Voxsartoria's Weekly WAYWRN Subjective and Totally Unfair Digest - Page 10

This is a very good point.

But those illustrations, if you read the captions, were not trying to depict the average lifestyle. They were overtly about the people at the top, and they served as markers for what the parameters of fashion were, as laid down by the people who set the fashions.

I really need to read your book (no sycophancy here), I assume that top down fashion is something you present as I sorta see that theme in your posts from time to time. It is still relevant in a sense as the big fabric shows have a huge impact on what will be designed. Cloth producers and their colour/mood surveys and the ensuing product they present are major players in today's world.

Top down fashion was the rule then. It isn't any more.

All I am saying is, the editors of AA and Esquire claim that the illustrations were based on obseravation. I believe them. That's not to say that they always observed correctly, or that they didn't get it wrong sometimes, or introduce an element of idealization, or sometimes just make shit up. I believe they did.

But, by and large, I think they reported faithfully what they saw. Hence the illustrations are good examples of the elite styles of dress in New York, London, and fashionable resorts of that time.

200 years from now, what we are wearing today and what these plates depict will all be lumped together under one style - and the subtleties between now and 70 years ago will not be lost, but will probably be considered irrelevant.

A lot of people seem to think dressing as we do implies a desire to demonstrate social status or mimic the past (for example, Fuuma has claimed, time and time again, that we are simply having a sort of 'dialogue' with another time). I think it's important, if not at least interesting, to understand our motivations as members of a minority group.

Regardless of your hostilities with FNB, I don't appreciate being called 'dense', particularly after I've taken the time to respond to you in a respectful manner.

I said that the idealization of the high society dress of a certain period is a huge influence on many members of this forum and often held as an unsurpassed golden standard by people who think there's an optimal way of dressing (hahahahaha!).

You might say my dialogue is limited to Patrick Macnee's tailor circa 1965.

I agree with that, and make no bones about the fact that when I dress I am trying to live up to a standard that transcends my time and place. But I do so because I think it looks good. My interest is purely aesthetic. That the clothes came from high society originally is interesting, but not so relevant. I will never be of that world, and am not pining for it, and any case it mostly doesn't exist any more. I just really like the clothes.

If this were such a bad thing, then we would have to say that acquiring any expensive taste, or any taste more expensive than what we grew up with, is a priori the mark of a poser. That's just another way of ossifying the cast system. The only people hell bent on wishing for that are people who feel their own place in the pecking order threatened.

And, yes, mafoo, for the record, I am talking about FNB.

There's a difference between believing that objective improvement is possible and believing that you know, in all certainty, what is objectively better or worse. If you believe objective improvement is possible, you will demand rational explanations for change; if you don't think anything is 'better' or 'worse', except in completely subjective way, you won't require such justification.

Sure, there can be several reasons. A strong reason is the feeling that the present doesn't respect them for the qualities they possess and that there are no "gentlemen" or "ladies". It's a matter of degree and I suppose everyone has it to so extent, a nostalgia for the past. it's simply a matter of how far back, how authentic the reproduction of the outfits and for what purpose. I doubt if there was anything better about the clothes in the thirties in the absolute sense. Some of the styles have become classics and perhaps some of the color combinations are cultural now. I think the thirties are not in vogue now but rather more like the 1960s and 1970s. The thirties renaissance for men's clothing is fallow, at least for the moment. No I don't think this is true. If I understand what you mean, people who buy clothes for contemporary status want to fit in while those who recreate the past think they have rediscovered a sort of secret exclusivity and want to stand apart. Thus, one does not have to have any imagination and can simply copy but because the source is not widely avaialble it is almost as if one "invented" it. I havn't got an issue with studying the AA and/or Esquire plates for historical research and trends in clothing; it is adoring the lifestyle of the time and wanting to become it that prompts a curious desire to copy exactly. More than buying "in" clothes, it is more like wearing Shaq's jersey to become Shaq. Although I do not think this is a perfect fit because, as mentioned above, because the person believes these plates to be like an exclusive source they would want to believe they are actually plus Shaq que Shaq. I know, perhaps it's more like wearing a reproduction jersey of a player from a long defunct team that no one knows about and taking immense satisfaction that only you know about the player's history.

Bailey & Weatherill?

That would have been in the B&W series. When they went color for the US market in '67 Macnee switched to having clothes designed for him by Pierre Cardin. Those were totally caricatured.

The shirts were T&A RTW, apparently.

In the New Avengers Macnee started out with suits tailored by Gieves.

^^^ Foo, was all that clear enough?

But have you considered the possibility that some things from the past are just better than what is normal now? You hate heavy, traditional fabric, but it performs better in some ways. Someone who wears a heavy tweed jacket could be doing it out of nostalgia, sure. But maybe he just likes the way tweed wears.


Everyone wants to simultaneously be unique and fit in. If people who wear avant garde fashion are trying to 'fit in', they are only trying to do so in a very small group.


Again, you shouldn't assume people do as others did in the past merely because they wish to mimic the past itself.

100%. And he didn't insult me.