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imomus
The great photographs of Sapporo girls in kimonos on the Shift site this month (shot, as usual, by Meguya of Fly) made me think about the way my ideas of sartorial elegance, beauty and gorgeousness have drifted away from modernity, the West and the present towards tradition, the Orient, and the past. Shift seems to have moved in the same direction: whereas ten years ago Shift and I were content to walk around Harajuku looking at t-shirts, now we're only happy when gazing at the colourful patterns of kimonos, Japan's most ancient and traditional garb. But how did it come to pass that gorgeous patterns, colours and shapes were suddenly to be found only in the past? How did the past become more colourful than the present, more "progressive", with lovelier values? Is the future something to do with embracing some of the values of the past?
My greatest errors, Part 258: I was waiting for the market, and modernity, to bring me sartorial gorgeousness.
One by one, the following things disappointed me as possible sources of this gorgeousness (bracketed figure denotes approximate date of my disillusionment): the Paris collections (1995, date I first attended actual Paris catwalk shows), stylists on Western magazines (1991, date I was styled for Vogue UK by Isabella Blow, the most original stylist of her generation), urban hipsters in trendy cities (1998 to present, as I progressively scoured and exhausted Hoxton, Williamsburg, Daikanyama only to find chromophobia, skulls, and slightly-differently cut and textured denim), thrifting (2001 to present, as I increasingly find the same mass produced conformities in the thrift stores that I find on the streets), Cutie magazine and Japanese youth culture as portrayed in street fashion magazines like FRUiTS (2001 to present, since the decline of ganguro, the last Japanese youth culture style of any interest).
Some things escaped the "cull" of my progressive disillusionments: ethnic dress (as shown in Tibor and Maira Kalman's book (un)fashion), traditional religious garb (robes, etc) as worn in ethnic (mostly Muslim) urban areas like London's Brick Lane, the clothes worn by elderly Berliners, the uniforms of traditional craftspeople and guildworkers, Rastafarian style and the fashion sense of one or two exceptional pop stars like Eye Yamataka and Devendra Banhart. The frilly revisionism of Gothic Lolita. And certain eccentric sartorial investigations carried out in the Western art world, still capable of impressing me, mainly thanks to the art world's dedication to "otherness" and "buying and selling that which cannot be bought or sold".
Analysis of the shift in my taste: I have abandoned the idea that gorgeousness can come from the production system of today's free market, the present, or the West. I believe this is because the West embraces the credo "Give me convenience or give me death!" The modern West is incapable of seeing formality or dignity or commitment or even colourful flamboyance as a virtue. The West has eradicated, in men and women, the idea of femininity because it is terrified of femininity. The West breaks down small groups (guild carpenters who wear carpenter garb) in order to make us all one big group of "individuals" who nevertheless wear the same thing (white shoes, jeans, t-shirt, black jacket), the same all-purpose convenio-garb. The West, with its concepts of time management, profit and efficiency, cannot justify the beading of a dress, the embroidery of a blouse, or the weaving of a carpet unless a machine can do these things in a matter of seconds. Ironically, Eye Yamataka's show at ArtZone in Kyoto was mostly built around the paradoxical idea of the laborious embellishment of simple mass produced convenio-clothes, the protracted and penurious hand-decoration of T-shirts and jeans, the pouring of hours of work into the kind of clothes most people take seconds to pull on. The re-insertion of formality into the informal, one might call it.
The last record I bought -- and I don't think this is unrelated -- was a Trojan triple box set of Nyahbinghi reggae, including early recordings of Count Ossie, the Nyahbinghi drummer who was coaxed down from pious Rastafarian meditation in the hills by Prince Buster. There's some parallel between Count Ossie's music and the lovely kimonos in Shift this month; they're both visitations, visible and available in brief flashes at the margins of our system of conception and production, from a system of conception and production which is very different. And although I know that glorification of this otherness is Romanticism and Rockism (and finally entirely compatible with capitalism's colonialist-orientalist effort to capture the uncapturable, sell the unsellable, and commodify exotic goods not produced by it), I can't help it. Count Ossie and kimonos just seem inherently gorgeous.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 02:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 02:25 am (UTC)However, there are always exceptions to the rule; there will always be a few people more fashionable and unique than the rest that will be intelligent and iconoclastic enough to make the mass produced stylistic zeitgeists into something of their own, if not skirt(no pun intended) the stylistic zeitgeists entirely to create an entirely new sort of fashion. I bet those few might think in a similar fashion to the Gothic Lolitas and, yes, the thoughts found in this entry, and look to the past for inspiration, just as many new wave fashions looked to the mod 1960s.
We have the past 2000 years of fashion at our disposal, for chrissakes! We're post-modern!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 02:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 02:52 am (UTC)... was my favourite disk in my rustic teahouse in the Higashiyama hills where I'd spend weekends in 1999. A good soundtrack for wabi-sabi.
The West, with its concepts of time management, profit and efficiency, cannot justify the beading of a dress ...
Exactly how do you manage to block out all those "super-legitimate" sombre grey suits that throng Japan's trains and afterwork entertainment zones?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 03:22 am (UTC)The grey suits are of course Japanese adopting Western chromophobia. They're the-west-in-the-east.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 04:18 am (UTC)There are still places around with this atmosphere - try Café Sarasa (http://www.fodors.com/miniguides/mgresults.cfm?destination=kyoto@86&cur_section=din&property_id=417892) in Nakagyo-ku, for example.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 04:45 am (UTC)"Café Sarasa
"In an area where trendy new designer stores recycle old kimonos and rub shoulders with traditional art supply shops, there's a lovely old café where you can sip the largest café au lait in Kyoto. The exposed beams and mud walls of this Edo-era house lend the café woodsy charm. The laid-back eatery serves light meals -- try the Okinawa-style fried rice with vegetable and tofu, or the Vietnamese-style pancakes. Café Sarasa is three blocks west of Teramachi-dori and a little south of Sanjo. Look out for a tiny bicycle shop and head up the stairs to the left of it. No credit cards."
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 04:52 am (UTC)...Conclusions I've come to this week: Beauty and elegance are the most subversive elements in our society. Blissful optimism is the most rebellious outlook a person can have. It would seem that the (truly) "cutting edge" bohemian approach and the refined "cultured" approach are converging as they have become -nearly- synonymous. Ugliness is passé. Detached coarseness, which has been (perceived as) the underlying "subversive element" in art for over a century has now become a sad caricature of "artiness". "In your face" attitude is now a terrible bore...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 05:46 am (UTC)Oh dear Momus, the ever-dreaded "general statement"! You'd better throw around "tends to" and "may be" so people can understand it!!!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 05:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 05:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 05:58 am (UTC)However metropolitan Quebecers are totally different, their dress sensibility is as sane as the Japanese.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 06:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 06:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 06:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 06:27 am (UTC)killer words man.
yea i find it frustrating that i am so impatient, used to always going....but living in the usa, thats just the way things are. ive spent enough time in other countries that id really like to get out of here. it just sucks that its so tought to get work visas in the euro union... but there are always lots of other places i could go....where in japan are you living? for school?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 06:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 06:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 06:44 am (UTC)My greatest errors, Part 258: I was waiting for the market, and modernity, to bring me sartorial gorgeousness.
I progressively scoured and exhausted Hoxton, Williamsburg, Daikanyama only to find chromophobia, skulls, and slightly-differently cut and textured denim.
The modern West is incapable of seeing formality or dignity or commitment or even colourful flamboyance as a virtue.
The re-insertion of formality into the informal...
Yes, indeedy.
I feel much of the current shabby state of things is in part a function of this obsession with an emphasis on innovation without refinement: a forced novelty that is ultimately unsustainable and inorganic. In our zeal to make what we thought was going to be an irrevocable series of breaks with our collective past, we've burned through our new, shiny ideas much too quickly. We have now exhausted all resources except the past we'd purported to abhor. It seems that this impasse has been brought about by the interaction between the corporate capitalist sectors and what is now the ossified, doctrinaire "avant garde," or at least what passes for it. Together, they will continue to trot out the fall collections, but the really interesting ideas are not going to come from the core of what we now deem to be "progressive" or "arty" enclaves. It will be in the diaspora, where forms and ideas can diverge and germinate beyond the manic scrutiny of both media and cool hunters.
On the way to a wedding in Queens last September, I awaited an an old friend in a hotel lobby, who arrived dressed in "traditional" Scottish full dress (spooran, kilt, etc). His female friend from Japan was dressed in a gorgeous, colorful traditional kimono, looking much like the women pictured above (except the more traditional sandals were worn). It was amazing how freindly and deferential the sidewalk passersby became as we hailed our cab. I found the juxtaposition arresting: each enhanced the strangeness and beauty of the other. Hence, I don't really feel this to be an East/West issue. For a sense of this otherness, I need only look to a tintype of my great great grandfather Joseph, a Choctaw who relished his jewelry, richly beaded cloth and turban.
Perhaps my being an American allows me a certain appreciative distance, but I think older Western forms, if seen with fresh eyes, can be adopted and enjoyed: at the moemnt I find prerevolutionary French Sevres porcelain (http://lord-whimsy.livejournal.com/2006/01/04/) very exciting for its poised, plantlike forms and brash colors (I'm surprised you haven't taken notice of Shaker furniture, given your spare, post-protestant aesthetic).
Among small, dandyish New York circles, I see more men with waxed moustaches and traditionally western facial hair styles, and the effect is oddly refreshing; Hulihees are certainly otherworldly and outrageous in a time when even sideburns are suspect.
Is this sensibility we're discussing romantic? Perhaps, but not entirely; some of it is just a form of critique. I still think that the old "strip lights and perspex" model of what we thought the future should be just won't work on its own, and hopefully we might now engage in the process of reformulating a richer vision of the future; one that isn't so bleak and dehumanizing. We may keep our romanticism in check if we follow it only so far as to simply acknowledge that the current idea of the future fails to satisfy our dignity and animal senses, and is therefore worth the neglect and contempt we once heaped upon the recent past.
I've never attended art school, so I was never indoctrinated into the idea of "permanent revolution" in art, which on its own I find to be a deeply unappealing, "no"-oriented stance (http://imomus.livejournal.com/161843.html). I don't see the revisiting of older forms as reactionary; from what I've seen, this sort of synthesis is how things advance (or perhaps I should simply say, "grow").
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 07:19 am (UTC)-greg jewett
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 07:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 08:14 am (UTC)...and the Feminist movement was ironically a major cause for this.
Momus, following more than a few occasions, the similarity of your ideas to my own scares me into thinking that you're not actually out there somewhere but just a projection of my mind; perhaps that's because this is a blog. It's a nice feeling to hear someone else express similar ideas. Glad I'm not alone in this.
Well, my move will be to try to subvert culture with my subjective, erotic, cute, and feminine novel. ...working on it.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 08:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 08:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 08:30 am (UTC)As for your last question, isn't that the basis of just about all philosophy? If I could answer it we could celebrate "the end of philosophy"! Perhaps that wouldn't be so great, though.