I was right: Calvin Klein 90s minimalism

On December 8th I predicted that 1990s-era minimalism would come back and that Calvin Klein should capitalize on this. And on February 13th JC Report's review of "Recession-Friendly Style" in the fall collections said:

Calvin Klein rigorously adhered to the brand's minimalist DNA, with Francisco Costa skillfully executing clean, well-tailored clothes reminiscent of the house's '90s heyday.

It remains to be seen whether other designers will pick up on this trend and grow it. I still think so!

Strong shoulder

When fashion editors write about the recycling of 1980s fashion, they always take care to mention that no one need worry because one thing that will never come back from the 80's is the shoulder pad.  I think this is wrong!  I think big, strong shoulders for women should come back.

Particularly when and if Hillary Clinton loses the Democratic primary, a lot of pissed-off white women are going to want to put on something that really makes them feel powerful.  So are a lot of job-seeking or job-holding-on-to women, when and if the recession gets worse.

Suits have been coming back for a long time and I think they should really come back now.  Women's fashion should stop playing around with "menswear" looks and just do some good-old, powerful, classic jackets for women.  And, underneath, perhaps a regular-old shirt instead of a fancy cami.  And on the bottom, a skirt to the knee (the conservative length for hard times).

I was right: Natural haircare & unhairdos

This article in today's (bad, bad!) NYT confirms both the trend towards the mainstreaming of natural (non-shampoo) hair care, which I wrote about in Long hair (penultimate paragraph), and the trend of messy, falling-apart hairdos, which I wrote about in Unhairdos.

Graffiti

One last reader question:

Do you see graffiti subjects or colors trending a certain way?

I am far from being an expert on graffiti, so I have no idea what the current trends are. However, the trend in street art that interests me the most is the work of the Splasher. The group behind "the Splasher" is very opposed to the growing alliance between and merging of art and commerce which I'm predicting will be the huge trend of the 21st century. "The Splasher" is one of the early examples of resistance to that trend.

Interestingly, I believe that the group behind the splashings may have had its own anti-co-optation art co-opted by Sephora, whose current promotion features a woman's face "splashed" with different colors of makeup. Granted, this is clearly supposed to be a Pollock reference -- but it's curious that a "splattered" image was chosen to advertise all the other "art"-themed makeup looks, which don't even include a Pollock-inspired look. It's possible that the Splasher was on the advertisers' minds and that the "splashed" aesthetic will be seeping into popular culture.  MAC Cosmetics is using the street art aesthetic in one of its new lines, too, by partnering with graffiti artist Fafi.  These art-focused makeup lines are evidence that cosmetics companies are finally beginning to resolve the mismatch between clothing and makeup (which I mentioned in this post) by catching up with apparel companies on the "creativity" trend.

Getting back to the anti-corporate-art movement: Just as international resistance to American dominance is taking a terrorist form, the Splasher's resistance to capitalism took the form of "art terrorism." But terrorism is no use against the market. Advertisers mastered and improved upon "guerrilla" publicity long ago, rhetorically bankrupting such tactics for their inventors. The organizers of the "splashings," by engaging in the same forum as the street artists, "lowered" themselves to the same level as the perceived sell-outs, and hurt their own cause more than they helped it.

How will counter-culture cope with the almost instantaneous co-optation of the "creative underclass" and its "terrorist" tactics by consumerism? Again, culture will follow the model of war: just as, under a Democratic administration, the U.S. will withdraw from Iraq and allow the Iraqis to "fight it out," capitalism, too, will cool its heels while the artists tear each other apart. Corporations will extract as much profit as possible from the fight, then pick up one day and leave, abandoning the creatives to fend for themselves in their ravaged community. Afterwards there will be a long period of "rebuilding," during which anger towards the exploiters will grow -- but it still won't find a powerful outlet in "terrorist" actions for years to come, because such tactics will be so discredited. Instead a "shadow" creative movement will grow, safe in isolation from commerce. One day, it, too, will be co-opted. That seems to be how things work.

I was right: natural-colored shoes

Today Bill Cunningham's "On the Street" is about natural-colored shoes, which I wrote about spotting on the street on January 18th.

Pack animals

Here's another reader question:

Why are women pack animals and men are not? Yes, men have briefcases, but women always carry around lots of stuff.

There are two reasons, one of which arose somewhat out of the other. The first reason is that women can't, or won't, carry things in their pockets, as men do. Back when women wore voluminous dresses, bags were unnecessary because women would carry things in little pouches worn inside their skirts, which they reached into through slits in the sides of their dresses. But once the female silhouette was modernized, there was no more room for these pouches. Women could use pockets, like men do -- but a pocket with actual stuff, such as a wallet or keys, in it placed anywhere on a modern female outfit tends to destroy the female silhouette. So vain females eschew pockets and instead carry bags. (Non-vain females often don't have a choice, since clothing manufacturers, in response to women's preferences, often don't include pockets on women's garments.)

The second reason women carry around so much stuff is that they have a lot of stuff. The main items women carry that men don't are personal-grooming ones: makeup, hairbrushes, etc. These things can be, and used to be, contained in relatively modest-sized bags. But during the last 20 years or so, women started carrying even more stuff in their bags, just because they could -- and so bags got larger in response.

One reason women started carrying more stuff is that there was simply more stuff to carry. The obvious culprits are cell phones and iPods, which didn't use to exist. But women now carry around all kinds of other items that didn't seem essential in the past but now do, such as hand sanitizer, bottled water, breath-freshening strips, etc. Again, the focus with these items is personal care -- a huge, easy selling point for women. Manufacturers thoughtfully make these personal-care goods in "purse-size" containers for women to buy. They are feeding off not just a practical need, but also a psychological need women have to feel "secure" and "prepared" to deal with emergencies like bad breath or bacteria-covered skin. This gives women the illusion of power in a workplace still subtly dominated by men.

And lastly, there's the Sex and the City effect. That show and its huge rippling cultural effect (whose demise is finally upon us, heralded by the terrible copycat shows Lipstick Jungle and Cashmere Mafia) taught women to see the fantasy of glamorous, sexy "New York" as the ultimate covetable fashion ideal. Unlike most women across America, women in New York don't drive around in cars, so they can't keep their stash of necessities with them in the glove compartment. Instead they carry around huge bags. Women across America have recently followed suit, carrying similarly huge bags even though the original purpose for them is absent.

Gambling

Over the next few days I'll be answering a few questions a reader e-mailed me. Here's the first one:

Gambling in all forms is VERY popular. Gambling used to be an activity that was considered somewhat shameful (if not sinful) among the middle class... Now it's ubiquitous. It was once considered louche, now it has no disreputable air. I wonder if you believe that this will continue or whether it will reverse since the economy is in a tailspin.

In my opinion, it was the instability of the economy that made the gambling trend so popular in the first place. Of course, back when the poker trend started a few years ago, it was in an atmosphere of economic growth and relative optimism, which on the surface justified a trend towards playing games in which one risks money. But beneath that optimism probably lay a subconscious worry about just when our economic bubble was going to burst. That underlying anxiety perhaps led people to voluntarily take on economic risk in order to gain a feeling of control over it. Now that that risk has become all too real, I expect that the popularity of gambling will indeed dwindle.

Update: Camouflage

In December I posted about all the camouflage army jackets I'd been seeing around town.  Since then I've seen more and more camouflage, but remained unsure of what it meant. Today I read this article, which describes how gang members in the U.S. army in Iraq are sending flak jackets back to America for use in gang warfare.  It gave me a couple of new ideas about the source of the camo trend.

On one level, the camouflage trend may have come from a street trend: gang members started wearing the stolen camouflage flak jackets around, clothing companies picked up on this, and the trend was turned into fashion.

On a more abstract level, the use of camouflage as a print in civilian wear may be a symbol of how American corporations are using the war to make money.  Commercializing camouflage by bringing it into "fashion" could be a statement about the commercialization of warfare.

The favored shade of blue for females in politics

This morning a tipster directed me to the Drudge Report's side-by-side comparison of Hillary Clinton and Margaret Thatcher wearing the same "Thatcher Blue" (link).

It reminded me of another woman in politics, Barbara Bush the elder, who also famously liked to wear bright "Barbara blue."

It makes sense for a woman seeking popularity to wear blue, since it's well-established that blue is the #1 favorite color of people everywhere.  This particular bright, primary blue is the kind of intense color that children tend to respond to well.  Maybe these ladies are trying to evoke happy childhood feelings in us?  Or maybe choosing this super-charged blue is a way of taking the conservatism and respectability of darker blue and making it eye-catching and exciting.

Hats

I noticed a strong trend in the March issue of Teen Vogue: it seemed to be full of hats.

To check whether I wasn't overestimating just how many hats there were, I went through and counted.  Sure enough, the issue contained 60 images of women wearing hats.  In addition, there were 23 images of women wearing some kind of non-hat head decoration: 5 flowers, 6 bows, 2 turbans, 6 tiaras, 13 headbands, 1 large pin, 2 feathers, 4 colored hair extensions, 3 sunglasses-on-top-of-heads, 1 visor, and 3 full-deployed hoods on hoodies. 83 head accessories in all.

This is a big deal.  That is way more hats and hatlike accessories than any magazine has shown in a long time.  It's definitely a trend, one that Teen Vogue's editors seem to be pushing and which therefore has a good chance of catching on.

What do all the hats mean?  Since hat-wearing is associated with the past, and particularly with Jackie O and the early 1960s, hats may be popular because of the recent Camelot nostalgia in coverage of the 2008 election.  They also fit in with the return to conservative dressing for fall 2008.  Recently young trendsetters have played around with hats as fun, often vintage-y accessories, and in recent years we've seen the trucker hat, the cowboy hat, the hippie headband, and the fedora have comebacks.

But I see hats and other head decorations as more than just another ingredient to throw into the style-mixing blender.  I group them with the veils, masks, and hoods that have also appeared on runways in the past few seasons; as such, they are part of an ongoing, long-range ideological fashion trend, as opposed to being a fleeting fad.

Hats are profoundly traditional, symbolic, ritualistic clothing items.  Throughout history they have been indicators of religious affiliation, class status, and even political belief.  Hats are carriers and indicators of meaning, and the reemergence of the hat signals people's waxing interest in meaningfulness.  This trend signals that people are interested in identifying with, believing in, and standing for something.  In this way, hats are very post-postmodern.

It's curious that hats are returning just as there's been renewed interest in JFK in the form of comparisons between him and Obama.  JFK was the first US president to go hatless; this choice caused quite a stir, for at the time the hat was a key component of standard business dress, and going without one was somewhat shockingly informal.  But I don't think the return of hats means a return to formality, because the trend toward informality is extremely strong.  For instance, Obama has recently been echoing Kennedy's hatlessness by often going tieless.

I think the popularity of hats has more to do with maturity than formality.  JFK's reason for not wearing a hat was that he thought hats made him look old.  At the time he was elected, America's idealism about the future was very tied to positive associations between youth and progress.  The same thing is going on today, except that youth is being conceived of in a different way.  Simply being young is not the point; rather, it's the capacity of young people to display maturity, and thereby to increase the credibility and value of youth culture as a whole, that is gaining attention and favor.

The fact that stylish young people are donning hats shows that they are ready to actively and positively participate in culture -- adult culture.

What will the new hats look like?  I can't wait to see.  I'm hoping that the "reference" hats we've seen recently, like the trapper hat, will give way to exciting original designs within the next year.

Millennials

Americans born between 1976 and 2000, congratulations: you've been branded.

Although we were called "Generation Y" for a long time, and have had a few other labels tried out on us, such as "MTV Generation," "Tamagotchi Generation," "Internet Generation," etc., I'm confident that Millennials we now are, and Millennials we will remain.

I think this just because of my very unscientific observation that that's the word the media are trending towards using for us.  I also think the term "Millennial" will ultimately become universal because, of all the preliminary monikers, it best captures the zeitgeist of the generation it describes.  "Millennial," with its connotations of great opportunity for either spectacular destruction or utopian recreation, encapsulates the important history-making role the current youth generation holds in American history.  Its sci-fi overtone captures the importance of technology and the internet to this generation.  And finally, it's just extremely accurate.  The Millennials are the generation that came of age at a very significant point in time: the turn of the second millennium.

Tricky to spell, delicious to pronounce, "Millennials," I predict, will henceforth be the name for the generation after Generation X.

Generational détente

“If you want to be treated like adults, then act like adults.”

That’s a classic line teachers use to deal with misbehaving students.  It’s good advice, but often frustrating to hear and difficult to follow.  Kids do want to act like adults; they want it more than anything.  But they can’t do it so long as they’re kept in the role of children – and that’s what teachers, unwittingly, are doing to their students when they bark at them to “act like adults.”

In ancient societies, the path to adulthood was clear.  Everyone grew up in the same way, following in their parents’ footsteps and ritualistically gaining entrance into adult culture soon after puberty.  But today, because of our exceedingly complicated and everchanging culture, facilitated by sophisticated, pervasive international media, the old model is broken.

Instead of growing up into the culture of its parents, each generation of kids today grows up with its own culture.  The latest generation gets the latest culture – and because each wave of culture inevitably reacts against the previous one, the younger generation’s culture is consistently anathema to the older’s.  This isolates the young from the old, making the elders’ wisdom look obsolete and the youths’ offerings look destructive.

Kids can’t “act like adults” because they’ve become conditioned to think “adulthood” is something that belongs to a completely alien sphere ruled by a different culture.  To act “adult,” in this paradigm, would require kids to leave their culture, where they feel powerful and engaged – and welcomed – and enter the alien adult culture, which seems to have nothing to offer them but reprimands.  Of course, no kids want to do that.

And so each generation embarks on its own terrifying mission of learning, on its own, how to grow up.  I imagine that this has been going on to some degree ever since the dawn of civilization.  The problem certainly grew enormously during the twentieth century.  But only in the last few decades has the speed of change gotten so fast and the reach of media extended so far that now the young and the old seem to exist on separate planets.

I think we’re at a crucial moment in our cultural history.  In the 1960s, the Baby Boomers rejected their parents’ values and founded their own youth culture.  In the 1980s, Generation X rejected that culture and dropped out, retreating into its own anti-cultures and sub-cultures.  The Millennials are now asserting a new youth culture -- one that thrives on individual involvement in larger society through the media.

Recently, predictably, the Boomers have had a rather negative response to Millennial culture, labeling it self-centered and self-indulgent.  I think there’s a lot of truth to those accusations.  But they’re not the full story.  I think the Millennial generation would love to engage in some productive, other-centered activity – if it could only reach outside its generational bubble into the “adult” sphere.

The key to an American renaissance is wrapped up in ending the culture war, but culture is really just the medium for a deeper conflict: What we really need to do is end the generational war – and the way to do that is for young and old to together build a shared culture which everyone can enjoy and in which everyone has a stake.  We need to achieve generational détente: a reconciliation between the youngest generation (the Millennials) and its parents (the Boomers), brokered by those in between (Generation X).

I’ve seen hints of the beginnings of generational détente in the movies recently.  On one side there’s Juno and Knocked Up.  In both those movies, Millennials got into trouble by doing a very “adult” thing – getting pregnant and having a baby – when they were physically – but not psychologically, economically, or in any other way – ready.  Tellingly, in both movies, the characters’ parents, Boomer characters, ended up giving them priceless good advice and practical help that made their “adult” task work out in the end – and helped the characters to do some emotional “growing up,” as well.  In both movies, the Generation X characters – the adoptive couple in Juno and the older sister and her husband in Knocked Up – ended up in the role of commiserators with the Millennials.  They were able to offer understanding and companionship, but were short on good advice and practical help, and ended up disappointing the Millennials when they needed them the most.

In The 40 Year-Old Virgin, the opposite thing happened.  A 40-year-old man – right on the cusp between the Baby Boom and Gen-X generations – tried and finally succeeded to reach another “growing up”milestone – losing his virginity.  But just as the pregnant girls in Juno and Knocked Up were too young for their endeavors, the main character in The 40 Year-Old Virgin was too old.  He almost messed up his best chance at a good first time by relying on his Gen-X friends’ advice, which kept him motivated but ultimately lacked substance.  What saved him was some bonding with a Millennial – his girlfriend’s daughter.

The message in these movies is that the different generations need each other.   Each generation has an important role to play: The Boomers have the wisdom; the Millennials have the energy and enthusiasm; and the Gen X-ers have the communication skills.  If we can find a way to put these ingredients together, we’ll have a powerful recipe for cultural renewal.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first signs of a generational truce showed up in the movies.  Like it or not, the mass media are going to become even more enmeshed into our lives in the coming years.  We need to make sure that we become empowered agents, not victims, in this new media-filled world.  And so we need to pick a leader who can navigate the media in a way that brings the generations together.  That leader is Barack Obama.

Recently our media stars have become very political, with Angelina and Brad traveling the world to do humanitarian aid, George Clooney making edgy movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger getting elected governor, and Oprah making a presidential endorsement.  What we need now is for our political stars to succeed in the media.  JFK was good at that and his skill with the media was an important ingredient in his success.  Obama is even better, and I’m convinced his media-savviness is going to win him the presidency.  He is a classic Generation X communicator: a bit detached, a bit vague, but with enormous perspective, a knack for making connections and establishing common ground, and quite visionary and inspiring on the topic of the future.

I believe all our American generations are willing to “grow up” by putting aside their cultural differences and turning the media back into a tool of positive change.  I think the Boomers are ready to cede a bit of their control of the world stage.  I think Generation X has been ready for a long time to take a bigger role in culture.  I think the Millennials are ready to look beyond themselves to something much bigger.  And I think America is ready to “grow up” as a country and participate in global government in a mature fashion.

Kids need to act like adults.  But adults need to, too.  "Adults" are people who know how to communicate in a responsible, respectful, positive way.  Obama is communicating for us right now and will successfully lead us in our efforts to communicate with each other and the world.

Vote tomorrow, Tuesday the 5th!!!

Hillary Clinton, middle-class hero?

Hillary Clinton's political cynicism is spilling over into sartorial cynicism.

I have admired Clinton's skill at putting herself together so that she looks feminine and approachable without appearing unprofessional. But after seeing her outfit at last night’s debate, it’s become clear to me that her campaign is not just trying to make her look pleasant; they are deliberately dressing her up to look middle-class.

Clinton was born, perhaps, into a middle-class family. But now, as a graduate of Wellesley and Yale Law, a former lawyer, and a senator, she is a happy member of the upper-middle class. Yet in every respect, her clothing in last night’s debate rejected the upper-middle-class aesthetic in favor of a solidly –- and, I’m pretty sure, deliberately –- middle-class look. Here’s a rundown of how her ensemble broke the rules of upper-middle-class dressing, as set forth in Paul Fussell’s Class:

Her suit: The casual and untraditional style of her jacket, which had a small collar but no lapels, sent a message similar to the one Fussell saw in Reagan’s flouting of Eastern Establishment standards of dress. By eschewing the upper-middle-class professional look, which would have her wearing very conservative, man-tailored skirt suits, Clinton distances herself from the taint of elitism. Her choice of suit color is also key. For the upper-middle-class, Fussell says, “the color toward which everything aspires is really navy.” And yet Clinton has consistently avoided navy as a neutral in favor of black and the brown of last night. Finally, the fabric of Clinton’s suit was on the cheap-looking side. On the topic of fabric, Fussell writes, "Middle-class clothes tend to err by excessive smoothness, to glitter a bit, to shine even before they're worn. Upper-middle clothes, on the other hand, lean to the soft, textured, woolly, nubby." By this measure, the jacket Clinton wore in the previous debate was upper-middle-class; the one last night was much more middle. Finally, Clinton's outfit seemed to explicitly avoid the upper-middle-class look of layering. The matching color, and perhaps even fabric, of her jacket and shell made her look un-layered and therefore less classy.

Her jewelry: According to Fussell, upper-class women wear "very little jewelry" and have "a tendency to understate." But last night, as throughout her campaign, Clinton wore more than her share of jewelry, and none of it understated: a multi-strand beaded turquoise necklace with big oval turquoise button earrings. Nothing could convince me that Clinton would pick this jewelry out for herself; it's just too tacky and ridiculous. Worn together, the pieces looked like a matching set hawked on the Home Shopping Network. Not only were the necklace and earrings oversized and inelegant, but their turquoise stones lent them a Southwestern flair which Fussell repeatedly derides as very lower-class.

Her hair: According to Class, "the classiest women wear their hair for a lifetime in exactly the style they affected in college." I wouldn't expect Clinton to hew to that standard, since in her case this would mean a too-hippieish mass of long, frizzy hair. But she doesn't even meet Fussell's relaxed guideline for upper-class hair: "a hairstyle dating back eighteen or twenty years or so." If she had just held onto one of the styles she sported during the early Clinton years, she would be set. But her hair now is ultra-updated, complete with tawdry clashing ash-blond and caramel highlights, which again make her look very middle-class.

Perhaps if men had as much leeway in their formal dress, Barack Obama's people would be fiddling around with his clothes, too; but they don't, so they're not. Clinton's camp has, I believe, made a definite choice to make her look just like the soccer moms who carried her husband to victory. I have to say I don't like it. I want my politicians to dress for serious business, not a PTA meeting. But I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority on that. Clinton's style probably has the broad appeal her campaign is going for.