Maximizing the contradictions

I've already complained about how, in this twilight of the Late Modern collage aesthetic, consumers are required to put a lot of time and effort into expressing themselves through creative consumption. So now I'd like to propose a better, newer, more advanced transitional aesthetic -- a tide-over until the recession-delayed New Sportswear.

I mentioned it in my post about Unhairdos. My idea is called Beautiful Ugliness and would consist of ensembles, in various mediums including but not limited to fashion, in which disparate elements are combined without regard to aesthetic harmony and in fact with the goal of creating dissonance.

I think Beautiful Ugliness is a good next aesthetic step because it's a clear way to acknowledge a problem that I think we as a culture are avoiding: that our current mash-up culture is a temporary, uneasy compromise at best and is not helping to move us forward. Because, I think, we are so afraid of facing the huge difficulty of collectively fabricating more original cultural forms to meet our modern human needs, we're procrastinating by obsessively trying to make mash-up culture "work." And of course it feeds into consumerism, too. If everything is original and different but everything has to "match" and "balance," etc., you have to spend a lot of time shopping for the right-color, right-style, right-"wrong," in a way, products. Magazines and TV shows are full of advice on how to make all the crap work together. Obviously it's a big strain on everyone. Why not put a stop to it with something a little more "real" and honest?

Instead of "right-wrong," I propose "wrong-right." This means, instead of trying to sublimate the apparent "wrong"-ness of our mismatched culture into the "right"ness of matchy-matchyness, let's put it out there, create obviously "wrong" mash-ups, and decide to accept these as the new "right."

Think about it: when you look around as you walk down the street, does everything match? It absolutely doesn't. When you walk around in nature, in a forest, say, everything matches to some degree. But in artificial human environments, aesthetic continuity exists within individual, self-contained environments such as stores, sure -- but not (except in the strip-mall environments that almost everyone agrees are heinous) in larger blocks of what actually constitute our living environments. If you look at a whole block, a whole street, together -- everything clashes. Everything is a jumble. Because it wasn't masterminded; it's the result of evolution, not intelligent design. And lots of city planners would tell you that that's precisely what makes good neighborhoods good. So why don't we expand this aesthetic, which is so expressive of what's good about melting-pot culture, and apply it more deliberately?

I love what Andy Warhol wrote in THE Philosophy of Andy Warhol about his own version of Beautiful Ugliness:

I really look awful, and I never bother to primp up or try to be appealing because I just don't want anyone to get involved with me. And that's the truth I play down my good features and play up the bad ones. So I look awful and I wear the wrong pants and the wrong shoes and I come at the wrong time with the wrong friends, and I say the wrong things and I talk to the wrong person, and then still sometimes somebody gets interested and I freak out and I wonder, "What did I do wrong?" So then I go home and try to figure it out. "Well I must be wearing something that somebody thinks is attractive. I'd better change it. Before things get too far...So I think, "How weird. I know I look bad. I made myself look especially bad--especially wrong--because I knew a lot of the right people would be there, and still someone somehow got interested..."

Of course this, like a lot of what Warhol wrote, is intentionally facetious/misleading, as what he called looking "awful" and "wrong" was a large part of the cult of personality he deliberately fostered in order to get the attention he claims he was avoiding. This ironically-ironic ambivalence towards the positive-attention-getting potential of "ugly" aesthetics would be one of Beautiful Ugliness's contrbutions to the cleansing transition out of irony into Post-Postmodernism.

Arguably some hipsters dress Beautifully Ugly, but most try to make stuff match and "look good." I just think it would be so cool if more people tried to "look bad." And wouldn't it be amazing if "bad" became the new "good"? Maybe that extreme of topsy-turviness would be enough to "reset" us aesthetically so we could come up with some good new stuff.

What's cooler than being cool?

How can our culture turn around from the dead end it’s reached with Cool?  This is something I think about a lot.  We’ve been stuck for way too long re-processing the same cultural material, in this hyper-ironic state of mind, and the feeling of stagnation is overpowering.

Marshall McLuhan would say we’re in a Narcissus phase.  In Understanding Media, he described what he called the “cooling” process, in which a culture uses play, parody, and miming to assimilate new (“hot”) information.  Cooling serves a healthy cultural purpose, but it can become unhealthy if overindulged in.  This often happens in the aftermath of the introduction of a new form of media.  In the hyper-cooling phase that follows the invention of a media form, people, not yet “understanding” the new form, become fascinated and enslaved by the extensions of themselves in it.  This enslavement occurs because people make the crucial mistake of thinking that the new media is separate from “real life,” when it is actually a part – an extension – of life and of people themselves.

In the present day, the hypnotizing media is the internet.  Because of the internet, the speed of culture and its cooling has gotten so fast that living with media is like watching a video of life that’s on a split-second time delay: disorienting, disturbing, and discouraging – but hypnotizing.  Hypnotizing because the split-second delay gives the false sensation of watching something fake, something different from our lives – a fantastic show that we don’t want to miss.

McLuhan would say that we’re making the same mistake as Narcissus, who, he emphasizes, did not fall in love with himself, but with a reflection of himself which he genuinely believed to be another person.  Similarly, what we haven’t realized, in relentlessly parodying, recycling, and remixing pop culture, then consuming it again, is that this parodied, recycled, remixed culture isn’t some “other” culture, separate from our own, better than it – it IS our culture.  Our problem, then, isn’t the common diagnosis of self-love, but rather self-alienation and resulting self-hate.  Who but a really, really messed-up person could look at her reflection in the mirror and think to herself, “That person isn’t me”?  But that’s exactly what our culture is doing.

And it’s clear that, subconsciously, the culture knows that it’s messed-up.  Because just as Narcissus’s initial happiness at meeting such a beautiful creature quickly turned to anger and disgust when he found his image unresponsive, the initial attraction we felt when discovering ourselves on the internet turned quickly to ugly, hateful tearing-down when we started experiencing how empty it is to feed upon oneself.

McLuhan doesn’t provide an answer for how to overcome the problem of over-cooling.  He does mention something called a “break point,” however, which seems to be the point at which a trend tips and reverses to the other direction.  We simply have to be approaching such a break point now.  How will the tip happen, though?

I’ve been trying to figure this out by extending the metaphor of cooling, asking myself, what happens when something over-cools?  The short answer is that it freezes.  That would translate into the speed of internet “cooling” breaking the speed of the internet itself.  Literally that’s impossible, since it would mean images of real-life events would have to appear on the internet before they occurred in real life.  Conceptually, however, that’s just the right idea.  We have to put things on the internet, and out into the internet-adapted culture generally, before they “happen.”  Meaning, we have to put things out there that aren’t real -- that are, in other words, art.

And entertainment has started doing just that.  The NY Mag article about Gossip Girl pointed out that the most ground-breaking thing about the series is how all the gossip surrounding its actors’ real lives may be being manufactured by the same person who writes the show for the characters.  So that would mean that the gossip reported on the internet is actually being written ahead of time.  This is an old trick, of course – the film studios figured it out a long time ago.  This has also been happening on the super-scripted reality shows like The Hills.  Again, a kind of art sneaking in under the guise of life.  We say this kind of behavior is somehow reprehensible, but I think it's just what we need.

Because like I started thinking here in reference to the internet, I think that our almost-frozen culture is also paradoxically the “hot”test it’s ever been.  The question of which extreme the temperature is actually at doesn’t matter: the sensation is the same, and all that matters is how we conceptualize it.  Are we going to keep thinking of our fake culture as “cool,” and tricking ourselves into thinking that as we constantly disparage it we’re talking about something better than ourselves?  Or are we going to assert that we are part of it – very much a part of it?

What’s “cooler than being cool” is, as we all know, “Ice Cold.”  I think what Andre 3000 wrote about in "Hey Ya" was actually a quite profound message about the redemptive pain of breaking through alienation by embracing it.  In the video, Andre 3000 is the quintessential alienated artist in the act of transcendence.  He's supposed to "act like [he's] got some sense," but all he knows how to do is "play," because that's the only way he knows of dealing with the complete ridiculousness of the adulation of his public (both in the studio and through T.V. screens) -- by inciting it, embracing it, and raising it to even-crazier heights.  He does this by putting on a false persona -- not just one, but actually 6 personas (1 of them repeated 3 times), each with its own costume and personality and style of seduction.  The seduction is both overtly fake (the over-the-top suaveness of the singer, the girl who runs up on stage to hug him but then ends up mainly wanting to wave at the camera) and intensely real and personal (the sweet girl in the yellow top blowing a kiss to the keyboardist, who shyly smiles).  Both modes coexist and make each other possible -- embolden each other, perhaps.

The video parallels the love story in the song, which is itself a metaphor for the alienation in modern life.  The song is about romantic ambivalence: "But does she really want to / but can't stand to see me walk out the door" (these thoughts incoherently running into each other, they're so mixed-up).  There's this terror of committing to something, for fear that its disappointing reality ("separate's always better when there's feelings involved") will make the fantasy crumble ("got it just don't get it till there's nothing at all").  What makes love the exception?  There's no straight answer to that, other than not to try to pin down an answer.  Instead of listening to the words of the song, we should just dance; and instead of introducing Andre 3000 to our mother, we should just have sex with him.  We should just live -- and living necessitates a little fakeness, a little superficiality, but also a little faith, just like love.

In the video, the bizarre instantaneousness of media communication drives home the miraculous coexistence of superficiality and depth: real-life Andre 3000 transforms into a still image of himself on a poster waved at him by a fan; Polaroid pictures develop images of what's currently going on before our eyes.  But again, this can only happen (actually not, according to the Polaroid Corporation) if we "shake it."  Andre 3000 demands this participation, not just by actively seducing his audience, but by weaving a really infectious call-and-response into his song.  Even uptight Catholic school teachers can't resist the excitement of involving oneself in this kind of "play."

"Ice Cold" means that state of extreme “so-hot-it’s-cool”ness which "Hey Ya" is about, which is the best kind of coolness -- the kind in which you’re actually going out on a limb and owning what you create.  Instead of pretending you’re somehow above what we all do now – put on personas, wear costumes, fake attitudes, create brands for ourselves – generally “be superficial” – you’re identifying with it and even asserting that what seems “fake” is, in the world of modern media, actually the realest thing there is.

So hot it's cool, so cool it's hot

I've been reading Understanding Media and thinking about how McLuhan's theories about hot and cool media apply to the internet.  It's clear that with its combination of "hot" text and "cool" electronic communication and participation, the internet does not fit neatly into either category.  But does that mean that McLuhan's theory doesn't apply to the internet, that it breaks down in our new media atmosphere?  Or does the mixing of "hot" and "cool" online make the internet "lukewarm"?

I think a good way of understanding the internet in McLuhan's terms is with the description used in a Pop-Tart commercial I remember well from the '80s, which seized on the phenomenon of how the burning sensation of freshly-toasted fruit filling searing one's tongue is indistinguishable from the similar "burning" coolness you feel when your tongue is stuck to ice.  The overstimulation of your senses in one direction leads to an inverted experience of the sensation.  And so, Pop-Tarts are "so hot, they're cool -- so cool, they're hot."

That's what the internet is like.  It is, I believe, an inherently "hot" medium -- so hot that we've come to experience it as "cool."  The internet's heat comes from its inherent characteristics:

• high definition (computer screens)
  
• high density of data
  
• high specialization (specialized function of transmitting text, images, and sound)
• intense engagement of a single sense (sight)
  
• high degree of fragmentation (on millions of web sites)
  

The internet's "cool" attributes have to do with its apparent effects:

• high audience participation
• unification of time in a continuous present
• inclusion of all
• retribalization

These "cool" effects have all come about precisely because of the internet's extreme "hot"ness: it's the "hot" qualities of data density and intense visual engagement that bring about the "cool" sensation of unified time and instantaneousness; "hot" fragmentation that is causing "cool" retribalization and all-inclusiveness; and the "hot" specialization of computer technology that requires "cool" participation.  The extreme hotness of the internet makes it "feel" and in some ways behave like a "cool" medium.  But it still lacks the essence of "cool"ness.

McLuhan theorized that electric technology would deliver us out of the literate (often misconstrued as "rational") mindset of mechanization back into an intuitive ("irrational") world, where myth, the "total field," non-illusionistic art, structure and configuration (as opposed to linearity), and oral culture would gain ascendency.  But I don't see that happening.  Sure, the internet's intensity creates a kind of buzz that gives a feeling of iconography, mythology, simultaneity, and complex structure; but, to me, in practice the internet mainly displays the characteristics McLuhan assigns to traditional, Western, "mechanized" culture: fragmentary, superficial relationships; sequentiality; the hiding or denying of causes; an over-focus on "point of view"; attention to specialized segments of information; the divorce of form and function; and written modes of communication.

McLuhan warns that cultures always make the mistake of trying to use new technologies to do the work of the old.  That's what we're currently doing with the internet by using it as the medium for our same old literacy-focused culture.  It's not impossible for the internet to "cool down" so that we can bite into it without burning our tongues; but in order for that to happen, I believe it would have to evolve dramatically from what it is today.  It's fun to think about the ways in which people initially "misunderstood" how to use the internet -- which suggests that we "get it" now.  But I think we're still mistaking a "hot" medium for a "cool" one.  That's a mistake that may have some disappointing consequences.

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.

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.

The coming collapse of the American art market

I've been wondering what will happen when the American art market collapses. I think it's going to happen soon -- maybe this summer.


The economic super-boom America has been in since the end of WWII paralleled the super-boom in American art. It was no coincidence that America's political and economic supremacy made American artists supreme. But that is about to change. Now that our boom has gone bust, the art boom will meet the same fate.


It's not that there will be no more money for art. Just like in other recessions, the American super-rich will get to keep much of their wealth and will still be able to spend it on expensive art. They just won't want to. What made American art so attractive to new money was what it symbolized: that exciting American supremacy. The rich didn't just want the status of owning art; they wanted the psychological justification for their wealth and power that that art seemed to provide. But once American supremacy diminishes, American art won't look so appetizing anymore. As a result, American artists are going to see a lot less demand for their work and much lower prices.


The art itself will change, too. In contrast to the egotistic exuberance of early-boom artists like Pollock, post-boom Americans artists will shed their bravado and mystique. No one will be interested in that anymore. And in a way, that will be a big relief. All the postmodern ennui, the fragmentation, reflexivity, and ambiguity, will finally come to an end. Postmodernism will be revealed for what it really was: not a discrete period constituting a reaction to Modernism, but merely Modernism's self-digestion and death. In other words, there is no such thing as Postmodernism. The period properly called "postmodern" has only recently arrived. Postmodernism was just the final period of Modernism: Late Modernism.


The new art won't be "post"-anything. It will be new. And it will build on the foundations of our new, globalized reality. It will be hugely influenced by the 2.0 paradigm. It will see the reclassification of the artist from lone visionary to collaborative craftsman. Luckily for America, it will begin right here, during our decline. Unluckily for America, it will then spread and find its greatest expression abroad, during the rise of other countries.


Update 2/8/08: Uneasiness at London auctions
Update 4/17/08: Is Street Turmoil Coloring Art Market? [WSJ preview, subscription required for full article]

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.

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.