"Is Style Only for the Upper Class?" - NYT

[mussel]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/bu...pagewanted=all

 

[texas_jack]

These people need to take a trip to the ghetto on Sunday morning. You'll see some style, you may not like it, but it's style.

 

[Lucky Strike]

Good enough answer from the Style editor, I think:

A. That the sort-of-idle rich are style leaders because they can devote themselves to cultivating their tastes is an interesting view, though I don't really agree with you. Our reporting on so-called high society in the past couple of year has pointed out that whereas designers like Bill Blass once looked to the tastes of Park Avenue dames for inspiration, nowadays many younger socialites (and Hollywood stars) are given their finery by designers who are looking to exploit them as walking billboards. Original and influential style comes from everywhere, high and low, rich and poor, young and old. Think of hip hop street fashion, or the blue-collar Carhartt guy look still popular in Williamsburg, or the Factory-era Edie Sedgwick, whose style is being revived. We aim to cover all of it.

 

[amerikajinda]

I don't agree with this statement from the author, "A $500 pair of Prada loafers will outlast any five pairs of $100 shoes."

 

[JLibourel]

I like the part in the "Q&A" column about the gay men known as "bears." Well over a decade ago, a good friend of mine was at a newsstand and saw a magazine entitled "American Bear." He is a keen student of the natural sciences and was one of SoCal's premier amateur field naturalists--with zoological, mineralogical and paleontological discoveries to his credit. (He discovered several new species of prehistoric animals, but they weren't too dramatic--things like Palaeocene whelks.) Naturally, a magazine entitled "American Bear" piqued his interest, but he soon realized it was not his sort of magazine. The chap operating the newsstand advised him that its target audience was gay men who liked hairy bodies.

 

[StevenRocks]

Seems like a reaction to the many high-priced items the Times tends to showcase it their Style section. I used to get complaints like that doing my freelance style column.

Truth be told, a lot of stuff can be picked up at cheaper stores, but it takes imagination on the readers' part to seek it out. It's not the newspaper's job to tell you every cheap way to knock off designer style.