viz. - style

Fashion Misfires: The Hunger Games II.

Jenn Shapland — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 20:17:11 +0000

Image: author's own, photo of December 2013 cover of Vogue

To round out the fall 2013 season of viz, I follow up on Suss’s latest post re: the Hunger Games and the rhetoric of fashion. As Suss makes clear, the new film Catching Fire portrays style in the districts as Depression-drab-chic (to put it generously). Which is all kinds of problematic. In the continuing buzz surrounding the movie's release, however, I've noticed that it's the outrageous outfits of the Capitol dwellers that capture the most media and corporate attention.

Take, for instance, CoverGirl’s Catching Fire makeup line. The twelve “looks” in the Capitol Beauty Studio (no joke) are inspired by the ridiculous costumes every district’s tributes wear to garner the favor of the wealthy Capitol patrons. Internet hounds have been all over this, critiquing the makeup line especially harshly in relation to the book series’ anti-capitalist message; selling makeup like this misses all the irony of the book's portrayal of wealthy Capitol style, in which makeup is used as kind of a big practical joke on poor people. On the lighter side, you can see the line in action on the Hairpin's a-mazing video series "Just the Tips." [If you have some time to kill this time of year, you can also watch them attempt to wear sweatshirts under dresses (spoiler alert: doesn’t work).]

Or take a gander at the latest issue of Vogue, like I did while walking through the airport over Thanksgiving. One of the headlines on the cover reads "Hunger Games: Does Intermittent Fasting Really Work?" I didn't have the stomach to turn to the article and find out what it is they mean by "work." (Make you intermittently hungry, I presume?) Instead, let me provide you with Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence's response to a fan’s question about body image. When asked, “What is your response to people who judge others based on their appearance?” JLaw replies, “Well screw them…What are you going to do, be hungry everyday just to make people happy?”

If we listen to Vogue, it seems the answer might be a resounding “yes.”

Via http://www.botoxchronicmigraine.com/

And finally, while we’re at it, can we talk about how frequently and inappropriately the Capitol catchphrase “odds [ever] in your favor” has appeared in ads lately? Have you seen this Botox commercial? Are you as freaked out as I am? Botox people, why are you threatening us?! Perhaps they think repeating the refrain of a fictional community that forces kill to other kids for fun is, in fact, the best way to sell migraine medication. But also: since when is Botox a cure for migraines?

There you have it, viz readers. When we put all the facts together, one thing becomes clear. The only truly fabulous style to emerge from The Hunger Games is Jennifer Lawrence's ALH.*

Via Autostraddle, via Jennifer Lawrence’s Facebook

*that's alternative lifestyle haircut, y'all

Carson McCullers, Style Icon

Jenn Shapland — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 18:53:14 +0000

This post was originally published, in slightly different form, on the Harry Ransom Center's blog, Cultural Compass.

Photo of Carson McCullers by Cecil Beaton, via Cultural Compass

It might seem funny that an author’s fashion sense would even be a topic of discussion. What does it matter what a writer wears, so long as she writes? And yet, clothes, accessories, and everyday objects give us tangible, direct links to the past and to the people who wore them, used them, and kept them in their homes.

Personal style marks writers in revealing ways: it can be suggestive of time period, class, habits, or aesthetics. I think, perhaps, it distinguishes writers more than we realize. Consider Leo Tolstoy’s tunic and beard, Gertrude Stein’s long vests and cropped hair, David Foster Wallace’s bandana, Flannery O’Connor’s cat-eye glasses. Blame it on the cult of image that surrounds all contemporary celebrities, but these visual details help bring authors to life for readers. And personal style doesn’t just bring the writing to life. It makes the writer more human and more of a character all her own.

Images via (clockwise from top left):The Guardian, The Bluegrass Special, Poetry Foundation, Fowling Hantods

Carson McCullers is one writer whose personal style has had an unexpected influence on me. If you perform an image search for Carson McCullers or consult one the biographies of her that houses a set of glossy photo pages in the center, you’ll see that the woman had a unique sense of style. Often it looks like she cut her own hair, in renegade fashion. Possibly with pruning shears. She wore starched white shirts with enormous collars and cufflinks. She wore so many embroidered vests. She had a face, and a stare, and a pout to end all pouts.

Many readers know McCullers for her investment in the American South, but she doesn’t write about a South that might strike you as familiar. Instead, she represents the outsiders, the misfits, the kids who don’t belong. Her writing invites you into a realm where children can befriend adults but never seem to have parents—at least not parents who are paying attention. She introduces you to adolescents who find themselves at the center of complex legacies of racial and class conflict, which they navigate with remarkable insight and open-mindedness. Their world comes alive in the heat of never-ending Augusts, while McCullers’s characters swelter in endless boredom and daydream about Alaska or snowy Cincinnati. They rarely get to leave home, but they dream constantly of a life beyond or outside the small community that is all they know.

The personal effects formerly belonging to Carson McCullers at the Ransom Center are a curious array of objects and clothing. The objects, I like to imagine, were swept straight off her desk and into a box to be mailed to the Ransom Center’s door. They feel just as random—and just as talismanic—as that. Two cigarette lighters—one gold Zippo (engraved for Terrence McNally) and one mother-of-pearl desktop lighter that weighs at least three pounds; a curious statuette of a llama (a paperweight?); a handkerchief printed with a recipe for Irish Coffee; a torn straw hat; a pair of cream wool socks, worn on the soles.

Photo of Carson McCullers' engraved Zippo, via Cultural Compass

It’s hard to account for these items. When I’m cataloging artifacts of everyday existence, it’s often unlikely that I’ll find any record to confirm the role these belongings played in the author’s life. Nonetheless, the objects spark my imagination. They provide a portrait of the writer that exists nowhere else. These are the things McCullers saw, perhaps daily, the things she touched, carried in her pockets. These are Carson McCullers’s pen refills. The packaging and labeling of consumer goods also tells us something about a historical moment through design, font choices, and pricing. And the objects of everyday life ground writers in the real, tangible world; these objects help stave off the common impulse to idolize authors.

McCullers’s clothes evoke the 1940s and 1950s more than anything else in the collection. Rich tweeds in teal and lime green; a deep burgundy shawl coat that looks Russian; unfathomable long-sleeved, collared nightgowns; elaborately embroidered jackets. There’s one piece that seems especially out of place: a gold lamé jacket with magenta lining that still has the price tags on it, from all those years ago. It looks like a gift never worn; or perhaps it belonged to McCullers’s mother, Marguerite Waters Smith. Marguerite’s passport is also part of the collection; it lists her profession as “housewife” and has no stamps in it.

Photo of Carson McCullers' magenta-lined lamé jacket, via Cultural Compass

McCullers’s fiction comes alive through objects and through clothing, which makes her collection of personal effects that much more telling. When I think of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940), I think of Mick’s refusal to wear anything but shorts, even when she is expected to wear dresses. I think of Frankie in The Member of the Wedding (1946) and her adamant bowl cut. I picture the strange motor that she keeps on her dresser and switches on when she’s bored. Or the heinous-sounding bright orange dress she picks out for her brother’s fateful wedding. Details of objects, fashions, clothing, and garments ground McCullers’s fiction in a richer, more vibrant imaginary world, one replete with the textures of our own. McCullers brought the aesthetic of her work into her daily life with clothing and objects, and vice versa. Everyday things are an enormous part of a person’s identity; in many ways, if you think about it, they assemble who we are and what we do.

"Boy" Cuts: Part I

Jenn Shapland — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 15:00:00 +0000

Compiled from www.madewell.com

Fall clothing lines are out, which means the online window-shopper in me is happy as a clam. I’ve been scrolling around, looking for new sweaters or jeans or blazers that would be appropriate for the drastic change in seasons we collectively imagine here in central Texas.

And here’s what I’ve noticed: all the things I like right now have names with the word “boy” in them. Tomboy jackets, boyjeans, boyfriend shirts. Perhaps this is just indicative of a (never-ending) androgynous trend at the places I shop; as the image above shows, just one store—in this case, Madewell— capitalizes on the boyish qualities of their women’s clothes four times in their fall lookbook. Menswear-inspired women’s clothes are nothing new, but they’re definitely on trend in the retail world this fall, in a very self-aware way. Dressing across gender lines can be cool and even a means of subverting traditional gender roles or images. But labeling these styles “boy ____” has, I think, the opposite function.

It got me thinking about some of the strange, patriarchal, normative, and bizarrely long-lasting differences between men’s and women’s clothing design. In particular, one of the most basic differences: how they’re cut.

I’ve recently started designing and making my own clothes, largely inspired by a Japanese designer whose company, Arts & Science, has produced a line of “Genderless Clothes” and consistently produces exquisite, minimalist pieces that anyone could wear.

Image from www.designsponge.com

As I began to experiment with sewing from a pattern, I learned quickly that one of the reasons I love Arts & Science is that their cuts are straight and simple. (Which is great for someone who’s still figuring out her sewing machine. Curves are tricky, y’all.) Patterns for women’s clothes (many of which haven’t changed since, oh, the 1950s) are more often about contouring, curving, and accenting or hugging the woman’s “form.” And this, I think, is where the problems arise.

The answer is obvious, but why is it that most women’s clothing is designed to either a) show off or b) hide the body, while most men’s clothing is designed to comfortably fit the body? The objectifying gaze of patriarchy is right up against you at this moment, fellow wearers of women’s clothes! It’s sewn into your very seams! Even if you’re wearing (like I am right now) a basic white T-shirt. More on that in the next installment.

Last thoughts for today: I saw Savages perform Friday night and just want to commend them and call attention to their bravely stark, minimalist, stage attire. Their all black, clean, un-contoured cuts, combined with dark hair and white lights for a pristinely simple, powerful visual. For a band that’s all about minimizing distraction to maximize immersion, I was thrilled to see such attention to detail (or lack of detail) in their clothing styles.

Image from "The Key"

Stay tuned: in the next installment, I tell a harrowing tale of the time I took men’s clothes to the Round Rock, TX J. Crew outlet women’s fitting room (gasp!), and share a critique of (many twenty-something’s beloved) American Apparel.

The Lesser Known Bel Geddes: An Assessment of the Harry Ransom Center Exhibit

Chris Ortiz y Prentice — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 21:43:29 +0000

Image Credit: Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation

The Divine Comedy, scene rendering: In a path of blue-white light Beatrice steps down from her chariot to meet Dante, 1921-1930

Norman Bel Geddes lived a sixty-five years that connect two worlds, the Victorian past of 1893, the Atomic Age of 1958. His work reflects and resists that trajectory. The current exhibit on Bel Geddes at the Harry Ransom Center (UT Austin) divides his career into phases or stages of development. A highly creative childhood segued into a successful career as a stage and costume designer for New York Theater. Of all his work—in industrial design, in architecture, in “futurism”--his set and costume design remains my favorite. But in an important sense, Bel Geddes never left the theater.

In his thirties, Bel Geddes painted some wonderful watercolors of his stages and costumes. The famous one is of his most ambitious—indeed wildly ambitious—production of The Divine Comedy. There’s a great story attached to this endeavor. Bel Geddes recounts in his autobiography a period of creative fallow. He had set his desk against a blank white wall, so over-active and confused was his imagination. He says he learned every crack, contour, and bump of that white wall. One day, looking up at one such barely perceivable irregularity of texture, it appeared to expand and swirl. Soon it was a horrible vortex. Bel Geddes rose from his desk, stumbled backwards, crashed against the bookshelf and fell to the ground. As he recovered from this vertigo he recognized that his eyes were fixed on a book that had fallen next to him. It was Dante’s great work. Bel Geddes opened a page at random, so the story turned myth goes, and decided to employ his imagination in a massively scaled, and complete, production of The Divine Comedy.

Image Credit: Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation

Figures of dancers for Palais Royal Cabaret, 1922.

The watercolors from this period of wonderful creative exertion should strike to the heart of any fan of science fiction, anime, or fantasy. It was in this same foundational period of Bel Geddes creative life that he decorated the Palais Royal Cabaret, one of Paris’s most fashionable spots between the wars.

Image Credit: Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation

Costume design for Gypsy Woman in The Miracle.

Bel Geddes turned next to industrial and interior design. I find his work of this period—including a range stove that influenced design for decades—understated, sleek, modern. Seltzer bottles for 1939:

Image Credit: Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation

In this period, Bel Geddes designed an energy-conserving house, which was less practicable than provocative. Bel Geddes, the stage man, persisted throughout his career.

It was in the booming forties and fifties that Bel Geddes’s ambitions could be matched by material resources. It seems to me that Bel Geddes was better when pressed by limitations. Ambition turns monomaniacal when it is paired with fame—which Bel Geddes had by then come by—and seemingly unlimited resources. Bel Geddes started modeling cars of the future, tanks for the army, a cruise-liner, an ocean-liner of the skies, baseball parks, and of course the Futurama for the 1939 World’s Fair.

Image Credit: GM Media Archives, General Motors LLC.

General Motors, Futurama Spectators, ca. 1939

The massive Futurama could never again be matched. I think Bel Geddes understood that. The works of his middle and old age show a returning humility. Understated Bel Geddes, like understated Dickens, is a rare and fine commodity:

Image Credit: Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation

Prototype case for Emerson Patriot radio, ca. 1940-941

Very likely Bel Geddes could not do otherwise than imagine the future. I think there is a sort of futuristic old-fashionedism about Bel Geddes at his best. This style, which shows up in his stage and costume design, in his industrial design, in his home design--should be distinguished from the old-fashioned futurism, the supermans and skyscrapers that dominated the sci-fi pulp, of the 40s and 50s. Bel Geddes is an old-fashioned futurist when he does Futurama. But at his best, Bel Geddes was, I suggest, a futuristic old-fashionist, as in this never-completed plan for the British Imperial Hotel in Nassau:

Image Credit: Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation

Job No. 684, Colonial Hotel - Nassau, 1954-1956

Futuristic old-fashionedism: the will to conserve mated with the will to create. One among many strands of the modernist tapestry.

The opinions expressed herein are solely those of viz. blog, and are not the product of the Harry Ransom Center.

Revenge of the attention economists?

John Jones — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:51 +0000

J O’Shea at SuperTouch has posted a review of an art show by Mr. Brainwash (AKA Theirry Guetta). According to O’Shea, Brainwash is a hack, ripping off the style of pop artists like Warhol and street artists like Banksy and Shepard Fairey.

After following pioneering street art legends like Banksy and Shepard Fairey around, camera in hand, shooting hundreds of hours of footage, however, the lure of cheap & easy fame began to eat away at [Guetta]. The desire to mint an original style proved more elusive. It all began several years ago with a series of uninspiring wheatpaste posters in the style of nearly every stencil artist that came before him depicting Guetta, with trademark facial hair and fedora, holding a camera, fused to the walls of Hollywood’s most heavily trafficked corridors. Further inspired by the success of Banksy’s self-produced “Barely Legal” solo show in 2006 (and with the encouragement of Sir Banks himself—possibly his biggest art prank on us all to date?), and having established sufficient ”street cred,“ Guetta began to plot his own ascent. The result is the exhibition in question, titled “Life is Beautiful” that currently occupies the formerly vacant CBS Studios on Sunset Blvd. . . . In the words of one of LA’s most pioneering street art provocateurs, Skullphone, “if Disneyland wanted to open a street art ride, this is what they’d have done.”

The antics of Mr. Brainwash, and the reaction of O’Shea to them, made me think of Richard Lanham’s at times scathing review of pop art in The Economics of Attention. It is interesting to note that artists like Duchamp and Warhol, who Lanham calls “attention artists” or “attention economists,” were pranksters who may have really liked the joke that O’Shea so deplores: somebody sees how much money and prestige comes from making pop art, declares himself a pop artist, and starts to receive money and prestige through the wholesale copying of other artists’ methods and works. Mr. Brainwash is merely manipulating what Lanham calls the “Interpretive Bureaucracy of Attention Economists,” the establishment of art critics and promoters who can be trusted to find importance and meaning where there is none.

I would be interested in hearing from other readers of Lanham’s book to see how they think Mr. Brainwash’s work fits into the author’s description of the Attention Economy.

via Right Some Good