguay?

What will eating this orange do to my body? Will it taste good and bring me pleasure? Is it healthy for me? Will it provide my body with the nutrients it needs, while not polluting it with so many toxins it overrides any benefit it could provide? And lastly, how much does this orange cost? Do I have enough money to purchase this orange?

On a spiritual and physical level, you are what you eat. Do I want this orange to become a part of my body, the house of my soul? Can I eat this orange and feel good about it, ethically, spiritually, sensually? By eating this orange am I supporting suffering? Am I supporting death by giving myself life? I’m going to give myself an ulcer just thinking about food. This is my ethical experience with food: neurotic, paranoid, philosophical, and usually not enjoyable.

For me, all food is food for thought. 

Another bloody rainy day at 37 Hyde Park Gate

The bloody alarm didn’t go off

You woke up with a bloody cough

You really need to bloody pee

It’s bloody dark and you can’t see

You and the bloody door collide

The bloody bathroom’s occupied

You bloody wait and bloody wait

Every day in Hyde Park Gate

The bloody kitchen’s bloody packed

The dirty dishes are bloody stacked

You bloody wish to go back home

Someone bloody ate your Toblerone

Your bloody milk is bloody sour

You bloody realize the bloody hour

You’re bloody going to be bloody late

Running out of Hyde Park Gate

You’re bloody hungry all the bloody time

And all you’ve got is a bloody lime

The bloody food is bloody bad

Grocery shopping makes you bloody mad

It’s bloody expensive as bloody hell

But all you can say is oh bloody well

And that’s your bloody general state

Every day at Hyde Park Gate

The bloody flat is bloody old

The bloody air is bloody cold

The bloody beds bloody creak

The bloody doors bloody squeak

The bloody Internet doesn’t bloody work

The bloody workmen bloody lurk

Everything’s just so bloody great

At 37 Hyde Park Gate

Don’t be fooled by the bloody address

This bloody apartment is a bloody mess

The bloody toilet is bloody clogged

The bloody ceiling is water-logged

The bloody carpet harasses your eyes

(And it bloody smells, no bloody surprise)

In this bloody shameful real estate

That’s 37 Hyde Park Gate

The bloody room that’s twenty by twelve

Doesn’t bloody have a single bloody shelve

It’s bloody tiny as can bloody be

It’s bloody way too small for three

The bloody lights are out by 10

You bloody trip, and trip again

You bloody question your bloody fate

Every night in Hyde Park Gate

You bloody do dishes in the bloody sink

That bloody aren’t yours, and you bloody think

This bloody isn’t bloody fair

And the bloody Dutch just bloody stare

And there’s no bloody laundry machine

Any bloody where to be bloody seen

And Goldie-locks is your bloody roommate

Every day at Hyde Park Gate

You bloody walk out into bloody rain

You bloody miss the bloody train

You bloody want some bloody peace

But the bloody sitting duck won’t cease

To bloody talk all the bloody time

You’re bloody about to lose your mind

In this bloody place you love and hate

Called 37 Hyde Park Gate

A rainy day in Never Never Land

“Mummy, look at the Indian.” As I sat on the bus, compulsively checking the street signs at every intersection to be sure I didn’t miss my stop, I overheard this darling little boy speak to his mother. He was pointing to a book on his lap, his mother gazing out the window. What really sparked my interest, though, was the fluffy brown teddy bear tucked securely under his left arm. Immediately I saw this little English boy as Michael, the youngest of the Darling children from J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan and Wendy.” Was this boy looked after by a Saint Bernard named Nana? Did his older sister leave her window open every night, perchance so a young boy might listen to her stories? And suddenly the bus is not a bus, and the road names are not “St. James” or “Gardiner.” A thick fog creeps in from all corners, filled with effervescent capsules of memories, floating around me waiting to reveal their reminiscences. Julie London’s voice announces over the PA system: “Gonna take a sentimental journey.” What street was I looking for? A gleaming bubble encapsulates my head.

Youth is wasted on the young. In every octogenarian lives an eight year old boy or girl, pleading with the world to release them from their decrepit body, still waiting for that mystical boy to shake fairy dust on them and fly away, powered only by pure happy thoughts. Where is Tinker Bell, that mischievous and jealous fairy, with her bodacious hips and ballerina bun? What makes the story of Peter Pan so sad and so beloved worldwide? It’s everyone’s story, in a sense. It’s a story of coming to terms with lost innocence, the story of that one cruel realization that our bodies force our minds to grow up. The soft lines of childhood are perverted as fat accumulates, jutting out in places it never did before, and the soft silken hair of bonnie heads coarsens and spreads like an infectious disease. It’s curious to think that most people spend their entire childhood wishing to be older, only to spend the rest of their adulthood wishing to be younger. But to live as a child forever? Thus far, none save a solitary boy have achieved the great feat.

I examine the teddy bear a second time. Another bubble circles my head with a whirling haze. The mist clears and I am staring at a familiar face, brown and fuzzy, with a black threaded nose and two glass-bead eyes. My sheets are covered with Belle and the Beast: using my sophisticated system of sheet-dating it’s 1992 and I am 3 years old. As I trace the bear’s scarlet velvet heart, I can feel my pervasive nervousness. My mom is at the hospital, waiting for the baby to come out of her tummy. My sister, the eternal babysitter by proxy, suggests we watch a movie. I drag Teddy down the oatmeal carpeted stairs to the family room as my sister feeds Walt Disney’s Peter Pan into the mouth of the black machine. For weeks after, the sound of soft little feet padding to the window would be followed by the muffled grinding of wood against wood. A cold breeze would find its way through the half-open window, and a little girl, with a teddy bear secured tightly under her arm, would dream of the boy who would come and take her on marvelous adventures.  

This bubble is soon replaced by another. My sheets are blue with crisscrossing lines, seemingly mapping the infinite crossroads and decisions to come. It’s 2003, and I am 13 years old. I am in immense physical and emotional pain. Through a hideous operation I’ve been left mutilated. My face is puffy and my cheeks and gums are bleeding. Braces are an excellent metaphor for growing up. Imposed by the restrictions and beliefs of adults, they are cemented on without consent, to force your teeth to conform, obey, and become what society expects. They are constantly checked, tightened, and reordered. They are the source of much physical and emotional turmoil. Metal, as unmalleable as time, glints as it catches the light, reflecting an awkward and disproportionate smile as the photographer snaps a school photo. This is when I learned to not smile with my teeth. This is when I began to grow up. This is the year I stopped my midnight visits to the window.

And yet, Peter Pan lives on. Our subconscious remains his Neverland. He is always present, always at the window we secretly keep open in our hearts, waiting for childhood to find us again. He leaves us little reminders. I see his smile in the little boy with his teddy bear on the bus, dreaming of Indians. Like the silver thimble Wendy gifted to Peter Pan, I too keep a symbol of my childhood near to me. If you arrive at the window of 37 Hyde Park Gate, Room 2G and peek in, on the top bunk in the corner, the bedraggled but friendly face of an old teddy bear will peek back at you from under the covers.