Handkerchiefs

More and more of the young men I know in New York are carrying pocket handkerchiefs.

My father was amused to hear about this trend and inquired whether these same men had also taken to making shows of crying in public just as fashionable gentlemen did in the nineteenth century. I had to say that no, they had not. Yet he made me realize that the growing popularity of the handkerchief does have overtones of Romanticism.

The reason handkerchiefs have come back into style is fairly obvious: They’re just one of the many foppish accoutrements that men have adopted as part of the Anglophile dandy look that’s having such a major comeback. But unlike the other popular accessories, such as hats, pocket squares, and custom-made shoes, the handkerchief has changed not just aesthetics but behavior.

Traditionally, men sniffle through colds and allergies and drip through sweaty summers. These bodily discomforts are seen as unavoidable, since no manly man would be seen carrying around a packet of tissues in his pocket or fanning himself with a piece of paper. Men in our society aren’t supposed to be fussing over themselves in that way. But now that handkerchiefs have become mainstream accessories, men are not just carrying them but using them, to blow their noses and wipe their brows. And while this rediscovered habit is a far cry from weeping at the opera, it is similar in that it’s a public acknowledgment of men’s sensitivity—just in a physical, rather than emotional, sense.

There’s a long-term trend towards the genders becoming more alike, and the readoption of the handkerchief is a sign that one symptom of the continuing feminization of men will be their increasing willingness to be seen indulging in the kind of self-care—even pampering—that has long been the exclusive prerogative of women. Axe body spray, for instance, while a pitiful version of the cornucopia of fruitily-scented products with which women shower themselves daily, is nonetheless an example of a product that would have been considered effeminate a few years ago but which is nonetheless quite ordinary today. It will be interesting to see what new ways marketers find to capitalize on men’s increasing interest in exploring and enjoying sensory pleasure.

Unhaircuts

I think the next hair trend, for men and women (either concurrent with long hair or right before it) will be the "unhaircut."

The unhaircut is a nontraditional haircut in that it's not designed from the perspective of what would look good when the person is sitting upright, looking straight ahead, as all haircuts are today.  Instead, the unhaircut can be performed with the cuttee in any position -- lying down, with the head tilted to the side, or upside-down.  Once the hair is in position, it's simply grabbed at a certain point and hacked off, so that when the cuttee resumes an upright position, the hair falls into a semi-arbitrary, "wrong"-looking configuration.

This haircut is a lot like the emo haircut, except it's less studied and will not necessarily have to obscure the face or be dyed black or excessively styled.  I imagine the hair just hanging there, in whatever shape the cut gives it.  And I think the hair will be longer than most emo haircuts are--even on men, who might wear it shoulder-length.  The unhaircut's other antecedent is the grown-out look that's so popular among the New York private school boys and their ilk across America.  I'm sure they have a name for it, but I have no idea what it could be.  The "prep school mafia hairstyle"?  Anyone know?

The unhaircut says, "I realize that everything is just a construct, including haircuts," and in that way it's very postmodern.  Yet ultimately the unhaircut is post-postmodern, because it makes no distinction between hair and haircut: they are one and the same.

Post-postmodernism

I love the word "post-postmodern," first of all because it is so silly, but also because I'm so excited about finding out what "post-postmodernism" will be, as well as what its real name will be (because by its very nature, "post-postmodernism" is emphatically the wrong name for it).

I think post-postmodernism will be defined by the blurring of the line between reality and construct. In the post-postmodern world, life, art, and commerce will be one. This development will be dehumanizing according to our old definitions, but rehumanizing in our new ones, which will resituate money, advertising, capitalism, and the market, moving them from the status of parasites feeding off of humanity's blood to something more like the blood itself. I know, it sounds very bleak. But I think it's the real answer, because capitalism is here and it's not going anywhere, and we've waited far too long to devise some real, humane way to deal with its realities.

I'm not quite up to figuring all that out, but what I am up to are some ideas about how art and culture will respond. I think the new style, like the new geopolitics, will attempt a reconciliation between the realism we can't ignore and the humanism we strive for. The new "answer" in the arts will be neither a desperate search for meaning nor a flat rejection of it, but an acceptance that meaning is both real and unreal: intrinsic to humanity, yet "only human." Under the new pragmatic humanism, we will no longer be devastated by the recognition of our own perspective's arbitrariness--rather, we will accept it, and this acceptance ("ironically," although irony really will be dead this time) will enable us to lift up and celebrate art even more than we did in the twentieth century. Art and meaning will no longer be "only" constructs, but plain-old constructs--just like every single other thing we experience in our extremely subjective human way.

Art will moreover be recognized as essential therapy for humanity. I think anthropologists and psychologists will identify art's emergence along with civilization as an adaptation humans evolved in order to deal with the extremely traumatizing experience of living in a society. We will then turn this new information about art to our advantage, finding ways to use the arts to ease our transition into the modern world.

This new art will be totally unlike what we've seen before. It will be everywhere, and everyone will be a part of it. It will be awesome.

Big sweaters

Just an idea for something to try: oversized sweaters on women.

Similar to the popular belief that it's uncool to wear shirts tucked in is the general consensus that it's uncool to wear a sweater that doesn't tightly hug one's every curve. Baggy sweaters are associated with nerdy middle-school girls who are self-conscious about "developing."

I think this notion is passé. A baggy sweater looks refreshing and chic and makes its wearer seem relaxed, down-to-earth, confident, fun, and comfortable in her skin.

It's important that an oversized sweater have some kind of banding at the bottom so that it hugs the body there instead of flopping all around. And I think it's best to keep it simple. A men's small classic crewneck sweater in a solid color should work. But please none of those terrible thick waffle-knit sweaters that are trendy right now.

Army jackets

Ever since it got cold this fall, I’ve been seeing men in army jackets all over New York. They are cotton field jackets with a “woodland camouflage” print. Some of them appear to be army surplus (probably the M65 Field Jacket) and some are reproductions with a twist such as screenprinting done over the camouflage pattern. I’ve seen them on thirtyish men of all ethnicities, most of whom have an understated, sort-of anti-fashion—but still stylish—style.

This is the second military jacket to be popular this year. The first was the M65 “fishtail” parka, which Prada brought back in fall 2006 and H&M and others knocked off early this fall. I attributed the reappearance of the fishtail parka to its association with the British Mods of the ‘60s, whose look had a mini-comeback along with the other recent ‘60s trends, and to the “urban warrior” look that was popular last winter. Associated as it is with the Korean War and the Mods, the fishtail parka does not seem like a direct reference to our current war in Iraq.

Neither do these field jackets. First of all, the men wearing them do not project a politically-charged fashion statement of any kind. Secondly, the print I’ve been seeing is woodland camouflage, not the desert camouflage all our troops are wearing. Do these jackets make a statement at all? Maybe they were bought for practical reasons, such as price (they cost about $70), the desire to avoid shopping (they can be found in any army-surplus store), a disinterest in fashion (they’re a uniform), or plain utility (although the outer shell is cotton, a warm, down-filled liner can be purchased to go inside). Or maybe men bought them to be environmentally friendly (buying a surplus item is a form of reuse/recycling).

I’m curious, though, about the “woodland” camouflage print. I hadn’t seen it around until recently, and I think its popularity must have some significance. Could it have to do with a renewed interest in nature and concern for the environment? Or perhaps an enthusiasm for hunting? Or maybe the jackets are a political statement after all, and the wearing of woodland camouflage, instead of desert camouflage, is a symbol of Americans’ desire to turn our military’s image away from the negative one it’s taken on in Iraq and back towards its traditional, more positive one.

I wonder whether anyone else has been seeing this trend, or whether they start noticing it after reading this. Please let me know (in the comments) if you spot it around or have other ideas or reactions.

Update 1/6/08: I am now seeing brand-new-looking desert camo on "cool dads" at Whole Foods and such places.

Update 1/11/08: Now seeing tons of camo-print hoodies and hats

Tuck it in

There's this consensus that tucked-in shirts on girls look ugly, nerdy, and wrong. Almost no young women wear their shirts tucked in unless they have to as part of the dress code for their jobs. For as long as I can remember (since the mid-eighties), tucked-in shirts have been extremely uncool as part of casual wear. Why is this?

I think it's because it's so hard to make a tucked-in shirt look flattering on a woman's body. First of all, it draws attention to the waist, which can be bad if the waist is too wide, too high, or too low. It also makes the hips look wider by making the waist look smaller. And tucking in can make you look heavier than you are: if you're overweight, it draws attention to your tummy, and if you're thin, the blousing effect can hide your flat stomach. I'm guessing that untucked shirts became mainstream because women realized that it was easier to look good in them. The women who contined to tuck in their tops were either very conservative dressers or not very fashion-conscious ones. Tucking in became associated with conformity and nerdiness, and therefore came to be considered not only unflattering, but uncool as well.
Of course, the uncoolness of tucking in makes it ripe for coolness. Now that 70s and 80s styles are so mainstream, I think authentic 70s and 80s styling should come back, too. Plus, as I discovered just now while looking for images of nerdy tucked-in shirts, even L.L.Bean now shows its shirts worn untucked on models on its website. If L.L.Bean has decided tucking in is too uncool for its customers, then it is definitely time for it to become cool for trendy people. (L.L.Bean is a great barometer; they also started producing bootcut pants just as those were about to become unfashionable.)

It's all in the execution, of course. For knit tops, I think it's best to go small and simple: a form-fitting (but not skintight) T-shirt or tank tucked into jeans (the high-waisted ones are perfect). For blouses, form-fitting is a bad idea; tops with very shaped waists that slip perfectly into pants or skirts will give the bad, conservative look. It's better to choose a looser-fitting top, accept that the blousing is going to happen, and embrace it.

Lipstick

It's time for young women to start wearing lipstick again.  Gloss has been popular for too long, it's too much a part of the sweet/girly thing that is so over, and it's too wishy-washy of a statement for the more supercharged, ultrafemme style that I think is going to be in again.

Women over 35 wear lipstick all the time.  It's specifically younger women who are going to start getting into lipstick -- even teenagers.  It will be a "strong lip" -- no "natural" shades, but plenty of unnatural reds and pinks (but on the cooler side, not coral).  All the easier-to-wear stains, sheers, and cremes will ease the transition, but the real hard-core look will involve traditional matte or semi-matte full-coverage lipsticks.  I'm even thinking that some frosted shades could be quite hip-looking.

And I don't think this has to mean a neutral eye.  Hopefully it will mean at least slightly less eye makeup for certain people, but I think that whole idea of focusing only on the eyes or lips is really overdone, old-fashioned, and safe.  What about a real, made-up face?

Minimalism

Apparently the nineties are on their way back. I knew it was inevitable, but the idea of it was just so depressing and boring that I think I blocked it out. It makes sense, though--with the concern about the environment, the weak dollar, the celebutante burnout...It's time for minimalism.

The early signs are here: all the black on sale for winter; the Gap finally getting its act together and selling more colorful basics instead of trendy clothes (its older and younger brothers, Banana Republic and Old Navy, have made a similar switch as well); all the interest in Kate Moss; high-waisted jeans; the obsession with white Converse; American Apparel; androgyny. It's coming.

As soon as everyone acknowledges that we really are in a recession (or more precisely a "four-year slow-down," as my banker friend informs me), this will hit for real. Shoppers are already tightening their purse strings.

What will the apparel companies do? For a few years the fashion cycle has been so fast, and everyone has been buying trendy this and faddish that, throwing all their money away. I can't see how mass-market chains won't lose out when that suddenly drops off. There will still be some fads, of course; minimalism in the 90's wasn't just blankness, but a blank slate for other trends as well (grunge, heroin chic). But, like those, the fads superimposed on the 1990s of the 2000s won't be too lucrative, either. Luxury, of course, will keep booming through this, as those rich people continue to get even unbelievably richer, and they'll be able to afford the expensive designer versions of minimalism (People at Calvin Klein, start your engines).

So, the 90s trend is kind of a precursor to the end of the hipster fashion I predicted a few days ago. But, since it's still just a recycling of a previous decade, it's not the real deal. It will be more like a palate-cleanser. Because the 90s trend won't last a whole decade. In a few years, it will be over, and at that point we'll be all caught up; there won't be anything left to recycle...except for "recycling." How would that work--an ironic recycling of ironic recycling? That could be interesting. I look forward to seeing Marc Jacobs do it. Until then...black jeans, anyone...??

Long hair

Long hair is going to be in. And I mean really long hair. Think Lady Godiva. Think Rapunzel.

Actually, those women’s stories are quite relevant to the trend. In both tales, a woman’s long hair simultaneously symbolizes chastity and sexuality; I believe that when a long hair trend occurs in the future, it will be associated with a similar set of semi-contradictory attitudes toward women.

Women are going to become both more and “less” sexual in the coming years. They’re going to be more sexual in the sense that they will become more informed about, comfortable with, and outgoing about their sexuality. I think women are going to be more sexually aggressive with men than they are now. But at the same time, I they will be more picky, and the hook-up culture will decline as women get better at enjoying sex for its own sake. (Yes, it’s just like with the hippies and their hair—only I think it’ll go further this time. If you think about it in terms of the “waves” model of social change, the sixties were a little wave of hair and sex, and we are now approaching another, bigger one.) Long hair will be only part of fashion’s response to women’s increased sexual sophistication, which will be manifested in a generally more organic, soft, tactile femininity.

Let’s look at where we’re starting from. The most recent hair trends have been the Jean Seberg/Rosemary’s Baby pixie cut and the bangs phenomenon. Both of those are little-girl looks, which went well with all the little-girl fashions of the past year and a half. They are also both very specifically centered on the cut, not the styling, of the hair.

I see the long-hair trend as a continuation of those styles. First of all, the little girl will become the pubescent girl. The women in our culture who are most likely to have long hair, currently, are tweens and teenagers, and therefore women who wear their hair long will be identifying with adolescence and sexual maturation. Secondly, the turn away from aggressive styling will persist and deepen in the long-hair trend, which will be actively anti-style. Instead, long hair will be worn loose. And I don’t think it will be kept fussily combed, either, but will be a little tangled and thicket-like (sexual symbolism again). Cory Kennedy has been an important innovator in this regard.

The anti-style element brings me to the other important precursor of long hair, the no-shampoo/Devachan movement. That haircare style, with its focus on working with hair’s natural texture and oils, is a step in the direction of a kind of hair-worship that will be part of the long hair style. I think that women will begin to re-identify with their hair, and what is now an often antagonistic relationship between women and their hair will become one of nurturing and enjoyment. Women’s healthy, natural hair will symbolize their healthy individuality and confident sexuality.

Sorry, straight-hairs, but curls will fashionable this time (opposite of in the sixties). Also: the Afro is on its way back.

Head-to-toe

You hear it all the time: “I would never wear a whole outfit by one designer. I like to combine designer clothes with cheap stuff from H&M and vintage store finds to create my own unique look.”

“Unique.” Ha! That same unique look is worn by every single celebrity, rich person, hipster, and “fashionista” in the world. Sure, one person may combine that thrift-store jacket with a cocktail dress while another pairs it with an ironic T-shirt, but both people are wearing essentially the same look: that “I created my own unique style by wearing a bunch of stuff that doesn’t go together” look.

I’ll admit that, within the context of this now-ubiquitous “look,” creating a successful outfit requires some creativity. Honestly, it is quite a challenge, and someone devoted to getting it right can spend a great deal of time doing all the shopping and outfit-planning it requires. But to what end? A person who dresses like this may be wearing a unique outfit, but they are not sending a unique message. Instead they are sending the same message as everyone else on the planet: “I want to look creative, I hope I look cool, God these booties are uncomfortable, did I overdo it with the beret? Are people looking at me?” In other words, no message at all, except for a vague, self-centered longing for an identity. I think it’s only a matter of time, now, until people realize how shallow, boring, and essentially hypocritical this message is, and start looking for a new one.

I’m not asking for everyone to become genuinely unique and creative with their clothes. My, what a trial that would be! No, in fact, I’d prefer it if people dressed a little more alike, if that’s what it takes to get a new style going. After all, it’s nothing out of the ordinary for the majority of people to send the same message with their clothes; that’s what fashion is. In fashion, everyone sends the same message with their clothes at the same time because everyone in the society is going through the same things: the same economy, the same world events, the same environment, the same popular culture. Think back to some fashions that meant something (they’re easy to remember since we’ve now been recycling them in our creative outfits for the past ten years): flappers (“We’re liberated, we have legs, hooray!”); the New Look (“Yes! The war is over! we feel like looking HOT”); Courreges and space-age fashion (“We’re exited about the future, we’re going to fly to the Moon, we have even more legs, hooray!”). What fun those all were. These days, however, with our “unique” outfits, we’re trying to deny the fact that we’re all experiencing the same things. Instead we’re focusing on all the different experiences that are available to us now as a result of globalization and the internet, and that proliferation of possibilities is showing up in our wacky mish-mashed wardrobes.

But everyone is scared, too. And I think that fear is what’s causing us to place so much emphasis on creating a unique (but ultimately uncreative and “blocked”) style of dress. In this new world, with all its problems and possibilities, we’re afraid of losing our identities, of being submerged in mass culture. We’re insecure, so we’re exhibiting self-conscious, self-centered behavior. This is manifesting itself not in a new fashion, but in a new use of fashion.

Until recently, fashion wasn’t a very important part of most people’s lives. It was something that decorated, commented upon, and reflected life, but it wasn’t the focus of life. But since the millennium, fashion, and all the arts, have grown out of their proper contexts. Instead of being treated mainly as a decoration for life, the arts have come to substitute for it. We would rather look at art than what’s really going on in the world. Nowadays everyone wants to work in, or at least feel like they’re an expert in, film, fashion, music, writing, or art. Witness TV shows like The Hills and Project Runway: we’re all fascinated by people who are “making it” in these creative fields, and we think that in order to be truly unique and authentic, we have to be involved in creative pursuits ourselves, too. Witness the insane art market: everyone who can afford it is gobbling up art at high prices because they hope that its creativity and uniqueness will rub off on them.

But all this is an illusion. We can’t, as a culture, come up with a new statement in fashion because we’re overly focused on the fashion itself. Sooner or later, the feedback loop will have to break down, as a cannibalizing culture finally consumes itself. At that point, designers and other artists can turn back to looking at life, instead of at art, and a genuinely new style will grow out of that—one that reflects our times, our collective mood, and our culture’s aspirations. People—lots of people—will adopt the new style, and go from trying to be creative with their clothes to being genuinely creative with their lives—from insisting on the important uniqueness of their individuality to collaborating more in groups. Looking forward to that is very exciting.

I have a few ideas about what might happen, and I’ll probably post some of them later. But for now, I just want to predict (and pray) that before too long, we’ll start being able to say, “I’m wearing head-to-toe [blank],” and be proud of it.

Burn your bra

Okay, here's the first fashion prediction I want to share with you: bralessness is going to be in.

The history of the brassiere tells us that the modern bra evolved out of the corset. In the late nineteenth century, concerns about corsets’ health risks and physical restrictiveness led to the invention of a new, supposedly more comfortable undergarment. This new underthing was like a corset split in half, with the bottom part cinching in the waist and the upper part supporting the bust. Over time, the waist corset evolved into the lighter, elasticized girdle, which in turn fell almost completely out of usage in the late 1960s, when control-top pantyhose rendered it obsolete. Today, of course, most women’s below-the-waist undergarments consist of nothing more than panties. The top half of the corset, in contrast, changed very little over the course of the twentieth century; most bras retain the corset’s boning (underwire) and rigidity (padding). The brassiere’s function, as well, has remained the same as that of the corset: the reshaping of the breasts into a desirable, artificial shape. The bra remains, essentially, a corset for the breasts.

If the top half of women’s undergarments had kept pace with the bottom half, then today, instead of brassieres, most women would be wearing the upper-body equivalent of panties: camisoles. Why did it not happen that way? It seemed for a time that it might: in the ‘60s, some women stopped wearing bras, and many continued this trend into the 1970s. In the ‘80s, though, the switch to “power dressing” and a backlash to feminism caused the bra to regain its status as a crucial foundation garment, which it retains today.

In my opinion, wearing a bra is extremely uncool. Apart from being shockingly old-fashioned, bras are uncomfortable, prudish, ugly, and expensive. So why do most women still wear them? I’ve heard large-breasted women say they find going braless uncomfortable. There’s also the aesthetic factor: bras can disguise the appearance of breasts that are droopy or asymmetrical. But why do women with nice-looking, regular-sized breasts still wear bras?

It all has to do with sexual repression. Un-bra’ed breasts are very sexy; they have shape, personality, and a natural bounciness. Breasts in a bra are comparatively much less sexy; molded into perfect, geometric hemispheres, “supported” and held in place, they are sanitized, and, I think, desexualized. The contemporary “hottie,” with her skintight T-shirt over her Victoria’s Secret bra, has transformed herself into a safe and unthreatening visual treat for men. Her cartoon breasts—nippleless and immobile, like Barbie’s—give no hint of their actual functions as secondary sexual characteristics or milk-producing organs. Bras do the same thing to breasts that corsets did to waists: they objectify them, turning them into symbols of femininity by distorting and destroying their natural, feminine shape.

I think it’s time for women to stop wearing bras. It’s “been time” for a while, but I think American culture might actually, finally, be ready for it. There aren’t that many clear signs that the trend is coming—the most obvious is American Apparel’s promotion of the no-bra look in its ads and online product photos—but I think that bralessness would extend and resolve too many existing, long-term trends in fashion not to become a fad. For one thing, the women most visually associated with fashion—models—do not wear bras. That's partly because they don’t need them because they’re so skinny and have small breasts as a result. But it’s also just not the convention for models to wear bras on the runway. Why should it be any different in real life? Women are getting more and more interested in high fashion, and wearing clothes just like runway models do would be another way of being authentically stylish. Secondly, I think that small breasts in themselves should become trendy because of their above-mentioned association with thinness—which, of course, continues to be quite the fashionable body type for females. A bralessness trend would give thin women yet another way to show off how thin they are. Finally, I don’t understand why bralessness hasn’t been “in” despite being so inherently rebellious and punk. In a society where we are constantly searching for the new, hip thing, the no-bra option is just too obvious of a potential fashion statement to be ignored.

Something is currently brewing in fashion regarding women’s underwear, and it’s all bound up in this transparency thing that is so big for spring. I predict that within a year, that theme will be carried to the next level. Underwear has been revealed and examined, and next it will be cast off as an unnecessary artifice standing in the way of fashion’s reimagining of the body. But I suggest adopting this trend now, before it happens, when it is still weird, naughty, and utterly cool.