Do you dress to please the boys?

Are you visually original? Are you an outsider in one group and a conformist in another? Do you send and receive messages based on your understanding of recently-updated information from trusted sources? Are you interested not in uniting humanity into one big lukewarm gloop but in separating it out into lots of different groups? Do you dress to please the boys?

I'm interested in lots of stuff about clothes. First of all, the right side of my brain just loves to see certain colours and shapes in a balanced composition with others. But the left side of my brain isn't asleep while this sensory data is being processed. The left brain chimes in with cultural pattern recognition. 'Ah, that's interesting, I thought that Flashdance style was dead and rotten,' says smartarse Left Brain, 'but apparently it's back, all fresh 'n' lickettysplit. And what happens now,' continues baggy-ass trendy Left Brain, 'is going to be interesting. Some people will feel a repulsion they can't overcome. Some will feel a nostalgia which makes them welcome the style back. Some will be too young or too naive to know what the hell the reference is, but will buy into it because it's fashionable. And most will neither know nor care. They'll be thinking about something completely different. Sex. The presidential election. Problems at work.'

There's nothing wrong with being divisive, with wearing clothes that express your 'difference'. It's not an unfriendly act! Because we're aiming for a world in which people can accept and enjoy differences, aren't we? A world where people are divided in diversity rather than united in conformity, right? Where there are big, safe differences -- differences conducive to respect -- rather than small, dangerous ones (those pesky Minor Differences Freud warned us start wars), right? And yet people still feel uncomfortable about their perceived divergence from perceived norms. Perhaps more so now than ever. I've noticed a lot of Middle Eastern people recently wearing American baseball gear at airports, as if to say 'Listen, I may not look like you, but I think like you. I am not trying to be different, because I realise that if I dressed 'differently' from you, you might assume I'm hostile to your culture. I think and dress like you. Please don't send me for a special security interview. I'm just trying to get home. Thank you.'

Our anxious Middle Eastern-looking man is probably also wearing denim, because, as Fashion UK News reports in an article entitled 'Denim Democracy', denim is 'the world's most democratic fabric'.

Of course, 'dressing to fly' is a special case. Mostly we don't dress to pass through security checks or to affirm our belief in 'democracy' (just so you don't give it to us with surgical strikes). We don't, in other words, dress to appease angry authority. No, we dress for our peer group, our friends, our potential mates. The same assemblage of signs that expresses our solidarity with our peers and lovers also expresses our difference from those we don't feel close to and are not keen to fuck. We align ourselves with some at exactly the same moment that we differentiate ourselves from others. We make ourselves available to some whilst removing ourselves from the orbit of others, and all with our clothes. It's political, but micro-political. I'm with you guys, not those guys over there. You can have me, they can't.

Sometimes this 'I'm with smart, not stupid' solidarity / differentiation thing is about age, or class, or culture. Sometimes it's about district. 'The arrondissement dresses the man,' they say in Paris. Menswear designer Thomas Maier, talking about Paris, explains: ''Each neighborhood reflects a different lifestyle, from those Chesterfield coats that pepper the 8th district to the hip-hop kids in Les Halles and the Marais, to cool St. Germain-des-Près.''

If district isn't dictating your style, then age is. Julie Alleman, a marketing bod at Paris pret-a-porter store Who's Next, says kids are extremely fashion-conscious:

'Boys are much more into brands while girls are interested in style, in the silhouette. But boys spend just as much as, and sometimes more than, girls. They reveal some consistency in their purchases. At a time when girls are trying to emphasize their femininity, the boys are looking into sports brands like the sacrosanct triptych Adidas-Nike-Reebok, or brands like Fila, Puma, Diesel, Quicksilver, Oxbow, which go to the top of the class and stay there right through to the end of adolescence. Rap, skate, street, r'n'b, gothic... kidswear suggests above all a manner of being, a statement about spirit as well as about belonging to a tribe.' While 'kidults' or 'adulescents' are trying to look ironically childlike, kids are trying to look mature, adult. Which is just as well, because adolescents hate to see their style being copied.



The latest fashion news from Japan varies according to what district of Tokyo you're looking at. Personally, I always check Daikanyama first. Despite my recent posting about Shibuya-kei being back, there's still a large amount of chromophobia on Japanese streets. There are also lots of 'kidults'. Look at the girl on the left's Start-Rite sandals. The girl on the right is on Omotesando. I like her more formal, pageboy, pierrot-like look. The pierrot is an 80s archetype I feel has been left behind in the rush to ironic versions of early Madonna / Cyndi-Lauper / Flashdance pomo style (lots of accessories, deliberately trashy animal prints, leg-warmers, 50s-in-the-80s references). Harajuku is pretty ignorable right now, attuned to crappy old camo style, hip hop and visual kei clutter. Shibuya is doing flat caps and what I think of as 'Boy London' style (black'n'silver, crowns'n'crests). This stuff is also chromophobic; no nice colour combinations for hungry Right Brain here. People just aren't doing the colour thing at all.

Neither are Osaka fashion avant gardists Cosmic Wonder. Their jeans line is a series of white and pastel cotton ensembles with baggy bum pouches. (Plus some jeans with the same thing going on.) I'm more interested in their experimental 'nightwear for daytime' line, a series of pajamas and sleeping bags to be used for impromptu daytime sleeping. Anywhere, anytime! Very Slow Life! London-based Swedish designer Ann-Sofie Back also avoids colour, though she has some interesting eyepatch-style glasses in her Spring/Summer 2005 Lookbook.

Shift's 'Girls on the Street' archive this month is in London, where they've discovered some much more colourful Asian girls. (Why is it that Japanese abroad ditch the beige first thing they do? Is it because they tend to be art, design and fashion students, and therefore inherently less chromophobic?)



I like the way the girl on the left chains her jacket instead of buttoning it, the semi-transparent layered butterfly blouse she's wearing. (Marks off for the ciggy, though.) The girl on the right looks a bit up herself, but has made a good effort, especially with the colour-co-ordinated eye shadow. (Marks off for the boots, though.)

So, to sum up, the hot fashion memes this season, as far as I can see, are:

* Toned-down Flashdance style.
* Black and white stripes.
* Flat caps in light colours with loud houndstooth patterns etc.
* Trousers with something hangy-pouchy going on at the ass.
* Legwarmers.

And for the feet, chucks are still it. Though I'm personally favouring white Birkenstock sandals worn over black socks. And yellow flip flops are good.

Of course, there are still lots of people still swimming in the Redneck chic currents of yesteryear. I refer you to this photo that went up on someone's LJ today.

Vice magazine is doing some sterling work this month in its Worst Issue Ever, a satire on other magazines which includes several spoof fashion articles which might help to shame people out of their fashion complacency. There's a hip hop fashion spoof, a Guerilla Makeover and a deliberately evil and moronic set of Dos and Don'ts. I liked this comment left below the Don'ts by someone called 'Juvenal':

'I laughed at the cruelty of these because it's taboo -- and yet totally normal -- to see losers as losers. Then I thought about the humanity of putting homeless and poor people as 'Donts' in an issue which is The Worst Issue Ever. It's inexcusable -- and also totally normal -- to treat the excluded with this contempt. The Donts page is a satire which reveals the savagery of a 'totally normal' response to social exclusion. This page is also an effective response to haters of hip redneck style. It effectively says 'The alternative to putting poor people on a pedestal is hating them and leaving them in the gutter.' The moronic celebrity-worshipping Dos were the perfect corollary. The reason people are angry and disappointed about these Dos and Donts is that they're devastatingly on-target social commentary. And the laughs are uncomfortable ones.'