For years we’ve seen mainstream talk about going green and cycling to work, and finally, several years later, we’re seeing the glimmers of niche companies who realize that people don’t want to change clothes every time they get off the bike.

Jason Gay writes for the NY Times, In These Clothes You Can Go Far:

Most of Rapha’s items are constructed with modern materials, like Sportwool, a part-Merino fiber that wicks away sweat. Almost everything the company makes is designed to be appropriate for wearing to a casual workplace, or at least to the coffee shop.

“Before Rapha, there were two ways to be fashionable in cycling,” said Bill Strickland, the editor at large of Bicycling magazine and until recently the author of its Style Man column. “The first was to be supertechnical, and look like a pro. The other way was to be pure vintage. Rapha created a third way, starting with a premise of ‘How would I like to look in town?’ ”

Mr. Mottram, a buzz-cut 42-year-old who describes himself as a “keen but not very good” cyclist, said he started Rapha after being frustrated by the clothing options at his local shop in London. “My friends were on bikes that would cost $3,000 or more, but then they’d go spend $50 on a shirt that was badly made and badly styled and had no passion in it,” he said. “There was a gap in the market for this.”

I know, I know, it’s hard to envision your average businessman - or even the average hipster going to the day job or out on the town - cruising the streets in 19th century-esque knickers and barbie pink turned up cuffs and collars. Much less paying nearly $1000 for the ensemble. But hopefully this high-end New York example is a harbinger of more mainstream affordable options to follow.

Everyone knows it, but the fashion industry won’t admit it - they deliberately shun women over size 10, even though they comprise more than half of the women in America and a good deal of them have plenty to spend on clothing. Emili Vesilind writes for the LA Times, Fashion’s Invisible Woman:

Many retailers aren’t even game to discuss “plus.” When contacted for this story, nearly every major retailer — including Nordstrom, Macy’s, H&M, even Wal-Mart — declined to give interviews on the subject or didn’t respond to requests. It’s an odd silence, considering how ripe the market is. With hardly any high-end resources at their disposal, full-figured women still spent $18.6 billion on apparel in stores and online from December 2007 to November 2008, according to NPD Group.

The good news? That all might be about to change. Sameer Reddy writes for Newsweek, Turning a Page - In Response to Tough Times, the Fashion Industry Discovers Inclusiveness:

After a decade of fantastical growth, the fashion world finds itself confronted with a shift in its fortunes—magazines are folding or cutting back, iconic department stores are losing hundreds of millions of dollars, and designers send out conspicuously commercial collections in a dubious attempt to entice consumers to spend. As the economic picture deteriorates, a glaring discrepancy is beginning to emerge between the glossy images the industry uses to portray itself and the state of the external world. The fashion system is quick to react to shifts in popular mood as tastemakers search for a new editorial formula. That’s how it came to pass that on one of the inaugural covers of Love, a biannual niche title launched this month by Conde Nast, Beth Ditto, the beautiful, overweight lead singer of the Gossip, poses naked, her modesty preserved by nothing more than a cover line and a froth of hot pink organza.

Even though none of the major retailers would talk to her, Vesilind still manages to dig deep into the taboo issue to get at the truth of why larger women are ignored:

It often seems that it’s easier to find and buy stylish clothes for Chihuahuas than for roughly half the country’s female population.

Americans are getting larger, and 62% of females are already categorized as overweight. But the relationship between the fashion industry and fuller-figure women is at a standoff, marked by suspicion, prejudice and low expectations on both sides. The fear of fat is so ingrained in designers and retailers that even among those who’ve successfully tapped the market, talking plus-size often feels taboo. The fraught relationship between fashion and plus-size is far from new, but seems particularly confounding in a time when retailers are pulling out all the stops to bring in business. Carrying a range of sizes that includes the average female would seem like a good place to start.

But why have they not been doing this already?

At the crux of the inequity, according to some plus-size designers, models and retailers, is prejudice toward women the industry doesn’t find particularly glamorous or sexy. Like fifth-grade girls who secretly live in fear of being ostracized from the cool clique, they don’t want to be caught talking to the fat girl.

Yup, there we have it. Underneath it all the fashion industry is just as cruel as junior high. But they couldn’t sell this exclusive mystique if people didn’t buy into it. (more…)

from Alexsandro Palombo's upcoming book of illustrations, 'Vanitas, Inshallah'

Robin Givhan’s latest article for the Washington Post zeros in on what everyone knows but that no one of any importance dare to speak of, lest they be ignored and excluded by the same inner circle they seek to critique:

There is an assumed degree of extreme intimacy, among those who are in the business of making and marketing expensive clothes, that sometimes borders on incestuous.

One of the most recent examples of how the various strands of the fashion industry are interwoven — or more aptly, tied into a tight, complicated little knot — comes in the form of a Prada project called “The Iconoclasts.” The Italian design house announced that four well-known fashion editors will each window-dress one of its flagship stores. The guest merchandisers’ work is organized to coincide with Fashion Week in each of the four cities.

…The point, however, is whether they should be doing it at all. In a business where conflicts of interest occur every day, this is a step too far and poorly timed. Fashion does not need such a public blow to its credibility during an economic crisis that has it quite literally — and at times, unfairly — having to justify its existence.

Yes, that’s right, magazine editors are not offering us an objective, unbiased view of fashion designers offerings, and show favor to their advertisers. This situation is already so taken for granted that it only serves as the background context for Ugly Betty episodes rather than a full plot line. So why does Givhan now see this as such an issue, worthy of risking exclusion from the relevant insider parties? The Washington Post is making serious budget cuts, so could be there’s a ‘nothing left to lose since they won’t pay for me to fly to Milan anyway’ undercurrent, but Givhan expresses concern that given the current about face in consumer spending, this now undermines their credibility:

…the Paris store will be merchandised by the editor in chief of French Vogue, Carine Roitfeld — which would seem to be a bit like the editor of Sports Illustrated calling the plays at a football game and then writing about how brilliant the coaching was.

…Magazines have never pretended to be objective observers of fashion. They have always seen their role as that of cheerleader and champion. They celebrate the most talented designers and the most beautiful clothes and simply ignore the rest. They give special attention to advertisers. And so it’s often hard to know whether the best truly is any good at all. Maybe the only reason that a collection gets press is because the designer just happens to be a good schmoozer with the right connections or a compelling story.

Yah think? Again, this is not an earth shattering revelation. So why is it now such a big problem?

At a time when the industry needs all the credibility it can muster, Prada is bragging about its coziness with editors. With so many folks scratching each other’s back, why should any reader put stock in a story about clothes that supposedly have lasting value?

No kidding. It’s the same extreme trend over the top flashy excess that last year was sold as a ’splurge’ but now is spun with the new buzzword, ‘investment.’

Why should anyone believe magazines, designers or anyone in this industry? No wonder so many consumers believe the fashion business is just one giant conspiracy out to dupe women. It’s just what the paranoid always thought: They are all in this together.

Perhaps it was less of a problem when there was an ever increasing supply of cash flow into the industry fueled largely by the arms race between aspirational desperate housewives convinced that buying ‘It Bags’ on credit was necessary and innocuous.

The fashion industry painted itself into this corner over the long haul. It doesn’t see itself as a conglomeration of businesses that are interdependent and yet provide each other with checks and balances. Instead, the industry would best be described as an unruly family filled with enablers who encourage behavior that weakens consumer trust.

This sudden new reverse status of thrift and restraint combined with how excessive displays of consumption and lavish lifestyles have become unfashionable (in case you haven’t heard, bankers and by association the arm candy they used to finance are way unpopular symbols right about now) have left this insider clique looking, dare I say, out of date. And scurrying to regain their relevance in a way that seems to echo Wall Street’s denial that the way of life they’d become accustomed to isn’t going to ‘return to normal.’ Ever.

Hopefully these cracks in the establishment will provide opportunities for genuine innovation and relevant collections from heretofore excluded designers.

I’ve also been seeing the phrase ‘tone deaf’ used a lot, too. From ABC News, JPMorgan Chase To Spend Millions on New Jets and Luxury Airport Hangar

After pressure from his administration, Citigroup abandoned plans for a new $50 million corporate jet from France. And in February, Obama said the days of bank executives flying corporate jets “were over.”

But on March 11, the chairman of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, said he could not understand why corporate America has such a bad image.

“When I hear the constant vilification of corporate America I personally don’t understand it,” Dimon said.

Dimon, whose 2008 compensation package, according to SEC documents, was worth more than $19 million in salary, stock and options, declined to speak with ABC News about the proposed plans.

Can we say deeply engrained sense of entitlement totally divorced from performance or contribution not just to the greater good, but even to their own benefit? Because as I understand it, the whole Ayn Rand kick is all about leaving these superior, brilliant beings to pursue their own self interest because since it wouldn’t be in their self interest to, let’s say…have their companies blow up in a super nova that becomes a black hole sucking away global capital… that they wouldn’t - couldn’t - let that happen. And how’s that theory working out for us right about now?

Tony Schwartz writes How Self-Interest Destroyed the Economy and explains the ‘tragedy of the commons.’ Expect that phrase to be popping up more and more:

Do you find yourself asking this question: How is it that so many ostensibly smart people in the financial world made such terrible choices for so long?

Thirty years ago, an ecologist and professor named Garrett Hardin wrote a classic article in the journal titled “The Tragedy of the Commons.” His thesis was that individuals, acting in their rational self-interest, may ultimately destroy a limited resource over the long term.

To illustrate, Hardin used the metaphor of an open pasture - “the commons” - to which herdsmen bring their cattle to feed. The herdsmen understandably want to feed as many of their cattle as possible - or as Hardin put it: “As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain.” This works fine for everyone so long as there’s enough grass to feed all the cattle. As demand rises, however, the effects of overgrazing take a progressive toll on the commons, until ultimately they’re destroyed for everyone.

“Therein is the tragedy,” Hardin writes. “Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit - in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.”

But we’re not herdsman (well, at least not literally. Although the case could be made for anyone in marketing…) How does this relate to our financial system?

Far too many of us conspired to get as much as we could while the getting was good, never stopping to consider that if everyone keeps trying to get more - leveraging their bets and running up debt to do so — there will eventually be a day of reckoning.

And the antidote?

We live now in a world of palpably limited resources. Every choice we make has an increasingly visible impact on the commons. The leader who suggests that his company’s only obligation is to maximize profit for his shareholders is dangerously delusional.

We’re all in this together, and we literally can’t afford to act any longer as if we’re each free to pursue our self-interest with blinders on. The antidote is a higher level of awareness - the capacity to see the consequences of our actions over the long term and to make choices from that perspective rather than succumbing to our most primitive impulses.

A perspective which, of course, is the opposite of current advertising methods which are all about stimulating those primitive impulses in order that they may be sated by the product on offer. What we’ll have to see then, is a layer of sophistication integrated in - since thinking about others or the common good might now have perceived rewards (feeling good about oneself and the like) then the brand will need to associate itself with those actions. This will become a feedback loop of sorts - as consumers get more activist and whistleblowing becomes accessible to everyone with a cell phone camera, corporations will have to watch their p’s and q’s. How many investment bankers can become PR people? Hype alone isn’t going to cut it.

Mark you calendars: April 11 might turn out to be a newsworthy flashpoint day. I just read an alternet article about A New Way Forward, a group that’s formed to synchronize protests against Wall Street and the ‘too big to fail’ financial institutions:

Somehow, we’ve created a system that protects some of America’s wealthiest individuals by letting them build institutions that are “too big to fail.” Large scale banking has left our economy unstable, and overly dependent upon too few institutions. Greed for short-term profit, and competitive exuberance, has led to incomprehensible financing schemes and rewards for companies that sold people things they couldn’t afford.

But, increasingly, people are realizing that anger at the banks ought also be directed at Congress, and at ourselves. We have created corporations that have left us exposed, unstable, and made it easy for concentrated wealth to exploit the political process.

A new grassroots, bottom-up, organization, has sprung up demanding structural change, and grown from 4 to over 1,000 people in the last week. Their clear and important demand is this: any bank that is too big to fail is too big to exist.

Writer Matt Taibbi thinks the same thing. Keeping with the ‘too big to fail is too big to exist’ theme, Rachel Maddow interviews Taibbi and calls his piece for the Rolling Stone a must read:

Here is the introduction from The Big Takeover, which is well worth reading in its entirety. He follows with a blow by blow historical account framed in his take-no-prisoners style.

So it’s time to admit it: We’re fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that we’re still in denial — we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream. When Geithner announced the new $30 billion bailout, the party line was that poor AIG was just a victim of a lot of shitty luck — bad year for business, you know, what with the financial crisis and all.

… He conveniently forgot to mention that AIG had spent more than a decade systematically scheming to evade U.S. and international regulators, or that one of the causes of its “pneumonia” was making colossal, world-sinking $500 billion bets with money it didn’t have, in a toxic and completely unregulated derivatives market.

Nor did anyone mention that when AIG finally got up from its seat at the Wall Street casino, broke and busted in the afterdawn light, it owed money all over town — and that a huge chunk of your taxpayer dollars in this particular bailout scam will be going to pay off the other high rollers at its table. Or that this was a casino unique among all casinos, one where middle-class taxpayers cover the bets of billionaires.

People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they’re not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d’état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — “our partners in the government,” as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.

The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.

And then for some fun with time machines and crystal balls, Rachel Maddow interviews Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. Why is that fun? She pulls quotes from 1999 where Dorgan - one of the only 8 senators who voted against the bill that allowed for the consolidation of insurance companies/banks/investment firms heretofore prohibited because that’s what helped lead up to the great depression - expresses concern that 10 years forward we’d find ourselves bailing out these institutions.

Who’s looking like the smart guy now?

from NY Times: breaking ground for the White House kitchen garden

We’ve all heard about Michelle Obama as a fashion trendsetter and how her wearing a brand is the kind of marketing gold that money can’t buy. So if Michelle can turn the White House lawn into a kitchen garden, does that mean we’ll start seeing less Chem Lawn and more victory gardens in suburbs across America? Will neighborhood association rules have to cave on this one as the sustainable, local, organic and healthy food movement gains mainstream momentum? Let’s hope so.

The organization Eat The View is taking credit for instigating the replanting of the White House Victory Garden.

Eat the View is a campaign to plant high-impact food gardens in high-profile places. We asked the Obamas to lead the way by replanting a kitchen garden on the First Lawn and they heard our call!

Frank Rich writes in the NY Times, “Has a ‘Katrina Moment’ arrived?”

Since Americans get the big picture of this inequitable system, that grotesque reality dwarfs any fine print. That’s why it doesn’t matter that the disputed bonuses at A.I.G. amount to less than one-tenth of one percent of its bailout. Or that CNBC — with 300,000 viewers on a typical day by Nielsen’s measure — is a relatively minor player in the crash. Or that Edward Liddy had nothing to do with A.I.G.’s collapse, or that John Thain, of the celebrated trash can, arrived after, not before, others wrecked Merrill Lynch.

These prominent players are just the handiest camera-ready triggers for the larger rage. Passions are now so hot that even Bernie Madoff’s crimes began to pale as we turned our attention to A.I.G.’s misdeeds, just as A.I.G. will fade when the next malefactor surfaces.

What made Jon Stewart’s takedown of Jim Cramer resonate was less his specific brief against CNBC’s cheerleading for bad stocks than his larger indictment of the gaping economic inequality that defined the bubble. As Stewart said, there were “two markets” — the long-term market that Americans earnestly thought would sustain their 401(k)’s, and the fast-moving, short-term “real market” in the back room where high-rolling insiders wagered “giant piles of money” and brought down everyone with them.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/221836/march-16-2009/stephen-s-angry-mob-will-crush-aig

I, as an unapologetic western feminist, have zero religious mandate to cover up, but I think these look pretty cool and I wonder if we might see these catching on with non-muslim girls who just like the aesthetic. Heck, it could be warm in winter….or pair with goggles to keep the sand out at Burning Man!

from Capster.com

Betwa Sharma writes for the Huffington Post, Making the Hijab Work:

Ausma Khan, editor of Muslim Girl, a magazine for Muslim teens in the United States and Canada, says, “In America we’re seeing an evolution where the governing principle of modesty remains the same, but at the same time it is incorporating contemporary styles of dressing.”

…Khan, whose magazine devotes many pages to fashion, notes that this demand is not met by supply. “There is an untapped market for girls who don’t want to look like versions of Britney Spears but at the same time want to dress well,” she says. “The designers have not caught on yet.”

One designer with foresight is Cindy van den Bremen who operates out of the Netherlands. In 2001, she launched a hijab range to match sports needs and solve the problems that bulky hijabs caused Muslim girls in the gym.

After eight years, Capsters have become an international brand selling online and in stores across Europe, Canada, US, Middle East, Indonesia and Malaysia. “To be honest, there have been more requests for wholesale than I could handle,” she says.

As the forest fire rages through retail clearing out the dead wood in the malls, its going to be brands like Capster who innovate to produce a well engineered, appealing product to a gaping niche that will be the new trees rising up from the ashes soaking up the heretofor blocked sunlight. And currency.

Capster for surfing

On a practical level I’ve often wondered about the hijab: perhaps it gets way easier if you wear it all the time, but any time I’ve tried to wear a scarf over my head (costume, warmth, etc) I’ve never been able to keep the darn thing on my head. Which makes me wonder about how being mandated to wear one restricts you in less obvious ways by restricting the activities you can engage in. (This phenomenon is not entirely that different than high heels or tight skirts, no?) So I think it’s a genius adaptation for a girl to be able to approach her parents with a garment they can’t argue with, but that she can still go surfing in.

In my scans of the Fall fashion shows I didn’t see a noticeable trend towards hoods, but they always show up from time to time:

Zero + Maria Cornejo Fall 09, style.com

(more…)

According to Gawker, he can dish it but he can’t take it:

from Gawker.com

Shepard Fairey is America’s darling, ever since that Obama ‘HOPE’ poster. The AP looked like jerks when they complained about him stealing their photo. But! Fairey will sue your ass for stealing his brand, quick.

See, if you try to sell anything featuring the word “Obey” you are totally stealing from Shepard Fairey, and he will instruct his attorneys to send you a threatening cease and desist letter, because he keeps shit real like that. Some guy in Pittsburgh sells little baby Steeler mascots with the phrase “Obey Steeler Baby.” Shepard Fairey demands that he stop infringing on his trademark, which he originally made famous by ripping off the image of Andre the Giant!

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Fairey is involved in a high profile legal dispute with the Associated Press over the source photo of his iconic, ubiquitous Obama campaign poster.

And let me state for the record - because I know I’m about to incur the ‘you just don’t get contemporary art’ disdain - that in this specific instance of the Obama poster I side with Fairey’s argument that the photo was sufficiently altered to be considered artistic fair use.It is Shepard Fairey’s previous legal battles with copyright/plagiarism issues that are far more juicy, and his recent meteoric rise to fame in conjunction with the Obama poster has reignited this controversy.

example of Fairey's appropriation taken from Vallen's art-for-a-change.com expose

I know full well that the last thing I’m able to do is resolve the complicated questions of how copying interfaces with the art world, so I’m going to include excerpts and links from some of the more notable commentary and let you be the judge:

Let’s start with Rachel Maddow, who scored and next-to-impossible-to-get interview with Fairey last night. I was a little disappointed, however, that she failed challenge Fairey in any way. Was this her own proclaimed admiration of his Obey years or an agreement with Fairey that was a condition of getting the interview? Because I find it hard to believe that Maddow of all people did not do her research.

The Fairey critique that’s inspired the most ‘you don’t get contemporary art’ criticism is the exhaustive and biting article by Mark Vallen filled with side by side photos of Fairey’s work and their uncredited sources.

Plagiarism is the deliberate passing off of someone else’s work as your own, and Shepard Fairey may be unfamiliar with the term - but not the act. This article is not about the innocent absorption of visual ideas that later materialize unconsciously in an artist’s work, we do after all live in a maelstrom of images and we can’t help but be affected by them. Nor am I referring to an artist’s direct influences - which artist can claim not to have been inspired by techniques or styles employed by others? What I am concerned with is the brazen, intentional copying of already existing artworks created by others - sometimes duplicating the originals without alteration - and then deceiving people by pawning off the counterfeit works as original creations.

(more…)

A friend of mine saw these articles in a Sept/Oct 08 issue of Psychology Today and brought me a print copy. It’s such a well written piece that I’m going to quote most of it.  Let’s begin with the opening line from The Style Imperative, by Hara Estroff Marano:

“Do designers dictate hemlines?” the late style doyenne Diana Vreeland was once asked. “Only if you take dictation,” she replied.

With that remark she exposed a rift the fashion world seldom flaunts. There is a vast gap between fashion and style. Fashion is about clothes and their relationship to the moment.

I’m thinking Zoebots (Rachel Zoe dressing Sienna Miller clones) strolling LA with ‘It Bags’ and the latest $300 jean. Then she goes on to succinctly differentiate ‘fashion’ from ’style’.

from thesartorialist.blogspot.com

Style is about you and your relationship to yourself. Fashion is in the clothes. Style is in the wearer. The distinction could not be more revealing.

Despite the proliferation of fashion, style has been out of style for decades. As the economy expanded, America embarked on a collective shopping spree. In place of style we have honored Merchandise. Clothes.

She allows a more generous definition of ‘clothes’ than I do. I would argue that half of the garments in the mall right now (and at least 90% of Forever 21) are too crappy to be considered ‘clothes.’ In fact, for the past couple of years the prescient Williamsburg hipster embrace of lumberjack chic has foretold a backlash to ultra trendy, disposable, ill-fitting garments made of sleazy fabric. Building on the relentless curatorial caché of vintage seen since the eigthies, these durable duds of flannels, canvas and many pockets demonstrate the appeal and new status direction assigned to clothing that is real and functional in a post bubble world. But I digress…

Style, on the other hand, doesn’t demand a credit card. It prospers on courage and creativity.

Style goes way beyond fashion; it is an individually distinctive way of putting ourselves together. It is a unique blend of spirit and substance—personal identity imposed on, and created through, the world of things. It is a way of capturing something vibrant, making a statement about ourselves in clothes. It is what people really want when they aspire to be fashionable (if they aren’t just adorning themselves in status symbols).

DIY reFashionistas, this means you.

Through clothes, we reinvent ourselves every time we get dressed. Our wardrobe is our visual vocabulary. Style is our distinctive pattern of speech, our individual poetry.

from thesartorialist.blogspot.com

Fashion is the least of it. Style is, for starters, one part identity: self-awareness and self-knowledge. You can’t have style until you have articulated a self. And style requires security—feeling at home in one’s body, physically and mentally. Of course, like all knowledge, self-knowledge must be updated as you grow and evolve; style takes ongoing self-assessment…Lastly, style is one part fashion. It’s possible to have lots of clothes and not an ounce of style. But it’s also possible to have very few clothes and lots of style. Yes, fashion is the means through which we express style, but it takes less in the way of clothes to be stylish than you might imagine.

Marano goes on to describe Louis XIV’s influence on establishing Paris as a style capital, and offers Coco Chanel as the one who redefined the term for the 20th century:

She revolutionized style, too, but in the opposite direction. She stripped it down to what we recognize today. In giving clothes simplicity, clarity of line, functionality, emotional directness—inventing sportswear and that blank slate known as the little black dress—she allowed clothes to be animated by the wearer.

Ever heard the phrase ‘it’s how you wear it’? Below she elaborates on the concept.

And that is the style of style—one bold and unexpected gesture against a perfectly proportioned backdrop.

Emphasis on perfectly proportioned. Subtleties of cut, fit and silhouette. To me, this is where style and fashion overlap, at least in MY definition of true fashion (those underlying norms and shapes we’ll recognize 20 years from now as of that time). All that trendy, hyped up filler junk that is marketed as fashion is straight to landfill, not worthy of reviving when the fashion cycle makes its next path through that look.

from thesartorialist.blogspot.com

Why is style important?

Whatever else it is, style is optimism made visible. Style presumes that you are a person of interest, that the world is a place of interest, that life is worth making the effort for.

I don’t know about you, but when I feel the opposite (depressed and life is not worth the effort) you’ll find me in the blah clothes. And if I want to yank myself out of it (or at least fake it to everyone else) I’ll make myself put together a cool outfit before I walk out the door.

True style, in addition to being irrevocably social, is even morally responsible. Consumption isn’t promiscuous or random, at the whim of the marketplace or the urging of marketers. Rather, it is focused on what is personally suitable and expressive.

Conscious consumption. Being really picky. Refusing the junk, digging for the treasure.

Style is psychologically subversive; it exposes the American ambivalence over good looks. It always demonstrates that appearances do count. Deep down we suspect this, since we ourselves make judgments about others from how they look.

No one should be penalized for not having style, of course, but those who have it are distinctive and thus more memorable.

In the end, style is fundamentally democratic. It assumes every person has the potential to create a unique identity and express it through grooming and a few well-chosen clothes. Yet style is also aristocratic. It sets apart those who have it from those whose dress is merely utilitarian. It announces to the world that the wearer has assumed command of herself.

As the speed of all our transactions increases, we need fast ways of transmitting information about ourselves without losing authenticity; we have less and less time to make our mark in other, more leisurely ways of knowing.

You’re at a party/concert/meetup/class, etc. How do you decide with whom to strike up a conversation? (yes, hitting on someone falls in this category.) How do you choose what to wear to the event to signal to strangers your tastes and interests that you hope to have in common? How do you signal to others to not to bother trying?

Style, like a perfectly fitting book jacket, evokes the substance within by way of the surface. It makes an authentic visual impression, is a memorable mark of identity in a world that otherwise strips people of identity. There was a time when style was a luxury. Today it is a necessity.